Excellent discussion of WHITE voting choices over the last 10 years. Data driven and non-inflammatory you discuss simply how people voted without judging them as "good" or "bad".
The "takeaways" from your article for me are as follows.
One:
Racial animus is certainly a factor in driving voters, and mostly white voters, to the GOP. Edsall points out that those numbers are in slight decline but more importantly are baked into the Republican base even before Donald Trump. As Marc Hetherington, a University of North Carolina political scientist quoted in the Times article states, “And the highly racially resentful already knew full well that their home was in the G.O.P.”
Not ALL Trumpublicans are Racists, but ALL Racists are Trumpublicans.
Which is nice to get validation on but is something that has been obvious to everyone for the last 30 years. Except academics who didn't want to call so many White people racists.
Two:
The divide we are experiencing, which appears to have us evenly split on election days, teeters on issues that include and are beyond racism.
That may be the good news. Racial resentment among whites is a mostly intractable issue in the present. The increased diversity brought about by the oncoming seismic shift in demographics will soon place whites in the minority for the first time. The shift will likely have a mitigating effect on racial attitudes if only by attrition.
Thinking we can resolve all our differences is a fool’s errand.
Which is absolutely true. You are never going to get racists to change their spots without the equivalent of a conversion "come to Jesus" moment. That doesn't happen often and it's retail politics. Irrelevant in the big picture.
Changing demographics will fix that over the LONG TERM.
What's more interesting is why Non-Racist WHITE voters, VOTE with the racists and accept them into their party. You touch on that and I would be very interested in seeing you explore that topic in detail.
As a WHITE MAN who was raised in the South by racists, I have my own theories about the coalition of WHITE Voters making up the Trumpublican Party. I see its main components as being:
Evangelicals, Gun Nuts, Homophobes, Misogynists, Pro-Lifers, Anti-Taxers, Suburban Mothers, Poor Whites, and Rural Whites.
While racists are in each of these groups and influence them, I agree that NOT ALL of the voters in these groups are racists. So, theoretically some of them should be "reachable" and willing to break with the Trumpublican party on some issues.
This hasn't been the case however and I would argue that it is something of a "fools errand" to hope for any meaningful number of Trumpublican voters to give up on voting Trumpublican.
Here was my logic two years ago in Nov. 2020 when I said this just before the election.
White Republican America votes as a unified block. That’s their strength.
For example, even though 80% of them want some form of increased gun control, they vote, as a block, against it. They vote against something that most of them want because, as this election makes clear, they need every single White vote they can get.
If they splinter over issues, then Democrats will start winning on all fronts and none of them will get anything.
So, the 80% votes against something they want, in order to hold onto the “gun nut” vote. Because they need those White voters, the tail wags the dog, and no meaningful gun control legislation ever happens.
This Republican dynamic is a big part of why we cannot get anything done in this country and it’s why the odds of any big action on Climate Change over the next 4–8 years are poor.
A significant portion of White America rejects the reality of Climate Change and the Republican party needs their votes. They are going to fight against every climate initiative the Democrats try to push through, and the Democrats are going to water down what they put forward in an attempt to not lose white votes to them.
I stand by that analysis. I don't see the WHITE Coalition breaking up anytime this decade.
