John Judis and Ruy Teixeira heralded a new age of US politics in their 2002 book, The Emerging Democratic Majority. The book predicted that the growing Latino population, coupled with a clear Democratic lead in many other growing segments of society, would strengthen the party’s hold on the US electorate for decades to come.
Judis and Teixeira actually made two predictions: that Latinos and other Democratic-leaning groups would become a larger share of the population and that they would continue to lean heavily Democratic.
The first prediction has come to pass, with the Latino share of the electorate projected to double to 15 percent by November from 7.4 percent in 2000, according to Pew Research Center.
“A new New York Times/Siena College Poll showed a steady narrowing in Democrats’ margin within this important group for the current presidential race, compared with the 2016 election.”
But the second prediction is unraveling before our eyes. A new New York Times/Siena College Poll showed a steady narrowing in Democrats’ margin within this important group for the current presidential race, compared with the 2016 election.
We’ve heard this story before. In 1969, Kevin Phillips published The Emerging Republican Majority, arguing that suburban growth and the professionalization of the economy would usher in a new age of Republican dominance in politics.
It was not to be. The share of people living in the suburbs kept growing, of course. But that shift didn’t translate into the political earthquake Phillips expected. And, with the benefit of hindsight, we know a lot about why.
The Democrats didn’t ignore the fact that people were leaving cities. Instead, as the political historian Matthew Lassiter argued in Suburban Strategies, they refocused their political energy, and their policy platforms, to appeal to suburban voters.
Why demographics are not destiny in politics
We are economists, and we study markets. Politics is a competitive one. Just as auto manufacturers don’t sit and idly watch market trends—rising fuel prices, growing interest in electric vehicles—political parties fight for votes where they can get them. If a group of voters starts to grow, then both parties will court that group with campaign effort, messaging, and policy change. And, in the end, our national politics will stay competitive.
To test this proposition more systematically, we studied US presidential elections as far back as 1952 to see if demographic trends can predict political ones. In each election, we calculated how each group of citizens of a certain age, race, or income voted. We then looked at which groups grew and which groups shrank as the next election approached. We asked, if each group voted like they did in the last election, who would win the next one?
“Our analysis of data combining voters’ opinions with party platforms showed that where voters lead, parties tend to follow.”
It turns out that this kind of forecast rarely works. As we report in our new research paper, a forecaster would have done worse using this methodology than just guessing that every election would turn out to be a coin toss.
To be sure, over this period, some demographic groups gained electoral influence, while others faded. But with these ebbs and flows, US politics stayed in something like a competitive equilibrium, with no one party gaining a lasting edge.
One reason seems to be that the parties didn’t sit on the sidelines. Our analysis of data combining voters’ opinions with party platforms showed that where voters lead, parties tend to follow. When voter demographics predicted a rightward trajectory, either overall or on a particular issue, the parties tended to move the same way.
Loyalty today doesn’t mean loyalty tomorrow
Our work shows that it is a mistake to think that, just because a group seems loyal to one party today, this will remain true as the group grows in the future. Instead, it is a good bet that the group will get more attention from both parties, and a bad bet that US politics will become lopsided.
So, don’t be surprised the next time a group starts to splinter politically just when it becomes most important to the electorate.
Richard Calvo is a doctoral student in economics at University of California, Berkeley; Vincent Pons, is the Byron Wein Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School; and Jesse M. Shapiro is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration at Harvard University.
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Illustration: HBSWK, with image generated with Midjourney, an artificial intelligence tool.
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