The Shape Of The Electorate
Posted on July 7th, 2008
by Daniel Larison |
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And there are certainly libertarians who think Obama will be better on the war and on foreign policy, on executive power and on surveillance than McCain. ~David Boaz
Via Sullivan
These libertarians are the ones who are already being proven wrong. In any case, this reminds me of the recent Rasmussen item that studied support for the general election candidates according to different fiscal and social “ideological” pairings. This offers some interesting information that works to undermine the Cato thesis that libertarian-leaning voters make up as much as 13% of the electorate, and even more strikingly it accomplishes this while using the same flawed ”fiscally conservative, socially liberal” definition for libertarians that Kirby and Boaz were using last year. According to Rasmussen’s numbers, such fiscally conservative, socially liberal voters make up just 4% of likely voters. It seems to be the case that Obama is considerably more popular among these voters, leading 53-38 over McCain.
Interestingly, the unnamed “other” candidate does not get his strongest support from this “libertarian” group, which gives a third candidate just 3%, but gets it from those who consider themselves fiscally liberal and socially conservative (9%). It’s not clear which third-party candidate, if any, such voters would support, so it’s possible that more of these social conservatives could be brought into McCain’s camp. Naturally, the fisc-lib/soc-con group is Obama’s weakest among fiscal liberals, and it is also a group with a significant number of undecided voters.
How many “Obamacons” are there? I’m surprised to find that there are more than I thought there would be, though there are very few fiscally conservative, socially conservative Obama supporters. Prof. Kmiec does not have a lot of company. All together, variants of fiscal conservative, including the “libertarians,” make up 16% of Obama’s support. If you add the fiscal moderate/social conservative support, that comes to 24% of his support. Here’s the thing: Obama is neither fiscally conservative nor fiscally moderate, and he certainly isn’t socially conservative. If these voters put any store at all by how they have labeled themselves and what these labels mean*, it seems possible that a huge part of Obama’s current coalition and the basis for his five-point lead in Rasmussen’s tracking poll can be poached or driven away from him mainly by focusing on how expensive and unaffordable his spending proposals are. These voters represent almost 12 points in the general election tracking poll. If McCain can win over just half of them, he can win narrowly. McCain’s coalition is much more concentrated on the right with just 11% of his supporters coming from the left or from groups with uncertain ideological leanings, which gives him a more stable floor of support he can build on.
*I know most people don’t vote according to ideological labels or paradigms, but those who are able to define themselves with these pairings must have some policy preferences that more naturally align with one candidate rather than another.
Filed under: politics
We have a slight disagreement here. While I am coming rapidly to believe that Obama is not as good as he says he was or as I believed, there is no legitimate reason to believe he isn’t still better than McCain on any of Boaz’s metrics. McCain is almost uniquely reckless and ill-informed; for Obama to be equally bad is statistically virtually impossible.
And the point that needs making re: the fiscally moderate/fiscally conservative/socially conservative voters is the same point as ever: the war is deeply unpopular and McCain still supports it. There is no real way to capture un-support for the war with fiscal/social labels. My guess is there are a great many people frustrated with the war (and the Bush administration in general) who look at the two candidates and come to the staggeringly obvious conclusion that McCain is horrific and Obama is substantially less terrible.
I realize this is not a ringing endorsement, but Obama doesn’t need a ringing endorsement to win a landslide in this election. He just needs to not be as bad as the Republican Party. And it turns out he isn’t.
Of course it disappoints *me* that he isn’t the candidate I thought he was, but my disappointment is tempered by the fact that I still consider his platform better than anything this country has seen in 30 years. And, for libertarians, he’s still sort of obviously better than McCain. For the incrementalists, that’s good enough.
How many “Obamacons†are there?
Are you counting? My wife and I are two.
Among our reasons is that, unlike John McCain, Barack Obama does not seem scary to us. Though politically liberal he seems temperamentally moderate, safe and sane. Also among our reasons is that we feel that Mr. McCain is in denial regarding the nature and severity of America’s health-care financing crisis (even though we do not especially agree with Mr. Obama’s prescriptions). However, our real reason to support Mr. Obama regards the National Question, which is deadly serious to us.
According to Edwin S. Rubenstein, by the time of the 2012 election an actual majority of U.S. births will be nonwhite. Sliding racial demographics are probably not the only cause of our extraordinary national decline, for you and I each know enough recent immigrants to acknowledge that any U.S. citizen of any race can be a good American; but British statesman Enoch Powell was entirely right to observe that, when it comes to demographics, “numbers are of the essence.” There was absolutely nothing wrong with the United States’ demographic profile in 1960, Christian and 89 percent white, a uniquely successful profile that did not need altering. Yet, were one to judge by our immigration policies since 1960, one would think that we envied Brazil.
My wife and I believe that the sole available, effective political vehicle for traditional U.S. nationalism today is the Republican party. Moreover, we believe that the Republican party is a very good vehicle for this purpose—much better than the British Conservative party, the French UMP or even the German Christian Democratic party. However, the span of years remaining to us to save the United States from the fate of a Brazil grows short. We simply cannot spare the time for four or eight years of a McCain presidency followed by four or eight years, or more, of Democratic presidencies. We cannot let the McCainiacs hijack the Republican party now. We vitally need this party. We cannot do without it.
On current demographic trends, the decennial Congressional reapportionment of 2012 will favor traditional white America, for, as in 2002, representation will follow white flight from the coastal cities to the heartland. However, it will be the last reapportionment to do so, as by 2022 the dominant dynamic will be reapportionment to track the growth of the new ethnic minorities. An Obama presidency in 2009 may mean additional Republican governors and legislatures in 2011 to control the redistricting. This gives U.S. nationalists in 2012 a real chance—maybe our last real chance—to save the nation within the framework of our existing Constitution.
We blew it in the Republican Revolution of 1994. We could have saved the nation then, but we did not enough of us (including this writer) fully realize the significance of the chance. We dare not deliver this last chance into the hands of the McCainiacs and their unwitting leader Mr. McCain now.
Besides, Mr. Obama might surprise us. His politics are wrong, but he has the right stuff to be a good president. He just might be.
Things are trending our way, Daniel. Chris Cannon’s stunning primary loss in Provo, Utah, a week or two ago to an underfunded political unknown is a sign of the trend. Though I am a Pat Buchanan not a Ron Paul Republican, Ron Paul’s surprising showing in 2008 is another sign. Alaska is small and far away, but Gov. Sarah Palin’s wresting of the Alaska Republican party from the clutches of the Murkowskis is yet another. The corrupt Republican establishment has lost its clammy grip on the party. The ball is loose on the field, as it were. Mr. McCain must not be allowed to fall on it.
Mr. McCain represents too big a risk on too small a return. My wife and I shall probably vote Obama. I think that that makes us Obamacons.
Howard