How To Win In 2016: Debunking The Five Myths That Will Lead to Republican Defeat Read online

  All of which is to say that there is no middle path between voters who consider same-sex marriage a top priority in favor (young voters) and against (older, religious voters). The Republican Party must choose the voters it targets.

  Fact: Republicans Must Not Run From Issues That Perturb Young Voters

  Do Republicans have a better shot at winning young voters, or a better shot at winning older voters? The fact is that America is a rapidly aging country. In 2004, voters aged 18-29 represented 17% of the vote. In 2008, that number rose slightly to 18%. In 2012, that number rose again slightly to 19%. In 2012, by contrast, those older than 65 comprised 16% of the electorate. In 2014, those older than 65 comprised 22% of the voting population, while those under 30 were just 13% of voters; those aged 30-44 in the 2014 election comprised just 22% of the electorate as well (and they favored Democrats 50% to 48%).

  This would suggest that Republicans ought to target elderly voters at extremely high rates. As of the 2000 census, those older than 65 represented 12.4% of the population; as of 2010, that number was 13%. In 2000, those aged 45-64 represented 22% of the total population; that number jumped to 26.4% by 2010. Most importantly, in 2000, approximately 39.9% of Americans were aged 18-44; by 2010, that number dropped precipitously, to 36.5%.

  That back-loaded population curve is set to exaggerate as the years continue. The Baby Boomers simply didn’t have very many millennials, and that means that older voters will increasingly play a large role in elections. And those older voters are far more religious than younger voters. For example, just 39% of people aged 18-29 view Christmas as a religious holiday; two-thirds of those aged 65+ feel differently, as do 55% of those aged 50-64. Banking on atheistic youngsters versus religious older people seems like a rather large mistake.

  Religious people must form the backbone of any successful Republican coalition. In exit polls, Protestants voted 57% to 42% for Romney over Obama in 2012; white Protestants voted 69% to 30% in favor of Romney. That represented a four-point drop from 2008 for Democrats. White Catholics shifted from 52%-47% in favor of McCain in 2008 to 59%-40% in favor of Romney in 2012. White evangelical Protestants voted 79% in favor of Romney. According to Pew, white Protestants represented 45% of voters in 2000, 42% in 2004, and 39% in 2012; white evangelical Protestants constituted 23% of the 2012 electorate. Such voters overrepresented at the ballot, according to Ralph Reed. That led Reed to endorse the establishment view of voter turnout: “If the Republican Party wants to be competitive in national elections, it will have to nominate candidates who can appeal to young voters, women, Hispanics and other minorities.” But there’s another possibility, too: boost the already-above-average white evangelical Protestant turnout. Giving up the religious bird in the hand for the irreligious, younger bird in the bush is a fool’s gambit. That’s why Senator Ted Cruz (R-TX) says that evangelical Christians would be the base upon which he builds his campaign.

  There may be a needle to thread with regard to same-sex marriage for Republicans: Republicans can argue in favor of religious liberty in the face of the fascistic overreach of same-sex marriage advocates, who believe religious people ought to be forced into approving of homosexuality. Poll results have varied on the question of whether religious people ought to be able to deny service to same-sex weddings, but a recent Associated Press-GfK poll showed broad support for the notion that wedding-related businesses should be able to refuse service to homosexual weddings (59%).

  Myth #3: Republicans Must Close The Gender Gap By Dumping Social Policy

  Republican establishment figures have also suggested that Republicans face an enormous barrier in the gender gap. Pollster Kellyanne Conway, for example, recently told a New York gathering at the Competitive Enterprise Institute that the GOP must overcome the gender gap – that connecting with women is key to victory. Republican Party higher-ups have bought into the theory that presenting female voters with female faces will somehow draw more women to the party – in 2012, the GOP put forward its “Right Women, Right Now” effort designed at recruiting female politicians.

  In truth, however, Republicans have always faced a gender gap. From 1980 to 2012, Republicans won men at a far higher rate than women – though, to be sure, the gap matters less when Republicans win women overall, as they did in 1980 by one point, than when they lose women by 16 points, as they did in 1996. But Republicans lost women by 11 points in 2000 and 3 points in 2004, winning the election both times.

  The question isn’t whether Republicans would like to do better among women – of course they would. The question is how to do so. Leftist commentators, of course, ascribe the gender gap to Republican focus on abortion – despite the fact that 41 percent of women describe themselves as pro-life, and that a majority of women, regardless of self-description, believe that certain restrictions on abortion are necessary. Unfortunately, some in the establishment Republican Party have bought into the same logic, believing the only way to attract women is through softening on social policy, or attempting to run away from it entirely. As NBC News reported in 2013, the Todd Akin/Richard Mourdock experiences of 2012 led top Republicans “to vow to speak more softly on social issues and promote women within the party….The prevailing fear among some Republicans is that [anti-abortion] measures make the GOP seem unduly focused on abortion.”

  So far, many of the 2012 Republican candidates have been stumped on abortion, attempting to walk the politically correct pro-life line – pro-life, but pro-choice in cases of rape and incest, or pro-life, but respectful of Roe v. Wade, or pro-life, but not really willing to talk about the issue. The reality is this: for those women for whom abortion on demand is a top issue, Republicans are bound to lose. Republicans should therefore embrace their own positions on abortion, and not back down: after all, the media will play “gotcha” with them in any case. When asked about abortion, Republicans should also speak in minute detail about the actual biology of unborn babies as well as the biology of abortion procedures: polls show that Americans hate partial-birth abortion, for example, because they are forced to come to grips with just what abortion is. Fighting against partial-birth abortion did not damage George W. Bush politically. “Abortion” is a euphemism Democrats and the media should not be allowed to use without political repercussion.

  Most importantly, Republicans should recognize that abortion remains a major issue largely for single women. And those single women aren’t going to vote Republican in any case.

  Fact: Republicans Must Talk Crime and National Security

  Republicans need not win single women in order to win the 2016 election. They must win more men, and they must win more married women. In elections from 1980 to 2012 that Republicans won, they managed to average a neutral score among women; in elections they lost, they averaged a negative score with women of 12 points. But when it comes to men, the numbers grow even starker: in the elections they won, Republicans won among men by an average of 16.6 points; in the elections they lost, they won men by just 0.8 points. In other words, failure with men drove electoral outcomes slightly more than failure with women.

  That makes sense, given that married women vote more like men. A full 53 percent of married women went for Romney, but just 31 percent of single women went for Romney. In every election except for 1996 since 1980, as Kay Hymowitz reports, Republicans have carried married women. Hymowitz theorizes that’s because married women simply act as a proxy for “a cohort of white people holding college diplomas, earning more than $50,000 a year, and wearing reading glasses.” Hymowitz points out that men also have a marriage gap, with 61 percent of married men voting Romney and 55 percent of single men voting Obama. If that’s the case, Republicans face another uphill battle, as demographics shift and people marry older or not at all.

  But it would be foolhardy to throw away the base Republicans are likely to win in favor of a group of people Republicans are highly unlikely to win – especially given the fact that Republicans can heighten the gender gap rather than reducing it, at lea
st when it comes to the gap between single women on the one hand and men and their wives on the other. Reading the election numbers on women reveals one important fact: Republicans win more women when they run on national security and crime. In 1980, Ronald Reagan won the female vote because he ran on national security, explaining that Jimmy Carter simply wouldn’t keep Americans safe; he raised that number 12 points in 1984. In 1988, George H.W. Bush famously ran on Michael Dukakis’ weak crime record, and won women by a point; in 2004, George W. Bush ran on national security and lost women by a mere three points. As Democratic consultant Hank Sheinkopf explains, “[Foreign policy] gives Republicans an edge, and it does help close the gender gap. It dilutes the argument that Republicans are at war with women. It makes it inconsequential because there is a real war going on.” During the 2014 election cycle, pollsters concluded that Republican victory was imminent thanks to the national security threat created by the rise of ISIS.

  Polls show that women care more than men about rises in crime. A 2010 Gallup poll, for example, showed that fully four in ten Americans said they feared walking alone at night within one mile of their home. That’s been true since 1965 – but the numbers trend up before Republicans are elected, and trend down before Democrats are elected. Fully half of women said they were afraid of such crime as of 2010, as opposed to 22 percent of men. Gallup observes that “women are more fearful than men at every income level.” Unsurprisingly, even in blue areas like New York City, Republicans have been elected to high office based largely on fear of crime.

  With the uptrends in crime in America’s major cities, and with the Democrats’ open support for policies that increase such crime – policies such as destroying mandatory minimum sentences, freeing criminals earlier, and placing heavyhanded restrictions on police – Republicans have an opportunity to seize an issue they have ignored since the 1990s. They would be wise to take that opportunity.

  Myth #4: Money Wins Elections

  The old chestnut states that money wins elections, and that the Republican candidates most capable of raising a massive warchest will be in the best position to target presumptive 2016 Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton. The logic seems to be that candidates who raise tons of money can afford tons of television ads and a broader grassroots organization. This is why Democrats spend an inordinate amount of time complaining about Republican super PACs and campaign spending, as though the Koch brothers were completely capable of buying elections.

  That isn’t necessarily true. According to economist Steve Levitt of the University of Chicago, who analyzed the impact of cash on elections, “When a candidate doubled their spending, holding everything else constant, they only got an extra one percent of the popular vote. It’s the same if you cut your spending in half, you only lose one percent of the popular vote. So we’re talking about really large swings in campaign spending with almost trivial changes in the vote.“

  Nonetheless, Republican donors assume that they ought to be the kingmakers when it comes to conservative politics. The notion seems to be that since the top Republican donors are fantastic at making money – and they are – they must be similarly fantastic at dictating candidates to the conservative base. Even conservative media, this donor class argues, screw up the equation, calling as they do for more grassroots involvement in politics. Conservative intelligentsia say that conservative grassroots should sit down and shut up, or that Republican candidates ought to tell them to do so. Matthew Dowd, one of George W. Bush’s strategists, explained to Jackie Calmes of The New York Times, “You have to have national leaders emerge that are willing to have a confrontation, a real confrontation.” Calmes then quoted anonymous Republican sources suggesting just who that “leader” might be: Jeb Bush.

  The problem is that Republican cash doesn’t translate into votes – not unless you have people willing to do the grunt work. Karl Rove’s tens of millions in swing state campaign ads may pay some salaries, but they don’t reach anyone who knows how to use a TiVo. And sadly, Republicans don’t even allocate the money they do use wisely. In fact, they spend the cash on Rove types. In 2012, both Mitt Romney and Barack Obama spent in excess of $1 billion on campaigning. Here, according to The Huffington Post, is the breakdown on area of spending:

  Payroll:

  Republicans: $33.3 million

  Democrats: $63.2 million

  Payroll reflects the number of campaign employees. The Democrats spent nearly twice as much on boots on the ground as the Republicans. The results showed. As the Post reported, “The Obama campaign's advantage here would likely be even greater when counting the thousands of staffers hired by swing-state Democratic Party committees with money transferred to them by the Obama campaign and the DNC.”

  Ads:

  Republicans: $215 million

  Democrats: $412 million

  Ads, Including Production and Placement Services:

  Republicans: $270 million

  Democrats: $420 million

  Democrats spent significantly more money on campaign ads, too. This was an effect of Romney getting started later than Obama thanks to the egregious primary process.

  Online ads:

  Republicans: $100.6 million

  Democrats: $118.1 million

  Telemarketing:

  Republicans: $74.5 million

  Democrats: $35.2 million

  The Republican advantage in telemarketing spending demonstrates the shortcomings of the Republican campaign strategy. Telemarketing is significantly less effective than one-on-one contact, yet Republicans got doubled up on staffing to double up Democrats on telemarketing. That’s because the telemarketing money usually raises money; one-to-one campaign contact raises votes.

  Fundraising Consulting/Services:

  Republicans: $31 million

  Democrats: $6.5 million

  The one area where Republicans shouldn’t overpay – they’re businesspeople, for goodness’ sake! – is where they spent five times what Democrats did. The complaints about the so-called consultant class didn’t come from nowhere. The RNC spent nearly $5 million on catering and donor file maintenance.

  Polling:

  Republicans: $19.3 million

  Democrats: $32.1 million

  Democrats had more data and better data, and they used it to their advantage.

  Total Operating Expenditures

  Republicans: $885.6 million

  Democrats: $919.3 million

  $30 million isn’t an insignificant gap. But it isn’t the great decider. Where the money gets spent is far more important a gauge of success than the amount of money spent. And that spending strategy is, in and of itself, an important reflection of whether people are enthused. Obama raised $233 million from small individual contributions, nearly one third of his total direct raise. Mitt Romney raised under $80 million from small individual donors.

  Fact: Comparative Enthusiasm Wins Elections

  Nobody was enthusiastic about the 2012 election, statistically speaking. Barack Obama won a stunning victory over Romney, to be sure, but he won 4.6 million less votes than he did in his 2008 blowout over John McCain. Obama’s share of the white vote dropped off dramatically, and even the black voter turnout numbers dropped slightly from 2008 – although because of other voter turnout drops, the black voter turnout rose in terms of percentage of the whole. With 2004 turnout patterns, Romney would have beaten Obama. With 2012 turnout patterns, he lost by millions of votes.

  The problem: Romney’s vote totals didn’t increase much on McCain’s. In 2008, McCain won 59.95 million votes. In 2012, Romney won 60.93 million votes. So what went wrong for Republicans? If Romney had gained all the votes that didn’t show up for Obama, the race would have essentially been a dead heat. So what happened? As Michael Medved, a solid McCain and Romney backer, wrote in the days after the election, “[Obama] and his supporters succeeded in discouraging and disillusioning the Republican and independent voters Romney needed for victory.”

  Medved notes that while c
onservatives showed up for Romney, Republican-leaning independents didn’t – largely because the Obama team dumped 86 percent of Obama-directed money into negative ads about Mitt Romney, painting him as a nasty sort who would fire a man just so that his wife would later die of cancer, the sort of fellow who would direct his earnings overseas to avoid taxes out of dislike for his country.

  That smear achieved its purpose: Romney was widely perceived as cold and inhumane. In exit polls, Romney destroyed Obama on issues crucial to the American people: NBC News’ exit polls showed that with regard to the top issue for voters, the economy, Romney won 51-47; voters also believed Romney shared their values (55-42), was a stronger leader (61-38) and had a vision for the future (54-45). They also thought Romney was an out-of-touch, stuffy jerk: on the question of whether Romney “cares about people like me,” Obama clocked Romney by a whopping 81-18 margin.

  Too often, political analysts look at politics like bad poker players look at poker: they focus on their own hand. If only they play their cards right, no matter the opponent, all will turn out well. That simply isn’t true. Every political race represents a fight between two opposing forces, with all its attendant pushes and pulls. To win elections, Republicans must focus less on raising money and more on how they use that money: on driving out their own vote, of course, but also on ensuring that voter turnout drops for Republican opponents. That means targeting the opposing candidate and tearing him or her down.