When the 'Reagan Democrats' voted GOP in 1980/1984

[denem]

the Republicans welcomed them with open arms. I remember the interviews at the time: 'I still consider myself a Democrat but ...'

This election there are an emerging group of 'Biden Republicans': 'I still consider myself a Republican but ...'

Instead of being welcomed, some would treat them with scorn - 'How could you ever have been so stupid racist or greedy enough to vote Republican in ....'

What history tells us is that American politics is tribal. In 1932, at the height of the Great Depression, 39.7% voted Hoover.

What we also know is that a lot of those who cross the divide, who start having conversations in different circles, who change their viewing habits, who begin to feel more comfortable with being on the other side - these people stay.

Reagan boasted that he used to be a Democrat, and was cheered on by the GOP. Anyone who used to be a Republican, no matter how long ago, is smeared Democratic circles. Ask Elizabeth Warren, or even Hillary.

2020 can reset the U.S. political landscape. Republicans voting against trump represent a historic opportunity for the Democratic Party going forward. The political divide is sharper than ever. Those who make the leap should be welcomed. My 3c.

[Skittles]

1. I will never applaud anyone who thought DONALD FUCKING TRUMP would make a SWELL president

sorry, not now, NOT EVER

[denem]

5. 3m Obama 2012 voters

voted trump in 2016.

[Skittles]

17. I'll say it again

I WILL NEVER FORGIVE PEOPLE WHO VOTED FOR DONALD FUCKING TRUMP - they can all go FUCK THEMSELVES

[budkin]

21. Same

We all knew who he was and how he would govern.

[LakeArenal]

2. People better get over their aversion to Republicans.

Not what Joe is about.

Republicans will be sore losers. I’m not going to be a sore winner.

[zaj]

3. 1000% Electoral power comes from strong allies.

What harm is there? They aren't driving the Democratic Party bus, they are joining in the back with all of the rest of creative troublemakers.

[rpannier]

4. True, sort of...

Many of those Reagan Democrats were from conservative regions of the country.
They shared many of Reagan's principles going into 1980: Anti-abortion, anti-affirmative action, anti-environment, don't touch my money, etc
Most of the 'Reagan Democrats' had begun shifting long before.
States like Alabama, Mississippi, Idaho, etc had begun that shift in the 70's.
It wasn't that big a leap for the Republicans to have them in their party

[denem]

6. Agreed. But there was also 'Are you better off'?

Reagan will cut your taxes etc, which merged nicely with less money for 'welfare queens'. Tax has been a GOP staple ever since.

[LeftInTX]

34. not really

[brer cat]

7. Good post, denem.

I definitely agree that those who start having conversations in different groups will be more likely to stay. Some of them can be taught.

[I_UndergroundPanther]

8. I think the republican party

As it is right now needs to be burned to the ground.

They're traitors and even if they play nice they still have beliefs that go against democracy,and they can't be trusted.

Take the switch votes yes,

But remember they once supported traitors. Their tribe was a tribe of traitors.

We can't trust them.
Not after an attempted coup of our nation.
Nope I can't forgive I won't forget.

[denem]

12. " I can't forgive I won't forget. "

Thats 46% of voters in 2016. Thats a lot of people.

[DonaldsRump]

9. It won't happen until Citizens United is repealed

This was a cataclysmic disaster for the US. It allows money from essentially ANY source (R, D, foreign, criminal, etc) to directly or indirectly back candidates.

A secondary source of the problem is the end of the Fairness Doctrine.

Finally, social media providers (e.g., Facebook) should be held accountable for what is printed in their portals. They are absolutely no different than a printed newspaper in terms of defamation laws.

If we fixed these three things, the US and the world would be an entirely different place.

[Phoenix61]

24. Definitely the first two. The last one would be nice

but the first two are critical. There’s no way to do a reset when there is that much money flowing in.

[Drunken Irishman]

10. I have no problem with your point but Reagan Democrats were ideologically aligned with the GOP.

I think you're right that we should strive to be a big tent party and we shouldn't thumb our nose at those Republicans who want to support Democrats. But we can't be under the illusion these Republicans are progressive - a lot of 'em aren't.

The problem with your comparison is that Reagan Democrats WERE conservative. They were blue collar white folk who slowly abandoned the party due to its progressive ideals - but also, and maybe most importantly, due to the party becoming more inclusive in regards to racial minorities. Those Reagan Democrats? I hate to say it - they were racists. They likely opposed busing, supported redlining and were against Affirmative Action. On those issues, they were in lock step with the modern GOP. They were also in lock step on abortion, social welfare and other 'liberal' ideals that the Democratic Party embraced in the 1970s. In many ways, the Reagan Democrats were the backlash to the party's aligning with Civil Rights and Women's Rights.

These Republicans who are Never Trumpers aren't abandoning the party due to ideology like the Reagan Democrats did. They're leaving the party over Trump and granted, they're holding every Republican who enabled him accountable but I bet they're still pro-life, pro-gun, anti-regulation and anti-big government in many ways that will make it impossible for the Democratic Party to permanently house 'em unless the party lurches further to the right, which isn't going to happen (if anything, the Democratic Party is moving more and more to the left).

I don't know if these Never Trumpers would have been as active in electing a Democratic president this November if, say, Bernie was the nominee. And frankly, once Trump is defeated, and the party purged of Trump Republicans, I anticipate they'll return because, ideologically, they're still Republicans. Especially if, in four or eight years, the Democrats nominate someone whose views mirror Bernie.

[denem]

11. Time will tell.

[Drunken Irishman]

13. I think a better comparison is 1972...though on a larger scale.

Lots of Democrats crossed over and voted for Nixon because McGovern was perceived to be too out there. They came back four years later, though, and elected Carter. I think this is obviously a much larger scale but I suspect it'll follow a similar end-game.

[denem]

14. McGovern was not in office.

There is a difference between elections like 1964, 1972 and 1984, with voters staying with a known quantity against a challenger, and 1932 and 1980 where Republicans, and then Democrats voted against a president bearing their standard.

1992 is the counter example.

[Drunken Irishman]

15. No, but it fits your example better than Reagan Democrats.

Reagan Democrats left the party on political ideological grounds. They were conservative Democrats who likely did vote for Nixon in '72, came back to Carter in '76 and then permanently found their way to the GOP in 1980. Carter probably only managed to win 'em over because he was, for that time, a social conservative from the South.

The problem with Never Trumpers is that many of them are still conservative. They just don't like Trump and those who've enabled him. For them to remain in the Democratic Party, it would require them to shift ideologically. I don't foresee that happening. Biden is acceptable to this group because he's a well-known guy who has a history of being decent and pragmatic. But if it's not Biden at the top of the ticket in four or eight years, and the nominee is well to the left of him currently, with no Trump running, they might, and likely will, be more inclined to vote for a more conservative Republican ... unless they're tainted by Trump. And that's where I will agree with you: these people are pretty dead-set against supporting any Trump Republican, so, if the party nominates Tom Cotton in 2024, then they might be inclined to support the Democrat.

But if completely purge themselves of Trump? They'll go back.

No move the Democrats have made since the 1980s has opened the Reagan Democrats to the party again. Even Bill Clinton, who ran as a moderate, only did four-points better than Mondale did among white voters. In fact, no candidate has come close to hitting Carter's totals among white voters in 1976. Carter won 47% of the white vote. The closest since came in 1996 and 2008, where both Clinton & Obama won only 43% of the white vote.

Those voters aren't ever coming back. I can't say the same about these Never Trumpers.

[denem]

16. Clinton's win in 1992 set up the Democrats for three terms.

In 1996 Clinton lost the white vote 44-46 to Dole. He may not have won back all the Reagan Democrats, but he certainly scooped up some of them.

https://ropercenter.cornell.edu/how-groups-voted-1996

[Drunken Irishman]

19. Yes. I pointed that out in my post.

Not to be rude, but I suspect you didn't actually read my post or you wouldn't have said that because I specifically mentioned both Clinton's win in 1996 and Obama's in 2008, and their overall support. However, both still didn't hit the level Carter did in 1976. Moreover, your point only reinforces mine: there was no long-term coalition of white voters out of Clinton's win.

Review the exit polls here:

https://www.nytimes.com/elections/2008/results/president/national-exit-polls.html

Clinton, according to the NYT, won 43% of the white vote in 1996. Four years later, Gore won 42% and four years after that, Kerry won 41% - a continuous decline up until Obama's landslide-ish victory in 2008. Even still, in 2012, Obama won only 39% of white voters.

That matches the 39% Clinton pulled in during the 1992 campaign, but that was also a race with a significant third party candidate. In fact, Clinton only lost the white vote to Bush by one-point according to that NY Times link I linked to. In 2012, Obama lost it to Romney by 20 points. In fact, if you look at the margins, you can clearly see, outside Clinton's performance in the 90s, the Democrats were hemorrhaging these voters and they never returned to the party.

Here's the margins each Democratic nominee lost the white vote:

Carter: -5
Carter: -20
Mondale: -29
Dukakis: -19
Clinton: -1
Clinton: -3
Gore: -12
Kerry: -17
Obama: -12
Obama: -20
Clinton: -20

Granted, Democrats are doing better than Mondale among white voters but that was a significant blowout.

My point is that Reagan Democrats permanently shifted to the GOP from the Democratic Party. While Clinton maybe won some of them over, much of his success was due to white voters supporting the third party. In fact, while Clinton only lost the white vote by one and three points to the Republican, in 1992 and 1996, the margin of white voters who voted against Bill Clinton was:

1992: -21
1996: -12

1992 was not that dissimilar to the 80s for the Democrats, except Perot won 20% of white voters. Maybe they still go to Clinton if Perot stays out of the race (I think they do), but it shows how reluctant they were at supporting Clinton.

My point is that 1980 was a realignment election because it permanently killed the Democratic Party with white voters. Even Clinton's best run, as a white southerner thirty years ago, still meant a strong majority (60% of white voters in 1992), voted against him.

I don't see these Republicans sticking with the party because the only thing they have in common with Democrats is the distaste for Trump. Once that's gone, so is any need to align with the Democratic Party. However, Reagan Democrats didn't just go support Reagan because they didn't like Carter - they went and supported Reagan because, after 1964, the party started bleeding out white support and they aligned more and more with the Republican Party, which is still true today.

[denem]

20. I don't disagree with your numbers,

or the general thrust of your argument. There were stronger factors at play in 1980 for a realignment, than there are in 2020.

What I would say is that the white vote is not homogeneous, The remaining southern whites in the solid south who crossed over in 1980 were never coming back. I would argue that the blue collar whites in the mid-west and elsewhere were equally susceptible to Reagan's economic argument. - are you better off than you were four years ago. In 1992, 2008 and 2020 the answer was no. The message - that voting Republican ends up in tears is a durable one - particularly when in 2020, there are tears for the deceased.

What I would say about Republican voters, rather than the Never Trumper political pros, is that the political divide is now so steep, that crossing back is more of a challenge to one's self image and dignity than in previous years.

[Drunken Irishman]

25. I agree it'll be tough to cross back...

But there's another point here: how big is this Never Trumper movement, anyway? To be honest, I think they make up a fraction of the Republican Party. Maybe that's enough to flip states like Wisconsin and Michigan and Pennsylvania, but of those voters, how many of them voted for Romney in 2012? Trump did, across the board, worse than Romney among GOP voters in Wisconsin and Pennsylvania, despite there being an uptick in Republican voters. So, it definitely is a potential landmine issue for Trump, especially if he does worse among independent voters.

But how many of them are going to stay? I'm skeptical most will stay.

With that said, there is still little evidence that white voters are making a surge - even during Obama's reelection.

In Pennsylvania, in 2012, Obama lost the white vote 57-42 to Romney. In 2016, Hillary lost it 56-40. One big difference is in Wisconsin, where Obama barely lost the white vote to Romney 51-47, but Hillary lost it to Trump 53-42.

But that kind of hits my point. We're not talking southern states here. We are talking two states that have gone Democratic in every election going back to 1988 - until 2016. Hell, in 2004, Kerry lost the white vote 52-47 to Bush in Wisconsin - almost the exact margin Obama did in 2012 (which shows how much the demographics are changing there, as Kerry barely won Wisconsin in 2004 and Obama won it comfortably). But Hillary got wiped out in this regard. She lost the state because she lost the white vote by 11 points.

So, there does appear to be some consistency with the white vote in Wisconsin - which would explain why the Democrats generally won the state despite the shift by white voters away from the Democratic Party.

But that blew up in 2016. Whites abandoned the Democratic Party in Wisconsin, too. And Michigan. And Pennsylvania. At least, by wider margins than they did the last seven presidential elections. So, in those states, the Never Trumpers didn't materialize at a large enough number to make up for that loss in white support.

But this isn't the argument, right? White voters still never fully came back to the Democratic Party. Not in the 90s, not under Obama and that chasm grew even wider in 2016. It's possible Biden does better, as a more moderate candidate, than Hillary, or maybe even 2012 Obama, but that may also prove the anomaly.

The problem, and the point, is that the Reagan Democrats were perfectly made for the modern GOP. Conservative on social issues. Conservative on economic issues. They were likely Democrats who had supported Republicans consistently in the past but got tagged as Reagan Democrats because the shift became permanent.

I still don't see Never Trumpers as perfectly made for the Democratic Party. But if they are, I even question how many of them exist to alter election outcomes ... only because they existed in 2016 and Trump still managed to win. It took a solid decade before the Democrats could build a coalition good enough to win the White House again after losing the Reagan Democrats (and that coalition still is iffy and totally based on turnout, as we saw in 2000, 2004 and 2016).

[Awsi Dooger]

29. Here is another exit poll link that also includes midterm numbers

Just thought you might be interested, given all the numbers you quoted:

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/11/07/weekinreview/20101107-detailed-exitpolls.html

[Buckeye_Democrat]

30. Thanks for that link. I'd never previously seen it.

It's interesting how the white protestants shifted more to the Republicans over that span, with the lowest Democratic support in 2010 (last year shown).

I used basic algebra to estimate how the 2016 Presidential election would've turned out among white voters if NONE of the self-identified "born again" white people (per exit polls) had voted at all, and Hillary would've won the white vote by something like 6% in that case.

[Drunken Irishman]

38. Interesting. It looks like 1994 was when the Democrats truly lost white voters in all capacity.

They were losing them at the presidential level, but even during the GOP presidential wave of the 70s and 80s, Democrats still did significantly better, on the whole, than the GOP in congressional and senate elections. They held the House for that entire period of time, and the Senate for a good portion of it.

1994 changed everything. Of course, the Democrats also lost the House for the first time in a generation and, while they've been able to win it back, it's much more competitive now than in the past. Even in 2006, a Democratic wave year, the Democrats still only managed 48% of the white vote - their high water mark of the post-1994 landscape.

In 2018, Democrats lost the white vote 44-54, which is closer to 2008's totals. I'm guessing that's about as high as the Democrats could ever do in this current era.

[misanthrope]

28. I would include Watergate and Ford's pardon of Nixon

for helping Carter secure that 1976 election and pump up his share of the white vote. There were a lot of folk utterly disgusted with Beltway Republicans after 1975. Carter's newcomer status helped him win office but did him no favors once he had to work with the same establishment he sort of ran against.

[radius777]

33. The parties realigned over social justice. Liberal Repubs also moved to the Dems

for the same reason. Areas that were once Repub strongholds (metro areas) now vote strongly Dem, and areas that were once Dem strongholds (small towns, rural areas, etc) now vote strongly GOP.

The Reagan Dems were socially conservative/racist Dems (Dixiecrat types) who were not orthodox Reaganites - but bought into Reagan (and Nixon's) white flight politics and welfare queen narratives. Trumpism is much closer ideologically to what Dixiecrats were and are - populists when it comes to their (white) interests while viewing 'the other' as unworthy (the New Deal was held in place by Jim Crow).

At the same time many liberal and moderate Repubs moved over to the Dems - especially since '92 when Clinton/Gore moved the party to the center-left and appealed to soccer mom sensibilities.

For this reason I think the Never Trumpers (and the suburbs, especially in red states like TX and GA) moving to Dems are part of this ongoing trend/realignment - just as racist Dems in the Midwest moving to Trump (as a reaction to Obama) was/is. Basically the realignment of the parties that started with the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Immigration Act (that allowed non-white immigration) is ongoing.

[DFW]

18. If they are still Republicans, I welcome their votes

If they switch parties, I welcome them wholeheartedly.

What's done is done. What is not yet done matters a whole hell of a lot more at this point.
Anyone who agrees with me today is not my political enemy until he no longer does.
Until then, join the party, if not the Party (and the door IS open, by the way).

[AmericanCanuck]

22. All the scorn comes from the very far left

Having the centrist independents and moderate republicans reduces the power of the far left to push Biden around and they are pissed. They can vote for Jill Stein or stay home like last time but ... it will have no effect. They have marginalized themselves.

[JI7]

26. I think they are upset Biden is doing well in the polls and how he won the Primaries

[Buckeye_Democrat]

27. I consider myself to be far-left, but I welcome their support.

I've long-supported ideas like a universal basic income, which many people on DU don't even support.

It surely would've helped during the outbreak of this pandemic to keep more people at home.

[betsuni]

32. +1

[BannonsLiver]

23. I don't get it either

As I’ve said before in this space it’s not a fucking marriage. Nobody owes anyone anything.

[Hekate]

31. Excellent post, denem

Brace yourself for the usual comments.

[nuxvomica]

35. I think there has been an ideological shift for many

I hear Never-Trumper Republicans talking about the need for more government involvement in health care and more economic justice and more realization of systemic racism. Between Trump and COVID-19, I think a lot of people have gone through a sort of ideological shock treatment. This is how the Overton Window shifts and it has shifted decidedly left. I keep thinking about what Kurt Bardella, who had worked for Darrell Issa and Breitbart, said about his own road-to-Damascus conversion, that in conservative circles no one argues policy because everybody follows the same line but in liberal circles there is constant arguing of policy and there is greater awareness of and empathy for the needs of others. He said that awareness is a burden but in carrying it he is also unexpectedly happier than he was.

[crickets]

36. K&R for the post and the discussion.

[MineralMan]

37. I welcome everyone who votes for Biden.

Period. The more votes the better. I'm not going to insult them until after the election.

[SiliconValley_Dem]

39. oh us terribly dumb Democrats at it again

thank you for putting us in our place