The American Enterprise Institute (AEI) has launched a project called Elections and Demography. It analyzes the evolution of voting patterns according to gender and ethnicity.
Ruy Teixeira is in charge of the project. He is a political scientist linked to the Democratic Party. His book The Emerging Democratic Majority was named best book of the year by The Economist.
The independent vote
Elections and Demography (ED) is based on demographic subgroup averages from around twenty surveys. This average is updated weekly and is the basis for the report published by AEI. In the second to last report, published on October 27, ED made the following analysis:
With less than two weeks to go until Election Day, Republicans continue to gain in the polls. For the first time since this series began, Republicans lead on the generic ballot, picking up almost a full point since our last snapshot. A fundamental midterm trend is taking hold: undecided voters breaking against the party in power. The recent swing has almost entirely consisted of a rise in Republican vote share, rather than a dip in Democratic vote share. Since August, Democrats have remained stuck around 45 percent, while in recent weeks the Republican share has shot up from 43 percent to 46 percent. As the momentum has swung towards the GOP, the number of undecideds has dropped considerably. If the remaining undecided voters continue to break hard to the right, Democrats may encounter worse losses than anticipated.
Gender and race preferences
While Democratic Party support is holding steady, independent voters are leaving them for the Republican Party.
The 0.6 point GOP lead is not representative of the current situation, because it is an average of the last month. The GOP leads the Democratic Party by 12.7 points among whites, 8.9 points among people without a college education, and 5.9 points among men. Democrats lead Republicans among women (5.4 points), college students (13.2), Hispanics (17.5) and blacks (59.3 points).
The Hispanic vote
What is interesting is not only last month’s average, but also the change in the averages of each group. This shows how each group is evolving over time. The AEI report itself shows how the averages in this report have changed from a month ago.
In one month, the gap between Democrats and Republicans has fallen by 3.3 points. The Democrats' biggest plunge has been among women voters: their lead over Republicans fell by 5.5 points in one month. Four weeks ago, Democrats had a 10.8 point lead over Republicans among women voters and now that lead has shrunk to 5.4 points, making that a 5.5 point loss.
The decline in Hispanic support for the Democratic Party is also very important. Four weeks ago, Democrats led Republicans by 21.3 points compared to today’s 17.5 point lead. Overall, Hispanic support has deteriorated by 3.8 points in just one month.
