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January 05, 2005

Republican / Conservative - Not the same thing

An almost good post from Pandagon. One thing that consistently bothers me is this idea that the country wasn't conservative in 1964 when Goldwater got creamed but then because of Goldwater's principles, plus Reagan's personal appeal, the county became conservative by 1980 and it is still paying dividends for the Republicans.

Not exactly how I see things. Ideologically, I would say that the national electorate is more favorable to the modern Democratic party now than it was in the glory years of 1964, 1960 and 1932 - 1948. Republicans made most of their great gains since then because of race. They identified (through Goldwater's loss) large blocks of already conservative voters and then used race-based appeals to convert these voters from Democrats or independents to Republicans. As long as you could combine these mostly rural and mostly Southern voters with moderates (who fled to Johnson) in the future it would be relatively easy to win national elections.

On a federal level, they don't use race as a tool to win votes as much as they used to because they don't need to -- most of the conservative Democrats have by now realigned and it isn't necessary. On the state level, however, Republicans have had mixed success. South Carolina was probably the first state to become Republicanized in the South, along with Virginia. North Carolina, Tennessee and Kentucky were vulnerable as early as the 60's. South Carolina seems to be gone for good, although Democrats have largely readjusted and regained their footing in the other states -- even though Republicans would probably be favored in an open governor's race in each of these states.

In Georgia, Republicans had a hell of a time from 1865-2001 cracking the Democrats' hold on power. As recently as 1998, Roy Barnes was getting over 40% of the white vote in Georgia (and probably close to 45%). Then came the flag change and Perdue's subtle and not-so-subtle usage of it to woo conservative white Democrats to switch loyalties. He wasn't exactly subtle with the conservative whites, but he was able to largely fly below the radar with moderate suburban Republicans who surely would have deserted him had they truly known how racist of a campaign he was running.

Ironically, Republicans seem to have less success in Alabama and Mississippi, mostly because Alabama lacks a suburban base for a Republican party to grow from and Mississippi is nearly 50% more African-American than Georgia is.

If you can point to a similar demographic scenario today that is ripe for conversion then I will be glad to endorse a more liberal course for the party. It seems to me though that the people worth taking are moderates. If you look at exit poll numbers, where voters self-id by party and by ideology, you see that nearly every state has more "conservatives" than "liberals", although in most states "moderates" are the largest group.

I tried to reconcile by using educated guesses and referencing private opinion surveys that I've seen how Georgians break down, not just by ideology or party but by a combination of the two. This is my guess:

29% Conservative Republican
19% Moderate Democrat
14% Moderate Independant
12% Moderate Republican
10% Liberal Democrat
7% Conservative Independent
6% Conservative Democrat
3% Liberal Independent
1% Liberal Republican

In other words, Republicans + Conservative Independents = 49% of the state's voting age population. Democrats + Moderate and Liberal Independents = 51%. Embracing the liberal label in Georgia might get us the 1.4% of the population that are liberal Republicans but in the process could lose us the 5.8% of the population that are conservative Democrats.

My own guess would be that the groups ripest for conversion are moderate independents (naturally) and to a slightly lesser degree moderate Republicans and (lesser still) independent conservates. Together, this group makes up 32.4% of the state's voting population, and John Kerry probably only got about 20% of their votes, which translates into about 6% of the overall statewide vote.

The road to victory lies in winning and converting the moderate independents by a healthy margin, not getting clobbered by conservative independents, and making some inroads among moderate Republicans. Thankfully it's not incompatible with liberalism, but it takes some skillful marketing to get it done.

Posted by Chris at January 5, 2005 04:01 PM

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