After the 2012 election, in which Barack Obama won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote, the Republican National Committee found it necessary to conduct an in depth study of the loss, dubbing it the "most comprehensive post-election review" ever undertaken."
The result of the study concluded that... wait for it...the GOP needed to do much more to reach Hispanics if it hoped to win the White House someday.
As fate would have it, "someday" is now here, and as The Hill reports, Donald Trump will have to overcome the most diverse electorate in history, lead by a drop in white voters, and increases in Hispanic, black, and Asian voters.
As recently as the 2000 election, won by Republican George W. Bush, 81 percent of voters were white, 10 percent black and just seven percent Hispanic.
By 2012, when President Obama won his second term, the white vote-share was down 9 points, to 72 percent. Blacks cast 13 percent of the total ballots and Hispanics 10 percent.
Some experts believe the white vote-share could drop below 70 percent in November.
“The America electorate as a whole is increasingly diverse, and I think you will see increases not only in the numbers of Hispanic and black voters, but among Asian voters as well. And you’ll see the lowest share of the white Anglo vote,” said Fernand Amandi of Bendixen & Amandi, a consulting firm that specializes in work with the Hispanic community.
Indeed a GOP candidate who has built his candidacy based on building a giant wall between the US and Mexico will have a bit of an issue to overcome as 2016 shapes up to present the candidates with the challenge of having to win over the most diverse electorate ever. "If the whole country looked like Alabama, Donald Trump would be fine. But that is not the case" Said Republican Strategist Dan Judy.
Pew Research notes that since 2012 about 12 times as many adult white citizens as adult Hispanic citizens have died, despite the overall white adult population only being six times as big as the Hispanic population. Pew also counts a net increase of about 7.5 million eligible voters whio are members of ethnic minorities since 2012, and among whites that number is just 3.2 million.
One big assumption of course is that the minorities show up to vote on election day, but if that is the case then it could very well be an incredibly long day for Trump. In a Latino decisions poll released late last month, Trump was viewed unfavorably by 87 percent of Hispanics and favorably by just 9 percent.
Acknowledging that Trump is in for a rough time if the minorities do show up to the polls, chairman of the Texas Federation of Hispanic Republicans Artemio Muniz says "He has got to show that he is a leader. He can't demagogue the issue."
A study last summer from David Wasserman of the Cook Political Report looked at the likely make-up of the electorate in 2016 compared to 2012, and if Wasserman used a model assuming the same levels of support as President Obama and GOP nominee Romney received from five groups: college-educated whites, non-college educated whites, blacks, Hispanics, and "Asians/Others", the result would be stunning. Democrats would increase their vote in all 15 of the potential battleground states where Wasserman focused.
The suggestion from that model, as The Hill points out, is that The Donald really needs to increase the white voter turnout to win.
While we certainly don't downplay the demographic challenges that Trump faces, the lesson learned from the Trump campaign thus far is that Trump has always seemed to manage and surprise critics and "experts" almost always to the upside. Trump has a staying power that has been downplayed throughout the entire campaign, and without a doubt it will be downplayed once again as The Donald takes on Hillary in the fall - assuming Clinton isn't charged with any crimes prior to the election of course.
In the meantime, Trump will no doubt continue to charm voters, and piss off all the pundits.