According to a new Pew Research Center survey, the Democratic Party is being abandoned by two of the country’s biggest demographics: whites and Christians.
“Non-Hispanic whites make up 57 percent of all Democratic and Democratic-leaning registered voters, down significantly from 76 percent in 1992,” said the Pew analysis. “By contrast, though the share of GOP voters who are white has also declined since 1992, the change has been much more modest: Currently, 86 percent of Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters are non-Hispanic whites, compared with 93 percent in 1992. As a result of these changes, the 17-percentage-point gap between the share of white voters in the Republican and Democratic parties seen in 1992 has grown to a 29-point gap today.”
The same trends can be seen among Christian voters, who have remained faithful to the Republican Party while atheists and the religiously-unaffiliated have flocked to the Democrats.
“The pace of change in religious affiliation has been far faster among Democrats than Republican voters, resulting in a widening gap between the two parties in the shares who do not affiliate with a religion,” writes the research organization. “In 1996, just 10 percent of Democratic voters were religiously unaffiliated; today that share has nearly tripled to 29 percent. Among Republican and Republican-leaning registered voters, the share not affiliating with a religion has increased from 6 percent to 12 percent over the past two decades.”
We’ll leave the political predictions to the polling professionals who love to use statistics like these to proclaim the imminent demise of the Republican Party as a national force. Instead, let’s focus on how these numbers explain so much of what we see in the media these days.
Whether changes in the Democratic Party platform have led to the shift in demographics or vice-versa, the party clearly knows now where its bread is buttered. This knowledge informs everything Democrats do these days and explains why so much of their emphasis is on divisive subjects like racial inequality and LGBT rights. They are simply pandering to their base, banking on a future where Christians and whites are a minority.
On the surface, this strategy would be understandable. The problem is that they aren’t content to merely emphasize some issues at the expense of others; they have instead taken their rhetoric to vile extremes, painting whites and Christians as bigoted, insensitive “deplorables” who are scared to death of losing their 200+ year hegemony to a bunch of brown atheists from Central America. That they’ve managed to make racism look like victimhood and religious divisiveness look like “equality” is a testament to how much power they have over the airwaves.
Democrats may have a monopoly on the media, but they certainly do not have any authority on the truth. Perception may temporarily be reality, but the real truth will eventually emerge as unscathed and intact as it ever was. Will it happen in time for this generation to see it? Will it happen in time for the November elections?
For these answers, we can only wait and see.
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