A Democratic Wave in 2016?

Writing in the Washington Post Democratic pollster Stanley Greenberg predicts sweeping victories for Democrats in the 2016 elections:

The United States is being transformed by revolutions remaking the country at an accelerating and surprising pace. Witness the revolutions in technology, the Internet, big data and energy, though just as important are the tremendous changes taking place in immigration, racial and ethnic diversity, the family, religious observance and gender roles. These are reaching their apexes in the booming metropolitan centers and among millennials.

As the revolutions interact, they are accelerating the emergence of a new America. Consider that nearly 40 percent of New York City’s residents are foreign-born, with Chinese the second-largest group behind Dominicans. The foreign-born make up nearly 40 percent of Los Angeles’s residents and 58 percent of Miami’s. A majority of U.S. households are headed by unmarried people, and, in cities, 40 percent of households include only a single person. Church attendance is in decline, and non-religious seculars now outnumber mainline Protestants. Three-quarters of working-age women are in the labor force, and two-thirds of women are the breadwinners or co-breadwinners of their households. The proportion of racial minorities is approaching 40 percent, but blowing up all projections are the 15 percent of new marriages that are interracial. People are moving from the suburbs to the cities. And in the past five years, two-thirds of millennial college graduates have settled in the 50 largest cities, transforming them.

Shifting attitudes were underscored in this year’s Gallup Poll when 60 to 70 percent of the country said gay and lesbian relations, having a baby outside of marriage, sex between an unmarried man and woman, and divorce are all “morally acceptable.”

The United States is emerging out of its revolutions as racially blended, immigrant, multinational and multilingual — and diversity is becoming more central to our multicultural identity.

Further, these revolutionary transformations have accelerated the growth of a new majority coalition of racial minorities, single women, millennials and seculars. Together, these groups formed 51 percent of the electorate in 2012, but our analysis of census survey data and exit poll projections indicates that they will comprise fully 63 percent in 2016. With these growing groups each supporting Hillary Clinton by more than 2 to 1 in today’s polls, it is fair to say that the United States has reached an electoral tipping point.

The Republican Party’s battle to defeat this new majority has reached a tipping point, too. The brand of the Republican Party today has probably not been as tarnished since the Watergate era.

He may be right but, frankly, I doubt it. Many of the trends he points to are real but I think they’ll mean more for the 2020 elections than they do for the 2016. The results don’t depend on opinion polls take of all Americans, eligible voters, registered voters, or even likely voters but upon the people who actually show up at the polls and vote. This seems to be my day for multiple choice. Will the 2016 elections be

1. a wave election for Democrats in which Democrats take the White House, the Senate, and the House.
2. an election in which the Democrats take the White House and, narrowly, the Senate.
3. an election in which the Democrats take the White House, leaving the Senate and the House with Republican majorities.
4. an election in which Republicans take the White House, lose the Senate, and retain the House.
5. an election in which the Republicans take the White House and strengthen their majorities in both houses of Congress.
6. remarkable only in their banality.

I’m tempted to weasel out by saying that it’s too early to tell the outcome of the 2016 elections at this point—come back and ask me when there’s an actual Republican candidate.

If forced to choose, I’d say that even with the billions in in-kind contributions she’s likely to receive, Hillary Clinton, the Democratic candidate presumptive, will be unable to achieve the turnout that Barack Obama did in 2008 or even that President Obama did in 2012. I think that B-D are more likely than A or E. The fundamentals of presidential elections disfavor the Democratic candidate; the fundamentals of Senate elections favor the Democrats. That leaves B or D. I’ll reluctantly go with B but only because right now it looks as though whoever the Republican candidate will be, he will be ghastly.

Keep in mind that 80% of life is showing up.