In his Wall Street Journal column James Taranto remarks on Judis’s and Texeira’s predictions I mentioned yesterday:
In all, we’d say Judis and Teixeira were about half right. They correctly predicted that nonwhite voters would improve Democratic prospects in states like Colorado, Nevada, North Carolina and Virginia—but they failed to anticipate the scope of Republican gains in other states.
The latter trend probably can’t take the GOP much further; Maine, Minnesota and New Hampshire are the only obvious opportunities Trump didn’t realize this year. It’s certainly possible that the former trend will continue, as Teixeira now predicts, and the emerging Democratic majority will finally emerge.
Or it could recede again. Trump improved slightly over Mitt Romney’s performance among blacks, Hispanics and Asian-Americans—and there’s still plenty more room for improvement.
I think there are several problems with the hypothesis. First, although black voters clearly vote as a reliable bloc, Hispanic voters don’t. They don’t even vote as two blocs (Cuban and other). Might Republicans have permanently alienated Hispanic voters? Sure. But the evidence doesn’t prove it.
And I think that Mssrs. Taranto, Judis, and Texeira all neglect the effects of internal migration. Black voters moving from Illinois to Georgia will make Illinois less blue and Georgia less red. Will Hispanic voters moving from California to Texas turn Texas blue? Or will they become less blue themselves?
