The Emerging Republican Majority
Recent census data indicate the likelihood of a US House Republican majority in the next decade - if they can keep out their own way.
I remember well late 2002 - twenty-one years ago - when Democrats Ruy Teixeira and John Judis published a seminal book, “The Emerging Democratic Majority.” As a long-time GOP political operative and activist, I rushed to buy and read the book. It was a best seller.
It was a wake-up call for Republicans. Still, it underscored my long-held belief that the GOP would veer into a permanent opposition party without stronger appeal and policies directed at working-class voters, shedding their “country club” moniker. Former US Senator and friend Rick Santorum (R-PA) became among the first to embrace this nationally with his terrific 2014 book, “Blue Collar Conservative.” I strongly supported Santorum’s Senate and presidential campaigns going back to 2000. He was “America First” (yes, I know the phrase’s history. This is not the same) before it was cool. It was a slogan employed by candidates in both parties (Democratic US Rep. John Bryant used it to win reelection in Texas’s working-class Fifth District in 1986).
Santorum tells a funny story about when Donald Trump, before becoming a presidential candidate, called him and invited him to Trump Tower. “I read your book,” Santorum recalls Trump telling him as he was waved into this office. “No, you didn’t,” Santorum responded. He then quizzed Trump, and, by golly, he read the book. Trump effectively “borrowed heavily” (stole) from Santorum, who won 11 state GOP primaries in the 2012 presidential contest to eventual loser Mitt Romney, including the Iowa caucuses that year. The 2016 GOP platform looks like something Santorum would have written.
The rest, as they say, is history.
Teixeira and Judis’s 2002 premise was simple and well-documented: emerging cultural, demographic, and other societal trends promised a ruling Democratic majority by the end of that decade.
They weren’t wrong, then. By the end of that decade, Barack Obama was our first African-American president (well, at least 50 percent). Democrats were in solid control of Congress, including, briefly, a nominally filibuster-proof 60 seats in the US Senate.
Until the elections of 2010, starting with a surprising special election for the US Senate in Massachusetts, won by Republican Scott Brown (until Elizabeth Warren unseated him in the 2012 elections).
Republicans, after being out of power for four years, recaptured control of Congress and mostly kept it for eight years, as demographic and cultural trends began to shift in a way Judis and Teixeira didn’t anticipate. Republicans, not Democrats, would increasingly become the party of working-class voters, including a growing share of non-white voters.
Teixeira and Judis have since published a new book, Where Have All The Democrats Gone? The Wall Street Journal called it the top political book of 2023. Their terrific Substack site, featuring John Halpin and others, The Liberal Patriot, has been waiving yellow and red flags at Democrats for years, warning them that their majority was in peril, thanks to losing white and non-white working-class voters. They didn’t anticipate that in 2002 when Democrats were still considered the party of the “working class” and minorities. Democratic gains among college-educated voters have been primarily trumped (pun intended) by more significant numbers of non-college-educated working-class voters. Judis and Teixeira have the receipts. From a short review of their book:
The Democratic Party, once the preserve of small towns as well as big cities and of the industrial working class and the newly immigrated, has abandoned and even actively alienated many of these voters. In this clarion call and essential argument for common sense and common ground, Judis and Teixeira reveal the transformation of American politics and provide a razor-sharp critique of where the Democrats have gone awry and how they can avoid political disaster in the days ahead.
Democrat’s embrace of secular wokeness, from identity-based victimhood and discriminatory Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) programs in rejection of merit to defending life-altering transgender surgeries for minors, is turning off “normie” voters. It is the same with over 8 million migrants traversing our open southern border over the past three years, which the moronic and incompetent Secretary of Homeland Security, Anthony Mayorkis, attributes in part to “climate change.” Increasing numbers of voters see Democrats as increasingly detached from reality and assaulting long-held Western values.
Democratic candidates ignore The Liberal Patriot’s research, warning flags, and advice. Normal Democratic incumbents and candidates self-censor, fearing retribution from energized progressives in party primaries. After all, about fifty percent of the House Democratic Conference belongs to the far-left House Progressive Caucus, and most have been eerily silent in the face of blatant antisemitism on college campuses and elsewhere, including their ranks.
The Deputy Chair of the House Progressive Caucus is none other than the profoundly antisemitic Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN), whom House Republicans voted to remove from the House Foreign Affairs Committee last February.
And to make matters worse for the Democrats, new Census Bureau data covering 39 months since the last decennial census suggests that redrawing US House districts after the 2030 count could ensure, if not cement, a GOP majority for at least a decade.
Michael Barone, a highly respected political demographer, senior political analyst for the Washington Examiner, and resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, tells the story:
The three largest metropolitan areas had the largest population losses, in percentages and absolute numbers. California's population declined by 573,000 (all figures rounded off for clarity), Illinois' by 264,000, New York's by 631,000. In percentage terms, the tiny District of Columbia and isolated Hawaii rivaled these losses.
The picture you get is people fleeing COVID restrictions, empty offices and high taxes needed to support lavish public pensions. Expensive and dysfunctional government is a hard sell.
This wasn't just a regional problem, by the way. The Northeast outside New York state gained 35,000 people, and the Midwest outside Illinois gained 185,000.
After only 39 months - one-third of the decade - California is on the track of losing five congressional seats in the next census. New York, as its Democratic legislators scramble to rearrange deck chairs on their Titanic with court-ordered redrawing of congressional districts in its favor for the 2024 elections, will lose four.
It gets worse for Democrats. Guess where these people are moving to and which party has big majorities in their respective legislatures, not to mention their governor’s offices?
The South accounted for almost all the nation's population gains — and more. The Southern states — which I define as the 11 Confederate states plus West Virginia, Kentucky and Oklahoma — gained 3,822,000 people in the 39 COVID and post-COVID months. That's more than the nation's population gain, thanks to the losses in New York, California and Illinois.
The Southern states' lower taxes, lighter regulation and lesser imposition of "woke" policies have helped it attract internal migrants and encourage family formation.
Texas had the largest population gain in 2020-23 (1,357,800), but Florida was not far behind (1,073,000), and the South Atlantic states from Florida north to Virginia accounted for most of the South's gain (2,123,000), 62% of the national total. Mid-20th-century demographers saw the New York-centered "megalopolis" as the focus of dynamic national growth. Now it's Interstate 95 south of Richmond.
Texas is poised to gain four US House seats. Florida, too. Both states, and many others of the old Confederacy and the Mountain West, are likely to pick up seats, and all have strong GOP majorities and governorships. Solidly GOP and fast-growing states like Idaho and Utah are looking more likely to gain seats.
The South has, indeed, risen again. But this is not your great-grandfather’s or great-great-grandfather’s South, as much as some Democrats want you to believe otherwise.
There are some obvious caveats. First, not all of these new transplanted voters are Republican. Much of the growth in Colorado and Virginia over the past two to three decades has benefited Democrats, not Republicans, as those states sport bright purple political hues. Suburbs have gone from purple to deep blue in Washington, DC, and Philadelphia, if not elsewhere except for working-class communities, such as Dundalk in Baltimore’s suburbs. Rural areas are becoming more Republican by the minute, but they’re not growing as fast, if at all.
In Virginia, massive growth in government and high technology around Washington, DC, has triggered Democratic dominance in an area that used to feature two or three Republican Congress critters, from Stan Parris in Alexandria to Tom Davis in the Commonwealth’s largest county, Fairfax, and Frank Wolf. What’s left of their former seats is now reliably Democratic turf, even tony Great Falls, the home of GOP Gov. Glenn Youngkin and once a GOP bastion.
In states with more recent growth tied to an exodus from blue states, some are undoubtedly to be Democrats, including those who bring their voting habits with them. But survey data suggests otherwise. As blue states lose seats, it is also possible that blue legislatures will ensure Republican incumbents pay the price and see their seats carved up. But the GOP-leaning voters in those districts will have to go somewhere. Also, that may be easier said than done - not enough of these transplants come from Republican districts. It may make it harder for Republicans to win in some blue states, like New York, New Jersey, and California. Maybe not.
Second, things can change with a couple of off-year gubernatorial elections in many states, not to mention the effect of the national political environment. Demographic trends change slowly, but their relationship to politics is much more malleable in the short term. All politics ultimately are local. I’m also making the same “mistake” Teixeira and Judis did of a static set of politics and related factors driving population trends.
Third, some new Texas and Florida seats will be drawn to elect Democrats, especially if it helps shore up neighboring GOP districts. House Republicans may continue their dysfunctionality with assistance from Matt Gaetz in another display of an inability to govern by demanding ideological purity over progress. I hope not, but. . . Matt Gaetz.
Things may change in blue states. After all, conservative former Marine and GOP Congressman Lee Zeldin narrowly lost his gubernatorial race in New York in 2022 as Republicans gained four US House seats. Maybe Democrats will rediscover their working-class and minority voter juju. Perhaps they’ll wake up from a trumping (pun intended) in 2024 and beyond as their policies evolve into something more realistic and attractive to independent voters. Perhaps Democrats will begin to use their considerable financial advantage to nominate candidates more to Judis’s and Teixeira’s liking.
If ifs and buts were candy and nuts. . .
With the anniversary of January 6, 2021, upon us, Democrats are attempting to use fear over abortion access and Trump’s “threat to our democracy” to frighten and attract voters, painting dark and wildly inaccurate scenarios. It might work with some low-information voters as it did in off-year elections in some of Virginia’s suburbs this past November. But their increasingly far-left and disconnected-from-reality agenda, including gaslighting voters about the economic success of their big-spending policies, will only drive more voters into the GOP’s welcoming arms.
If Republicans don’t screw it up.
Barring the unforeseen, Republicans should gain the majority status Teixeira and Judis anticipated for Democrats two decades ago. That is, if the GOP can learn to stop snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, nominate attractive, competent candidates, and stay out of their way.
This is a really fascinating column. It is amazing how trends come and go. I was Stan Parris' chief of staff for his last five years. A Republican could not come close to winning what his old seat was today. I also remember not too long ago, that the Democrats were convinced that demographics were in their favor - mostly because they thought Hispanic immigrants would remain Democrats. Little did they realize that practicing Catholics who were highly entrepreneurial and devoted to their children's future, would increasingly find their home in the Republican party. But your warning about the Republicans blowing it is most important. To hold this new coalition together, Republicans need messengers who look like, and share the experiences of, the people they are trying to win over.
The "recent" census data offered to open this discussion was published in 2021 following the 2020 census. It's a dangerous leap from interpreting the dynamics of census data in a vibrant and mobile population to a conclusion concerning political party majorities particularly that in the House of Representatives.
More analytical briefs by scholars in August 2021 caution against an outcome of a Republican majority in the House in the next decade or sooner. The small tent defined by the current Republican leadership appears more certain to "blow it" than capitalize upon demographic advantages if, in fact, they exist or come to fruition. Characterizing all opposition as "woke" is a strong signal of a tribe lost in the desert or planning to seek retribution and deconstruct the national government.