When running a political campaign, instead of no-Urban and no-Hispanic dictates, it’s much smarter to be thinking in terms of pro-Urban and pro-Hispanic dictates, not to mention pro-Asian as well. The Pew Research Center says that the electorate in 2008 was the most diverse in history, capping a steady trend that it tracked back to 1988 for the purposes of this study.
In the 20 years since then, Whites have declined as a percentage of the electorate from 84.9% to 76.3%. Meanwhile, Blacks have gone from 9.8% to 12.1%; Hispanics from 3.6% to 7.4%, and Asians from a negligible reading to 2.5%. And all three groups registered gains in the percentage of eligible voters actually making it to the polls over the past four years.
Still, minorities tend to show up in fewer proportional numbers than Whites, although Blacks, with an historic candidate to show up for, almost caught up this time, trailing Whites by only 66.1% to 65.2%.
As a percentage of total eligibles, the numbers are White 73.4%, Black 11.8%, Hispanic 9.5% and Asian 3.4%.
RBR/TVBR observation: So there are more minorities in general, and more of them are actually showing up at the poll. All of which means that if a candidate has a case to make to any of these groups, it is well worthwhile to pull out all the minority media stops and become a household name.
