The GOP’s Winning Path

Pundits, political insiders and hacks of all kinds like to pontificate on the gloomy future of the Republican Party due to shifting demographics.

But the challenges that must be overcome for a Republican to win the White House have little to do with demographics and everything to do with the stacking of the Electoral College deck in favor of Democrats.

The path to victory for the Republican standard-bearer lies not in wooing lockstep Democrat minority constituencies, but in garnering a larger slice of blue-collar, politically independent, and largely white Americans in four key states.

A Game of Math
When it comes to presidential politics, the calculation is pure mathematics. To win the top prize a candidate must secure at least 270 electoral votes out of 538 total. Democrats start with an advantage of 243 “base votes” — states where the Democrat nominee is heavily favored or certain to win. Republicans start with 206. These 206 are the only votes Mitt Romney garnered in his bid for the Oval Office.

Then there are the truly swing states, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, New Hampshire, Iowa, Colorado, and Wisconsin, more than enough for an elephant to beat a donkey. With their 89 total votes, these are the states that truly determine the next president of the United States.

The best possible path for the GOP nominee involves winning Florida, Ohio, Virginia, and Iowa. Each step down the path, however, is more difficult than the one before.

A full GOP run of the essential swing states will require greater inroads into the blue-collar, white voters, who have been bucking Democrats in greater numbers in recent elections.

Based on an average of President Obama’s winning margins over Sen. John McCain of Arizona and former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney in 2008 and 2012, Florida is the most winnable, and the most important, of the swing states, with its 29 electoral votes. Obama won the state by a paltry average of 2 percent between the two previous elections.

In Ohio, Obama had an average advantage of 3.5 percent; in Virginia, 4.7 percent; Colorado, 6.25 percent; Iowa, 6.5 percent, New Hampshire, 7.75 percent, and Wisconsin, 11.5 percent.

The key to dropping those margins to striking distance will be to nominate a Republican candidate who can make a strong bid to widen the GOP advantage with working-class white voters.

Where to Find the Votes
Blue-collar workers have been the largest bulk of the old Democratic coalition to flee in recent elections.

Despite Romney’s “47 percent” gaffe, he was still able to increase his performance among blue-collar men by 5 percent over McCain’s 2008 tally, and by 3 percent among blue-collar women nationwide. Nationally, Romney, not exactly the hero of the working class, won two-thirds of the blue-collar vote.

The critical swing states all contain a higher percentage of blue-collar workers than the national average. Florida, Ohio and Iowa top the national average with 61 or 62 percent of their populations identified as working class, according to a study by the Kaiser Family Foundation.

“If Democrats can’t figure out how to appeal to today’s working-class voters, then they don’t deserve to lead,” Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg said in an interview with the LA Times. “(Those voters) are skeptical of government and skeptical of Democrats,” Greenberg said.

The Bad Egg
The electoral light at the end of the tunnel offered by working-class voters darkens in Virginia, which could be the state that stands between the GOP and the White House.

Virginia has the third lowest proportion of working-class voters of all 50 states. The highly educated, federal government-connected, and increasingly immigrant-heavy population of Northern Virginia has delivered the once red commonwealth a series of Democrat victories in recent years. Obama won the state in both 2008 and 2012. Democrats took the Virginia governor’s mansion in 2013 and Senate races in 2012 and 2014.

Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe is a longtime ally and associate of Hillary Clinton’s. The former Democratic National Committee chairman can be counted on to do whatever he can to deliver the Old Dominion for his old friend.

In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich, now running for president himself, demolished his Democratic challenger by 31 points.

But the 2014 Senate race contains a sliver of good news for the GOP. Sen. Mark Warner won his re-election bid over Republican consultant Ed Gillespie by less than 1 percentage point, though the race had not been considered competitive.

The surprisingly close result of the Warner-Gillespie contest could mean many voters in the state are dissatisfied with their new Democratic overlords and may be open to Republican arguments in 2016. If they are, Republicans will need a message tailored for Virginia, one that can win a different type of voter than the working-class voters they will need to win elsewhere.

There is plenty of good news for Republicans in the other target swing states. In 2014, Iowans replaced Democratic Sen. Tom Harkin with Republican Sen. Joni Ernst. In Ohio, Gov. John Kasich, now running for president himself, demolished his Democratic challenger by 31 points.

The narrow nature of the GOP’s best shot at the gold is both an asset and a liability. Both the Republicans and the Democrats should know the four states that are critical to victory. This is where the bloodiest fighting will occur and, in the end, Virginia may give new meaning to its moniker, “The Birthplace of Presidents.”