2010 will (again) be the year of the white male voter

June 17, 2010

By Carey Roberts

Everyone seems to be going ga-ga over last week's primary victories of three female candidates in California and South Carolina. I really don't understand all the fuss. Because once again, 2010 will be the Year of the White Male Voter.

Here's why.

Representing 36% of all voters, the 45.1 million white male electorate represents the second largest electoral bloc in America, after white females (48.8 million white women voted in the 2008 presidential election, accounting for 39% of the total count).

Let's turn back the hands of Father Time a few years.

When white men went to the polls in 2000 and 2004, six out of 10 of them voted for George W. Bush, handing him the big V in a pair of closely-fought elections.

Four years later, 2 million of these men defected from the Republican fold, casting their votes for Barack Obama. But these men quickly came to realize they had been taken for the fool.

Here's proof that Barack Obama is America's first openly Feminist-in-Chief: His creation of the White House Council on Women and Girls; his Supreme Court nomination of Sonia Sotomayor ("I would hope that a wise Latina woman...would more often than not reach a better conclusion than a white male"); a bloated stimulus plan that stiffed laid-off construction and manufacturing workers; and his senseless remarks aimed at men who "need to be knocked across the head every once in a while."

Put together, these events amount to a slap in the face for the white males who once believed Obama's message of hope and change was intended for all Americans.

According to a poll released by the Pew Research Center on April 18 of this year, 52% of men, compared to 42% of women, favor cutting back government programs. And identical numbers of men believe the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms.

Some pollsters fall into the trap of concluding that since women are more numerous than men, their electoral influence is greater. That's wrong, of course, because in a typical election the female vote is split, casting men as the tie-breaker.

That's exactly what happened during the 2008 Democratic primaries. When Hillary Clinton captured the white male vote, she won 9 out of 14 contests. But when the Bubba vote leaned to Obama, he triumphed in 9 of the 15 races. As ABC analyst Gary Langer noted, "in states with significant but not vast numbers of black voters, and few Hispanics, white men are critical:" http://www.renewamerica.com/columns/roberts/080313

Commenting on recent presidential contests, former Brandeis University professor Linda Hirshman explains, "With the possible exception of 1996, women have never voted a candidate into the White House when men thought the other guy should win."

And consider January's fill-in election in Massachusetts where women out-numbered men. While 52% of women gave the nod to Democrat Martha Coakley, 60% of the male vote swung in favor of Republican Scott Brown, handing the dark horse candidate a historic upset victory.

TV commentator Tucker Carlson calls men, "America's single more important voting bloc." And writing in The Neglected Voter: White Men and the Democratic Dilemma, David Paul Kuhn concludes, "No factor has been more instrumental in causing the Democratic decline in presidential politics than the loss of white men."

Which is another way of saying, No factor has been more important is assuring GOP dominance in 5 out of the last 8 presidential contests than the historic influx of white men.

So the 2010 mid-term elections are shaping up to be a Perfect Electoral Storm, featuring a confluence of white male anger over chronic unemployment, irritation with gratuitous male-bashing, and a resolute antipathy to creeping socialism.