The Ex-Wave of the Future

Samizdata has an interesting statistical table showing how demographics has worked against the Democratic Party. Had the apportionment of electoral votes followed the population distribution of the 1960s, John Kerry would have won. Democrat bailiwicks have not grown as quickly as the those which have tended Republican.

1960 census (1964, 68 elections) -- Kerry 270, Bush 268
1970 census (1972, 76, 80 elections) -- Kerry 270, Bush 268
1980 census (1984, 88 elections) -- Bush 276, Kerry 262
1990 census (1992, 96, 2000 elections) -- Bush 279, Kerry 259
2000 census (2004, 08 elections) -- Bush 286, Kerry 252

It would be interesting to discover what the underlying reason for this differential growth is. Some will argue, no doubt, that "Blue State" social attitudes may have depressed their birthrates, but that is too pat an answer, and the whole question deserves a more scholarly treatment. But whatever the explanation, if the trend is real -- and the divergence looks to have persisted for forty years -- then the leftist assumption that they are the vanguard of the future and the party of youth is empirically suspect. Time is not obviously on their side. If so, there is no reason to believe that their prospects will improve simply with the passage of years.