Election 2016: Did Identity Politics Hurt Democrats Chances?

What is identity politics? It’s very broadly defined but the short answer is “political activity or movements based on or catering to the cultural, ethnic, gender, racial, religious, or social interests that characterize a group identity” as defined by Dictionary.com. Normally, identity politics are very rational and statistically accurate. It’s based off of finding political patterns in certain groups or factions of people and using that information to predict voting patterns for said groups or factions. For example, a female will most likely vote for female candidates and be in favor or correcting women’s rights issues or a person of color will most likely vote for a candidate that is a person of color as well or correcting issues around it. In the 2016 election it was predicted that Hillary Clinton would be able to win the election based off of the numbers of the 2012 election and how certain groups or factions of people voted. This however was not the case due to a shift in voting patterns as well as a drop in overall democrat votes. The best way to show this is to break down the numbers in different common factions of voters.

Race has always been a hot topic around election time. In 2012 Barack Obama won 93% of African American votes, 71% of Latino votes, and 39% of White votes. Major news networks such as NBC and CNN and smaller online news networks such as Huffington Post projected that Hillary would get near the same numbers if not more during the 2016 election. Based off of CNN’s exit polls it was actually the opposite. This election 89% (-4%) of African Americans, 66% (-5%) of Latino voters, and 37% (-2%) of White voters voted for Hillary Clinton. In the three most discussed races in elections there was an across the board drop in overall voter turnout. On the republican side of things there was about a 1% increase between 2012 and 2016 for African American voters and Latino voters and a 2% drop for white voters. From this data we can see the Republican side of things stayed roughly the same while Democrat votes dropped in larger numbers in categories they usually dominate in.

Gender is also a much discussed topic in election results. In 2012 45% of men and 55% of women voted Democrat. 52% of men and 44% of women voted Republican. In the 2016 election 41% (-4%) of men and 54% (-1%) of women voted Democrat. 52% (0%) of men and 41% (-3%) of women voted republican. Overall we see a drop in both sides of the political isle for each gender except for Republican men who stayed about the same. The drop in female voters showed a big difference in pollsters and news networks predictions since it was projected Hillary would get the same or most likely more votes from women due to her gender and campaign focuses on Women’s rights issues.

We can also look at religious or lack there-of demographics. In 2012 42% of Protestants, 50% of Catholics, and 70% of Atheists voted Democrat. 57% of Protestants, 48% of Catholics, and 26% of Atheists voted Republican. In 2016 39% (-3%) of Catholics, 46% (-2%) of Protestants, and 67% (-3%) of Atheists voted Democrat. 56% (-1%) of Protestants, 50% (+2%) of Catholics, and 25% (-1%) of Atheists voted Republican. Again, we see the interesting trend of stagnant or slight drops to Republican demographics and larger drops up to -4% in Democrat demographics in multiple areas. This trend is even further supported by the popular vote counts of 65,455,010 Democrat votes and 60,771,703 Republican votes in 2012 compared to the 63,964,956 (-1,490,054) Democrat votes and 62,139,188 (+1,367,485) Republican votes in 2016.

From the data above we can see an obvious trend. Stagnant or slight drops for Republicans while larger drops up to 4% for Democrats in key demographics. Now for the big question… How does this tie into Identity Politics? There a few ways you could make a connection such as over-relying on specific groups to vote a direction without actual incentive to vote for that direction or dissatisfaction within certain groups of people that they are perceived to vote a specific direction simply because of attributes that link them to a group. In my opinion I think it has more to do with the overestimation and underestimation of the directions groups or factions vote based on previous election data causing a lack of perceived need to influence those groups as much since previous data shows they always vote in similar numbers and patterns. In Hillary Clinton’s case there were multiple scandals such as the information released from the Wikileaks emails and previous actions/statements that were brought to light that put her in a bad position for gaining votes in the categories listed above. It would have been a very wise move to pay extra attention to those groups to regain support which could have closed the gap we are seeing in the data above. If you look at results simply based on identity politics, it’s hard to notice that overall these groups in particular needed extra attention to regain support from some of the things that became known during the campaign.

Based on the data above which can be found at CNN’s exit poll results for the 2012 and 2016 elections I think identity politics did play a role in the Democrat loss but it does not have a large enough impact that it could be a major reason for it. There is an obvious drop in overall Democrat support and I think identity politics played a role keeping Democrats unaware that the numbers predicted were much lower than the actual results. This would lead to a perception that no special attention would be needed in those areas and could cause separation from the party.