Timothy Egan, author of “The Worst Hard Times,” a modern classic on the Great Depression, is in love with facts and numbers. That passion prompted an analysis of the Republican presidential nomination process now under way. The conclusions he reaches are flat scary.
In summary, he concludes: “The small fraction of Americans who are trying to pick the Republican nominee are old, white, uniformly Christian and unrepresentative of the nation at large. . . .None of that is a surprise. But when you look at the numbers, it’s stunning how little this Republican primary electorate resembles the rest of the United States. They are much closer to the population of 1890 than of 2012.”
Here are a few of the numbers Egan collected:
— The nine states that have held caucuses or primaries to date are home to roughly 28 milion total registered voters, of all political persuasions. So far, 3 million voters have participated in the Republican races, less than the population of Connecticut. This means that 89 percent of all registered voters in these states have not participated in what is, from a horse-race perspective, a very tight contest.
— Less than 1 percent turned out in Maine. In Nevada, where Republican turnout was down 25 percent from 2008, only 3 percent of total registered voters participated. “This is not majority rule by any measure, it barely qualifies as participatory democracy,” Egan commented.
— In Florida, turnout was down 14 percent and 84 percent did not participate.
— South Carolina was an exception. Turnout there was up 35 percent from 2008. Of those who voted, 98 percent were white, 72 percent were 45 or older and nearly two-thirds were evangelical Christians according to exit polls. But the Census says the state is only 66 percent white, that the median age is 36 and exit polls from the 2008 general election put the percentage of evangelical Christians at 40 percent.
— Outside of Florida, this contest has been nearly an all-white affair. In Nevada, which is 26 percent Latino, only 5 percent ot the caucus voters were Latino. Caucus voters in Iowa were 99 percent white. But whites are 63.7 percent of the U.S. population.
THESE NUMBERS explain, Egan comments, why the candidates are taking fringe positions: they are talking to fringe audiences.
“ … A huge majority of Americans want to raise taxes on the rich, favor the withdrawal from Afghanistan and believe the earth is warming because of human action. Yet the Republican front runner of the moment, Rick Santorum, is with the minority on each of these issues, and Mitt Romney is a near match.
“The New York Times poll of this week found that all voters, by a 66 to 26 ratio, support the federal requirement that private health care plans cover the full cost of birth control for female patients. Among women, support is 72-20. And with Catholics, it’s 67-25. Yes, Catholics are slightly more liberal than the population at large.
“So, given how out of sync these two candidates are with the rest of the country, how could they be the front runners? It’s simple: look at who is voting, a nation unto itself.”
