The GOP is Literally Dying Off

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For those who value logic, reason and being in touch with objective reality, Politico Magazine has an article that should give hope for the future.  The topic of the article?  The fact that the Republican Party base is literally dying off.  Despite changing demographics, changing attitudes on gay marriage, climate change, and a host of other issues, the GOP has bet the farm so to speak on prostituting itself to aging whites, many of whom are ignorance embracing Christofascists.  A demographic that is literally dying off.  In terms of a long term political strategy, the GOP seems to me to have a death wish.   Here are article excerpts:

It turns out that one of the Grand Old Party’s biggest—and least discussed—challenges going into 2016 is lying in plain sight, written right into the party’s own nickname. The Republican Party voter is old—and getting older, and as the adage goes, there are two certainties in life: Death and taxes. Right now, both are enemies of the GOP and they might want to worry more about the former than the latter.

There’s been much written about how millennials are becoming a reliable voting bloc for Democrats, but there’s been much less attention paid to one of the biggest get-out-the-vote challenges for the Republican Party heading into the next presidential election: Hundreds of thousands of their traditional core supporters won’t be able to turn out to vote at all.

The party’s core is dying off by the day.

To make matters worse, the GOP is attracting fewer first-time voters. Unless the party is able to make inroads with new voters, or discover a fountain of youth, the GOP’s slow demographic slide will continue election to election. Actuarial tables make that part clear, but just how much of a problem for the GOP is this?

[Q]uick back-of-the-napkin math shows that the trend could have a real effect in certain states, and make a battleground states like Florida and Ohio even harder for the Republican Party to capture.

[O]f the 61 million who voted for Mitt Romney in 2012, about 2.75 million will be dead by the 2016 election. President Barack Obama’s voters, of course, will have died too—about 2.3 million of the 66 million who voted for the president won’t make it to 2016 either. That leaves a big gap in between, a difference of roughly 453,000 in favor of the Democrats.

[W]hat if Republicans aren’t able to win over a larger share of the youth vote? In 2012, there were about 13 million in the 15-to-17 year-old demo who will be eligible to vote in 2016. The previous few presidential election cycles indicate that about 45 percent of these youngsters will actually vote, meaning that there will about 6 million new voters total. Exit polling indicates that age bracket has split about 65-35 in favor of the Dems in the past two elections. If that split holds true in 2016, Democrats will have picked up a two million vote advantage among first-time voters. These numbers combined with the voter death data puts Republicans at an almost 2.5 million voter disadvantage going into 2016.

[P]olitical demographers are seeing this election as a watershed. Millennials now have higher numbers than Baby Boomers, and the mortality rates will expand that difference in coming elections. The very conservative Silent Generation, born between 1925 and 1942, is declining at a rapid pace. The mortality rate for 70-to-74 year-olds is 6,058.4 per 100,000 each year, compared to 110.1 for the 30-to-34 age group. With each death, a little political power passes from one generation to the next.

[T]here is one certainty: Dead people don’t vote, at least not as much as they did in Chicago in 1960. When the political operatives start dissecting and predicting how the electorate is going to show in 2016, they should take into account not only the who and why of the ones that will vote, but also the ones who aren’t showing up this time around because they’ve kicked the bucket.

No carefully-crafted campaign message can change that.