The secret of GOP success
Nov 11, 2014, 5:06 PM | Updated: 5:07 pm
Some commentators have tried to explain GOP success in the recent elections by citing a sudden surge of conservative voters—the same ideologically-driven voters who, according to common myth, stayed home and doomed Mitt Romney’s campaign two years ago.
But exit polls show 35 percent of all voters in Mitt Romney’s race in 2012 called themselves conservative—similar to the 37 percent in the electorate of 2014, and more than the 34 percent when George W. Bush won in 2004. The biggest segment in each of these races was self-described “moderates”—40 percent this year—and GOP candidates in 2014 cut the Democratic edge among such voters by 7 points.
Republicans also did much better among women, young voters, blacks, Hispanics, Jews and Asians. Competing for all ideologies and ethnicities, without a strident doctrinaire edge, remains the formula for success in American politics.