T. A. Frank’s VDARE.com-Style Analysis In VANITY FAIR: Immigration Could Destroy Hillary With White Voters

05/18/2016

T.A. Frank has a pretty good article at Vanity Fair noting that Hillary Clinton’s Open Borders position on immigration will likely push working class whites towards Trump, which could swing the election.

Frank plays around with the numbers and notes

Two examples will suffice, and both were arrived at by using the remarkable Swing-o-Matic from FiveThirtyEight. In the 2012 election, 57 percent of non-college-educated whites showed up to vote, and 62 percent of them voted Republican. So let’s keep turnout the same and play with vote share. If 73 percent of these non-college-educated whites had voted Republican, then, even if 100 percent of Latino voters (as opposed 71 percent) had gone for Obama, Mitt Romney would have won the election. This year, Latino voters will probably show up in larger numbers, inspired by revulsion toward Trump, and black voters may show up in smaller numbers than the ones Barack Obama is believed to have inspired.
So let’s suppose the African-American vote reverts to the 2004 figures: 60 percent turnout, 88 percent Democratic. With a five-point increase in turnout among non-college-educated whites and a 10-point increase (from 62 percent to 72 percent) in the share of their votes, Trump seems to have a secure win. That would remain the case even if Latinos increased voter turnout by 10 points (from 48 to 50 percent) and increased their support for Democrats by nearly 30 points, up to 100 percent. Fundamentally, then, a small percentage of white voters hating Clinton’s stance on immigration could outweigh a large percentage of Hispanic voters liking it. (Emphasis added.)[The One Issue That Could Destroy Hillary Clinton, May 17, 2016]

Sound familiar? In December, I made almost the exact assumptions, using the same FiveThirtyEight Swing-O-Matic feature, and found they could result in a Trump win:

A significant, but not unrealistic, increase in turnout and share of the non-college educated white vote.
A small decline amongst college-educated whites. As a college degree no longer serves as a proxy for the upper-middle class, this could still signify a large drop amongst the "MBA middle," which would be offset by the college-educated “Pick-up Populists”
A blowout and large increase in the share of the Hispanic vote. Just for the sake of argument, we will see Trump do even worse amongst Hispanics than Romney, and see their turn-out go up. And, in fairness to conventional wisdom, I think this is a real possibility.
A small increase in the black share, and a decrease in their turn-out. Without a black man to vote for, I expect the black turn-out to decrease. At the same, while Trump will not do particularly well amongst African Americans, his bravura attitude and the scores of rap songs that give him “shout outs” will probably give him a small bump above Romney among what he has artlessly called “the blacks.”

[Trump CAN Win Presidency With White Working Class–Nate Silver (Unintentionally) Says So!, December 13, 2005]

I doubt Frank was stealing my arguments. Trump’s persistent success with the white working class is impossible to ignore. However, to be immodest, it’s one of many examples where VDARE.com has been ahead of the curve.

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