Away from the gated community: Republicans should not build a strategy around courting 'upscale' voters.(Essay)

[ILLUSTRATION OMITTED]

DEMOGRAPHY is destiny in politics, or so we have heard. In 2004, the growth of the exurbs was said to be generating a permanent Republican majority. Now the strong support for the Democrats by young people, Hispanics, and non-Christians is said to be creating an unstoppable trend toward liberalism.

The demographic trends are real. National Journal columnist Ronald Brownstein recently illustrated how much they matter with a neat exercise. He divided the electorate into six broad demographic groups--e.g., college-educated white voters and Hispanics--and noted how each had voted in the McCain-Obama contest. "If each of these groups voted as it did in 2008 but constituted the same share of the electorate as in 1992, McCain would have won. Comfortably."

Yet demography isn't everything. The shift from unified Republican control of the government in 2005 to unified Democratic control in 2009 was not produced only or even mainly by demographic trends. The make-up of the country did not change that quickly. A lot of people who had voted for Republicans started voting for Democrats.

Those people are not easily categorizable. Republicans lost ground among Hispanics, whites, and blacks; among women and men; among voters with college degrees and voters without; among evangelicals and non-Christians; among libertarians and populists.

It is possible that Republicans will regain popularity, just as they have lost it, across the board--if, for example, continued economic trouble becomes associated with the Democrats. Certainly there is no point in trying to add tiny demographic groups to the Republican coalition: The party is too far down to get a majority that way.

Indeed, Republicans are so far out of power right now that they will probably have to do what they should always have been doing: figure out the main challenges to the national interest and how to meet them. But even the most well-considered agenda will fail to accomplish anything if it is impossible to imagine how a majority of the electorate could ever be moved to support it. And the truth is that Republicans are going to have to choose which voters they are most eager to court. Time and money are limited, after all, and the actions that tend to please one type of voter will displease another.