Repuke party demographics (white christians?)

[Catch22Dem]

My co-worker just thinks Dean is a "nut bag." I couldn't disagree more so I asked him if he was talking about the white christian thing? He said, "well yeah that, and other stuff." So I told him, "well, ya know, the republican party IS primarily white and christian, so it's not like he made a false statement, besides, since when is that an insult? He went on and on about how statements like that aren't the way to get minority voters to side with you and yada yada yada. He also said "the democrat(sic) party is the same. It's because that's the overall make up of the whole country."

What I wanna do is show him a shocking demographic of his party compared to ours. Does anyone have anything like this I could use? I'm searching right now, but so far I'm coming up empty.

[kliljedahl]

1. Here's a good place to start

I love about.com


http://usconservatives.about.com/od/politics/a/GOPDemDemo.htm


Keith’s Barbeque Central

[Donald Ian Rankin]

4. One thing that struck me from the link you give

Is that he says that wealth and education both correlate with Republicanism among voters.

But I've also seen numerous surveys showing that in states where the average intelligence if higher the Democrats do better, and I'm pretty sure the same thing is true for wealth and education. I'm sure I remember seeing that Kerry won all the 10 states with highest average IQ and most of the ones with highest average income, and Bush won all the ones with them lowest.

Can anyone think of an explanation?

[comsymp]

6. Another good place

According to CNN/USA Today/Gallup poll data, 82 percent of self-described Republicans are white Christians - but so are 57 percent of Democrats and 67 percent of all Americans.

"He's not wrong," CNN analyst Bill Schneider said. "It's just stupid."

One Washington-based Democratic consultant, citing exit polls, said white Christians made up 76 percent of President Bush's re-election vote last year while comprising 45 percent of John Kerry's backing.
http://www.duluthsuperior.com/mld/duluthsuperior/news/politics/11846985.htm

Discussed here:
http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=104x3821078

[iamjoy]

2. Let Me Know When You Get It

But maybe it isn't the people anyway, it's the agenda that is white, Christian male.

I mean, I'm sure we could find the statistics, but you could get statistics to say anything you want, really. The Chairman of the Republican Party is a white, JEWISH man. Dean is a White Christian Male. Hmmm...

It was a Republican who appointed the first woman to the Supreme Court, the first African American to the Supreme Court, and as Secretary of State (twice). In fact, Dubya has made ethnically diverse cabinet appointments.

But look at the agenda of the Republican party, wanting to allow prayer in school - which in most cases would be Christian based prayers. Look at how they want to dismantle the EEOC which helps protect women and minorities from discrimination. And the funny thing is, they find women and minorities to endorse the agenda (as in Clarence Thomas and Janice Rogers Brown). It drives me nuts.

[batsauce]

3. The Democratic Party

needs to do a better job of putting minoritys in the drivers seat.

Numerically, We do a little better than the Republicans, but when you look at the 80+% of the African Americans who voted for Kerry, you have to wander at the the proportianiately minisucle representation in Congressional seats.

The African American voters deserve better than that.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

5. Surely the relevant statistic

Is proportion of Kerry voters who are African-American, not proportion of African-Americans who voted for Kerry?

If I recall correct, Kerry won 0.5 of the total vote. According to Wikipedia 0.13 of the American populace is African-American, so if we assume that 0.13 of the vote was too, and that Kerry won 0.8 of their vote then that would mean that about one fifth of his voters were African-America, I think?.

What fraction of Democratic Congressional seats are held by African-Americans? I suspect it's significantly less than 0.2.

Query: is "# seats held in Congress" a fair measure? Are we comparing two things it's fair to compare?

On the other hand, I suspect that more than 0.5 of Kerry's voters were female (don't women tend to vote Democrat more than men?) and I'd guess that they're even more underepresented in most levels of government?