The Sailer Strategy: Graphic Evidence From California
Did Arnold Schwarzenegger
win the California governorship because he captured
three out of every ten Latino votes, as much
post-election chatter has implied?
Of course not. Republicans
performed strongly in the California recall because they
did what Republicans must
always do to win: earn lots of votes from that
enormous but apparently
unmentionable bloc—whites.
From 1992 through 2003, Republicans
lost ten of twelve major elections in California.
Paradoxically, this 2-10 record in contests for
governor, senator, and president is often attributed to
the GOP`s last successful effort before the recall: Pete
Wilson`s campaign against illegal immigration in 1994,
which allegedly unleashed the sleeping Hispanic giant
blah blah. But, needless to say, this cliché can`t
explain why the GOP candidates in California got skunked
0-3 in 1992 – two years earlier.
The exit polls for these California
elections reveal the real explanation. The ten GOP
losers in these contests all failed to win a majority
of the non-Hispanic white vote.
[VDARE.COM note:
Stanley Womack of
Resisting Defamation complains that "non-Hispanic
white" is a put-down, but we feel obliged to use it—at
least occasionally— to indicate the specific category so
termed by the Census Bureau.] The two GOP
victories, however, did involve a majority of the white
vote.
Wilson won 61% in 1994. The two
Republican candidates in 2003 seized 67 percent. (I`m
lumping Tom McClintock`s 14 percent with Arnold
Schwarzenegger`s 53 percent because
McClintock ran to the right of Schwarzenegger.
Alternatively, in a one on one matchup with Cruz
Bustamante, Arnold won 66 percent of the white vote vs.
Bustamante`s 34 percent.)
In the last seven elections, the
gap between whites and Latinos voting Republican has
been quite steady: 22-28 percentage points. This year,
67 percent of white voted for the two Republicans vs. 41
percent of Hispanics (by the most optimistic count).
That`s a perfectly normal 26 percentage-point gap.
Conclusion: no extra Latino leaning
won it for the GOP this year. The White vote is what
produces GOP victories—hence what VDARE.COM calls
(despite my modest disclaimers) the
"Sailer Strategy" for GOP success.
Since GOP campaign strategists seem
to have
trouble understanding this point, I`ve drawn them a
picture:

(Click on graphic to enlarge)
The table above shows that in the
two GOP wins, marked in red,
Republican-voting whites comprised almost half of all
the votes cast in the entire state. (Californians vote
relatively heavily for minor parties, so 48 percent of
all ballots is usually more than enough to win.)
In the ten losses, however, marked
in blue, Republican
voting whites never exceeded 40 percent of all the votes
cast, and often came nowhere close.
In comparison to this overwhelming
factor, trivial fluctuations in GOP popularity among
minorities were simply insignificant.
(Note that this table captures two
effects: Democrats winning more white votes, and whites
just staying home in disgust.)
The bottom line: the conventional
wisdom that California Hispanic voters currently
hold a veto over attempts to cut down on immigration is
just an innumerate myth. (Further, a healthy minority of
Latino citizens don`t like illegal immigration
anyway, as
Cruz Bustamante`s hapless strategy of running for
governor of Mexifornia demonstrated.)
Memo to
Karl Rove: Assuming you don`t do the perp walk out
of the White House over the Valerie Plame
outing, you`re going to need an issue for your boy
to run on next year. Iraq
won it for you in 2002. But that`s not looking like
a real vote-grabber in 2004. Your amnesty idea (in the
form of drivers` licenses for illegal immigrants) proved
a
disaster at the ballot box in California this month.
If you really are the
genius your press clippings say you are, you`ll
figure out it`s time to reverse field.
Or, as Jesse Jackson might put it:
"GET THE WHITES RIGHT, CALIFORNIA [and the U.S. too, for that
matter] IS BRIGHT!"
[Sources: I used the LA Times
exit polls for 1994-2003 because they offer continuity
and consistency. Links:
2003,
2002,
2000,
1998,
1996,
1994. I
couldn`t find the LA Times` 1992 poll, so I used
the one from the now defunct VNS consortium. Links:
1992 Presidential,
1992 Senatorial.]
[Steve Sailer [email
him] is founder of the Human Biodiversity Institute and
movie critic for
The American Conservative.
His website
www.iSteve.blogspot.com features his daily
blog.]


