{"id":37224,"date":"2016-03-11T13:17:26","date_gmt":"2016-03-11T19:17:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/?p=37224"},"modified":"2016-03-11T14:07:51","modified_gmt":"2016-03-11T20:07:51","slug":"strategists-unpack-voting-blocs-key-to-presidential-election","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/strategists-unpack-voting-blocs-key-to-presidential-election\/","title":{"rendered":"Strategists unpack voting blocs key to presidential election"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Rank<\/strong><\/p>\n

Political strategists grappled Thursday night with the potential outcomes of this surprising presidential election, yet concluded it may be a more conventional race than believed; hopefuls on both sides of the aisle must ultimately engage a growing core of young voters and, most importantly, must engage people of color.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you\u2019re young, there are forces in your life that could possibly lead you more to voting Republican,\u201d GOP strategist Stuart Stevens argued. \u201cOne thing that\u2019s not going to change: if you\u2019re 19 years old and white or non-white, odds are you\u2019re going to be 45 and white or non-white.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Chicago Council on Global Affairs hosted the event, \u201cOn the Campaign Trail: Political Strategy, Millennials, and the 2016 Election,\u201d that featured a panel of strategists, moderated by Dina Smeltz.\u00a0About 50 people attended the event, organized by the Council\u2019s Young Professionals program.<\/p>\n

With the potential candidates looking more<\/a> and more<\/a> polarized, the issue of engaging undecided, new voters seems especially critical. Though the event was meant to underscore the importance of voter engagement in the increasingly unpredictable and surprising presidential election, the panelists mostly focused on contextualizing the race within patterns of voting in past races.<\/p>\n

Democratic strategist Joe Trippi noted that during his work on the 2004 Howard Dean campaign for President, Dean sought to engage the three \u201clegs on the stool\u201d of critical demographic bases that Democratic candidates need to clinch success: millennials, white progressives and non-white voters.<\/p>\n

He credits the unexpected success of Democratic Sen. Bernie Sanders\u2019s campaign to his impressive engagement with two legs, young voters and white progressives.<\/p>\n

\u201cBernie Sanders has had a problem that most Democrats have \u2013 that you can get millennials, you can get white progressives, you can put pieces of it together, but if you cannot win non-whites, you cannot win the Democratic party nomination. It has always been so from the beginning,\u201d Trippi said.<\/p>\n

Currently, Trippi said, Sanders still has not been able to engage that critical \u201cthird leg of the stool,\u201d though he had success with non-white turnout in his recent Michigan primary win<\/a>. He predicts Sanders won’t be able to clinch with just his millennial devotion, as that voting bloc isn\u2019t strong enough to support a majority.<\/p>\n

On the Republican side, however, Trippi warned that the young white population, which is slowly replacing the historically more socially conservative older white population, may undermine the traditional strategy of early Republican candidates appealing to their primary-voting conservative base.<\/p>\n

If old whites are dying, where they\u2019re declining two points [in the overall population] every four years, and they\u2019re being replenished with millennial whites who are intolerant of anything that\u2019s intolerant, that\u2019s the only thing they\u2019re intolerant of,\u201d Trippi said. \u201cSo you\u2019re losing two points of whites who believe there should be a big wall… and you\u2019re gaining two point of people who don\u2019t understand why there isn\u2019t a path of citizenship.\u201d<\/p>\n

Yet the right-polarized rhetoric coming out of the Trump campaign has found success.<\/p>\n

Stevens, a longtime conservative strategist who had worked on the media team on both of George W. Bush\u2019s presidential campaigns, said the failings of the promising campaign of GOP favorite Jeb Bush came when he failed to sufficiently attack Trump\u2019s bigoted policies.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe Bush super-PAC gave Jeb over $100 million and Jeb only spent 5 percent of it attacking Donald Trump,\u201d Stevens said.<\/p>\n

Stevens echoed the sentiments of many other mainstream GOP leaders by underscoring the danger of Republican presidential candidate Trump\u2019s unexpected ascent in the polls.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you\u2019re a political consultant, you spend most of your professional career trying to avoid moral choices and just focusing on winning,\u201d Stevens said. \u201cBut I think Trump really is a serious danger to the country in a way that a candidate hasn\u2019t been.\u201d<\/p>\n

Photo at top: Moderator Dina Smeltz, along with political strategists Stuart Stevens and Joe Trippi, discuss the 2016 elections in context. (Hannah Rank\/MEDILL)<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Hannah Rank Political strategists grappled Thursday night with the potential outcomes of this surprising presidential election, yet concluded it may be a more conventional race than believed; hopefuls on both sides of the aisle must ultimately engage a growing core of young voters and, most importantly, must engage people of color. \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":212,"featured_media":37225,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1145,30,585],"tags":[677,2301,1170,1198],"class_list":["post-37224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-election-2016","category-public-affairs","category-winter-2016","tag-politics","tag-presidential-election","tag-primaries","tag-voting"],"yoast_head":"\nStrategists unpack voting blocs key to presidential election - Medill Reports Chicago<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/strategists-unpack-voting-blocs-key-to-presidential-election\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Strategists unpack voting blocs key to presidential election - Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"By Hannah Rank Political strategists grappled Thursday night with the potential outcomes of this surprising presidential election, yet concluded it may be a more conventional race than believed; hopefuls on both sides of the aisle must ultimately engage a growing core of young voters and, most importantly, must engage people of color. \u201cWhen you\u2019re young, […]\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/strategists-unpack-voting-blocs-key-to-presidential-election\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Medill Reports Chicago\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2016-03-11T19:17:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2016-03-11T20:07:51+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/medill.wordpress.offload\/WP%20Media%20Folder%20-%20medill-reports-chicago\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/3\/2016\/03\/IMG_5816-e1457709906239.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"3264\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"2448\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"hannahrank\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"hannahrank\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"3 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/strategists-unpack-voting-blocs-key-to-presidential-election\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/news.medill.northwestern.edu\/chicago\/strategists-unpack-voting-blocs-key-to-presidential-election\/\",\"name\":\"Strategists unpack voting blocs key to presidential election - 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