Keep an eye on this statistic:

In Harold Meyerson's American Prospect piece on politics and Democratic options, he brings this to our attention:

What the Los Angeles Times' exit poll makes clear is that ... between the 1998 midterm and this year's ... the percentage of white voters increased from 64 percent four years ago to 76 percent this year.

And the whitening of the electorate does not seem to have been limited to California. Fox News conducted phone polls of voters on election night (an admittedly imperfect methodology), and concluded that the white share of the electorate grew in a number of "battleground" states from its figure in 2000: in Florida by 9 percent, in Colorado by 5 percent, in Missouri by 4 percent.

There could be a sleeping giant hidden in those no-shows at the polls.


posted by Quiddity at 11/30/2002 12:21:00 AM