Sean Trende, data cruncher par excellence for RealClearPolitics, has a column in which he defends his notion that roughly 6 million downscale white voters sat out the 2012 presidential election. These are voters we would expect to vote GOP.
Trende identifies these as the so-called "Reagan Democrats," blue-collar whites who are turned off by the Democrats' thralldom to various "victim" groups. I suppose he is generally correct, but I'm an empiricist.
I'd like to see the Republican Party do a number of focus groups among downscale whites who didn't vote in 2012 to learn why they stayed home.
Maybe Trende has the correct answer - neither Romney nor Obama was simpatico to these voters - maybe he doesn't. I'd be more comfortable with actual data upon which to base policy decisions.
