Friday, June 07, 2013

The Council Has Spoken!! This Week's Watcher's Council Results

 

Alea iacta est...the Council has spoken, the votes are in, and we have the results  for this week's Watcher's Council match up.

Some folk wisdom my father of blessed memory repeated to me early and often from a very young age: 'Figures lie, and liars figure.'



This week's winner,  The Myth Of The Hispanic Tidal Wave   by  Joshuapundit  was actually written a few weeks after the 2012 election, and was inspired by one of the myriad of commentators writing about how the tidal wave of Hispanic votes that re-elected Barack Hussein Obama spelled doom for the Republicans unless they abandoned conservatism and out-pandered Democrats for this vital new constituency. The way the article was written got my truth-meter ( something for which my parents had a far earthier barnyard-level term for) tingling, I did a bit of research and my father's wisdom once more redeemed itself.

In view of the Gang of Eight's recent antics with their amnesty bill, and a related piece that came out last week by Byron York, I decided it was more than relevant to unearth this one from the archives. Here's a slice:

The latest rage among Republicans and Democrats alike is the Hispanic vote.

The Democrats smirk that the muscle of the Latino vote is going to make them a permanent majority and make the Republicans extinct, while GOP establishment types (and even some self described conservatives) pontificate that the election of 2012 is a message for the Republican to embrace amnesty for illegal aliens, to try to outdo the Democrats in gimmees and in raising taxes to pay for it and to drop any vestige of social conservatism.

One of these articles (in American Enterprise, no less) by Charles Murray points out that in his view the argument that Latinos naturally skew towards social conservatism is bogus..and as proof he offers another non-white group that went primarily for Barack Obama..Asians, who are another minority that 'should have voted as natural social conservatives' :

My thesis is that the GOP is in trouble across the electoral board because it has become identified in the public mind with social conservatism. Large numbers of Independents and Democrats who are naturally attracted to arguments of fiscal discipline, less government interference in daily life, greater personal responsibility, and free enterprise refuse to vote for Republicans because they are so put off by the positions and rhetoric of social conservatives, whom they take to represent the spirit of the “real” GOP.

This isn't much of a thesis, frankly. First, Asians are an extremely diverse group..everyone from Chinese, Vietnamese and Koreans to Filipinos, Pakistanis and Indians ( a fairly diverse group in themselves). The figures cited make no mention of which Asians we're talking about. I would bet my dollar to your dime that Koreans voted substantially different in the last election than Pakistanis, for example.


Since they're not broken down but lumped together as a group, the best figure available is that Americans of Asian descent constitute 3% of the electorate, about 6, 450,000 voters.

So, what percentage of the Asian electorate actually voted? I couldn't find those figures but let's be very generous and say it was a 40% turnout. This would have been huge given that this was a very low turnout election. 73% of the Asians that actually voted went went for Obama, so we're talking about 1,883,400 votes mainly concentrated in Blue states like California, New York, New Jersey and Michigan ( if we're talking Pakistanis and Asian Muslims). That's a grand total of 28% of the available Asian electorate if we're talking a 40% turnout. It's probably a lot less, especially when you break it down by individual groups.Barack Obama probably did better among Muslims than any other demographic except blacks.In any event, that means that 72% of the Asian electorate is either Republican or available.

Now, that got me thinking along the same lines when it comes to the Hispanic vote.

Hispanics, for example, are 9.07 of the current electorate ( 23.7 million voters). Of those,  only 12 million or so  of that 23.7 million voted and they went for Barack Obama by 67.5%,  a whopping 8 million  of the 12 million whom voted ..or  just about one third of the entire Hispanic votes available.

That means two thirds of the current Hispanic vote is either Republican or up for grabs.

That's what all the verbiage and punditry is about....a grand total of less than 3.5% of the entire electorate, much of it already living in Blue States like California, New York and New Jersey. And that doesn't even account for voter fraud in places like California where there are no voter ID laws.

There's a lot more on this and what it means at the link.

In our non-Council category, the winner was Ayaan Hirss Ali with The Problem of Muslim Leadership  submitted by Joshuapundit. In it, the renowned author and ex-Muslima looks at Islam-inspired terrorism and puts her finger on the real problem. Do read it.

OK, here are this week’s full results. Only The Right Planet was unable to vote this week, but was not subject to the usual 2/3 vote penalty:

Council Winners

Non-Council Winners

See you next week! Don't forget to tune in on Monday AM for this week's Watcher's Forum, as the Council and their invited special guests take apart one of the provocative issues of the day with short takes and weigh in...don't you dare miss it. And don't forget to like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter.....'cause we're cool like that!
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