A recent article in Politico highlighted some issues the GOP needs to address to make a comeback.  It pointed out that John McCain won the same percentage of the white vote in 2008 as President Reagan in 1980.  While you don’t need to be Carnac the Magnificent to know our country is changing, understanding how much is essential to fixing the problem.

A March Gallup article showed the change in the generic ballot from 2001 to 2009.  Note: the discrepancy in the Gallup numbers is caused by the 2001 totals only adding up to 99%.  Remember how polarized the country was in 2001? While it was a good year for Republicans, it was far from a landslide as Republicans lost a number Senate seats including Michigan, Minnesota and Washington.  Even more disturbing was a chart that showed the GOP losing ground among every major demographic group.

Mike Murphy also noted some interesting trends in a recent Time article, pointing out that the Hispanic vote has grown from 2% in 1980 to 9% in 2008.  This increase effected many key states such as traditionally Republican Indiana, where Hispanic provided President Obama with a 58,000 vote margin in a stated he won by 26,000 votes.

Primary voters are a good indicator of where a poltical party is heading and a review of the elecotrate  July 2008 primary voters in Georgia echoed some of the points above.  Caucasians comprised 97% of the Republican primary vote, also 78% where over the age of 45, 26% older than 65.  Conversely ethnicity in the Democratic primary the same years was evenly split between African-Americans and Caucasians, with 70% over the age of 45 and 19% over 65.

Now that it’s clear the country is changing, the bigger question is what to do about it.