... if you look at racial composition of the delegates at their convention. According to The New York Times, their delegates were overwhelmingly white and male.
By Gender
By Race/Ethnicity
The republican delegates (and probably base) are simply not representative of the U.S. population as a whole. As the already diverse U.S. population becomes more and more mixed and multi-cultural, the narrow-minded republican party is going to find it impossible to compete with the larger and more inclusive democratic base. Democratic registration has already eclipsed that of republican party identification, thanks to the missteps of the Bush administration, the party's neo-conservative agenda, and the vigorous voter drive resulting from the primary battle between Hillary and Obama. Just when the hope of a more moderate and progressive party was forming under McCain, he killed that seed by picking a scary, ultra-conservative, evangelical in Sarah Palin. Good luck appealing to anyone but rabid evangelicals with that pick.
I suspected this just anecdotally from inspecting the crowds on TV. Democratic delegates represent the demographic of the country extremely well while republicans are overwhelmingly homogeneous. I decided to compare these numbers with the general demographics of the U.S in terms of gender and race/ethnicity.According to polls of delegates conducted by The New York Times and CBS News, 93 percent of the Republican delegates are white (compared with 85 percent in 2004 and 89 percent in 2000), while 5 percent are Hispanic and 2 percent are black. The Democratic delegate pool in Denver, according to the survey, was 65 percent white, 23 percent black and 11 percent Hispanic, roughly the same as at other recent Democratic conventions.
The poll also found that men accounted for 68 percent of Republican delegates (compared with 57 percent in 2004) and about half the Democratic delegates.
By Gender
| Gender | National | Republican | Democratic |
| Men | 49% | 68% | 50% |
| Women | 51% | 32% | 50% |
By Race/Ethnicity
| Race | National | Republican | Democratic |
| White | 68% | 93% | 65% |
| Hispanic | 15% | 5% | 11% |
| Black | 12% | 2% | 23% |
| Asian | 5% | N/A | N/A |
The republican delegates (and probably base) are simply not representative of the U.S. population as a whole. As the already diverse U.S. population becomes more and more mixed and multi-cultural, the narrow-minded republican party is going to find it impossible to compete with the larger and more inclusive democratic base. Democratic registration has already eclipsed that of republican party identification, thanks to the missteps of the Bush administration, the party's neo-conservative agenda, and the vigorous voter drive resulting from the primary battle between Hillary and Obama. Just when the hope of a more moderate and progressive party was forming under McCain, he killed that seed by picking a scary, ultra-conservative, evangelical in Sarah Palin. Good luck appealing to anyone but rabid evangelicals with that pick.
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