Continuing from our earlier discussion . . . Yair posted some results from his MRP analysis of voter turnout:
1. The 2018 electorate was younger than in 2014, though not as young as exit polls suggest.
2. The 2018 electorate was also more diverse, with African American and Latinx communities surpassing their share of votes cast in 2014.
3. Voters in 2018 were more educated than all the years in our dataset going back to 2006. . . . the exit poll shows the opposite trend. As noted earlier, they substantially changed their weighting scheme on education levels, so these groups can’t be reliably compared across years in the exit poll.
” 2018: Who actually voted? ”
NY Times (9 Nov 2018) initially reports that the numerical majority of eligible American voters (Vote Eligible Population/VEP) did NOT vote at all last week, though there was record voter turnout for this mid-term election.
What are the demographics of these non-voters?
Seems there should be substantial political-science interest in the majority of the Electorate that did not vote…versus the minority that did vote.
Seigler:
Yes, there is research on this topic; see for example here and here.
Yair wrote:
“2. The 2018 electorate was also more diverse, with African American and Latinx communities surpassing their share of votes cast in 2014.”
The word “Latinx” was entirely new to me and at first I thought it was a typo. But Wikipedia says:
“Latinx (la-teen-ex) (/ləˈtiːnɛks, læ-/) is a gender-neutral term sometimes used in lieu of Latino or Latina (referencing Latin American cultural or racial identity). The plural is Latinxs.”
I was unable to find the phonetic version for the plural form. But, from
https://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/why-people-are-using-the-term-latinx_us_57753328e4b0cc0fa136a159
there is a Google Trends graph which indicates that Latinx starts around 2004 with one entry and by October, 2018, it is up to 49.
But sometimes things go the other way. Way back when, “Jew” referred to a Jewish male and “Jewess” referred to a Jewish female. The latter term now seems to reek of ancient times and ancient prejudices and is thoroughly out of fashion. According to
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=jew%2C+jewess&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cjew%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2Cjewess%3B%2Cc0
each term–with lower case–peaked in the 1830’s. With upper case,
https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=Jew%2C+Jewess&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2CJew%3B%2Cc0%3B.t1%3B%2CJewess%3B%2Cc0
the impression is a bit different. But notice the peak around 1940 probably due to the rise of the Nazis.
Thanks for the link. I’ve encountered the term Latinx fairly frequently in the past few months, and figured out its meaning, but it’s nice to have the explanation of its origins and surrounding controversies. Life is complex, but it’s good to hear that people are acknowledging and discussing that complexity.
What is the definition of “latinx”? Who is included?