Today, Project Vote released a new memo, What Happened to Hope and Change? How Fascination with the “Tea Party” Obscures the Significance of the 2008 Electorate.
Written by Project Vote’s director of research, election scholar Lorraine C. Minnite, What Happened to Hope and Change? examines how the voting population that determined the 2008 election better represents our country’s racial and socioeconomic diversity than any in recent memory. Young people, low-income Americans, and Americans of color all turned out in high–and perhaps decisive–numbers.
Less than two years later, however, the significance of this exciting change largely has gone undiscussed, and the voices and views of this emerging American electorate have gone unheard. Instead, since the moment the new administration took office, the mainstream media has been obsessed with anti-government backlash from the so-called “Tea Party” minority–a group that tends towards older, wealthier, white conservatives. As a result we have been constantly bombarded by the message that Americans as a whole are angry and outraged with government overreaching.
Americans may be angry, but this new memo suggests that the reasons for this anger–particularly concerning economic policies–may be far more complex and nuanced than the dominant Tea-Party-narrative would lead us to believe. In September 2010 Project Vote will release the results of a poll of the 2008 electorate, to determine what Americans really want from the government they elected. Our survey will break new ground in oversampling low-income, African American, and younger voters who expanded their participation in 2008.
The new memo released today provides important background information for that project, exploring the shifting racial and socioeconomic class dynamics of who voted in 2008, and why it is so important that the interests, needs, and demands of this emerging electorate are part of the public debate.
To download this important new memo, click here.