The Political “Strategery” Guide To White People

Yes, I said white people and yes I know “Strategery” is not a word.

So why do we need a political map for white people? Aren’t they all the same? No.

It continues to amaze me how many involved in politics (including the press) will make great strides to stratify Latino and Asian voters by their appropriate subgroups but then make almost no effort to better understand white voters. I recently read Sen. Jim Webb’s book Born Fighting on the history of Scots-Irish Americans (sorry to all my GOP friends in VA).  This is a must read for people in politics who are looking to better understand rural, southern and Appalachian voters.

This attitude that white voters are somehow a monolithic voting bloc is a relatively new phenomenon. I recently bought a GOP poll book for the 1898 election in IL on Ebay and it was incredible to see how some things change a lot and some not at all. It was a detailed list of all the voters in a various precinct used by the Party’s Precinct Chair for the purpose of voter turnout. It listed each voter with several points of data, interestingly the “Ethnicity” section was divided into Italian, German, Irish, Polish, White and other. Hilarious. The reality of course is that the longer these groups stayed in American the more they lost touch with their individual group identities. So do all these voters now fit into a great big bowl of vanilla?

White voters affiliation with their grand parents and great parents ethnic background may be watered down but how else can you explain these differences.

• The Scandinavian and democrat leaning voters of Minnesota and Wisconsin.
• The German and Republican leaning voters of Ohio and Indiana.
• The Polish and democrat leaning voters of Chicago.
• The Scots Irish and (newly) Republican leaning voters of the Old South.
• The Irish and democrat leaning voters of Boston and New York.

Of course country of origin is only part of this identity. Often the religion and early economic class of many of these groups pushed them into the arms of either party.

So how are Irish and Scots Irish backgrounds different? In a nutshell, Socts Irish got to American first , settled (or migrated) in the  south and west and were Protestant. Irish were Catholic, came later and settled mostly in cities in the north. The history of the early Scots Irish is truely American. They were originally from lowland areas of Scotland and were Presbyterian. The English moved thousands of them to Ulster in Ireland to help quell the Irish, quickly the English realized they could not control either group so they began to ship these very poor settlers to “buffer” areas in between the wealthy English gentry and the Indians. The original “40 acres and a mule” program. These early Scots Irish moved into the south and Appalachia extensively. They had some interesting characteristics that many would recognize today. They were religious, gun loving, family oriented rural people who had a deep distrust of central authority.

So when you are trying to figure out messaging and strategy for voters make sure you talk to your pollster about ALL of the subgroups for each ethnicity.

Chris Faulkner