GOP, Democrats Search for Strategic Key to All-Important White Vote

Every day, America becomes less white. What that means, according to the common wisdom, is that Republicans had better start doing better with black and Hispanic voters or get used to losing. But this wisdom obscures a greater truth: In 2004, and for the foreseeable future, the white vote remains the big enchilada, the focus of both parties' efforts and the key to victory. "Whites will determine the next president," said demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution and the University of Michigan. He has calculated that while non-Hispanic whites are 69 percent of the population,they will -- because of higher rates of citizenship, registration and turnout -- make up nearly 80 percent of the electorate in November and 86 percent of voters in 17 critical battleground states. For Republicans and the Bush campaign, white voters remain not only their base but, in the face of what appears to be very limited success in expanding their appeal to black and brown voters, their most fertile territory for gaining the marginal increases in support and turnout that they need to keep the White House. [more ]