On the other hand, whites constituted almost 95 percent of Bush's total vote. Conventional electoral wisdom discounts race as a political factor, focusing instead on class, the gender gap, union membership, etc. All but union members and big-city residents are racial or ethnic groups. White union members and city dwellers vote to the left of whites who live more racially isolated lives, but they barely tilt Democratic. Similarly, women voted 54-43 for Gore, but white women actually favored Bush by one point.
Women of color create the gender gap.
The income gap in presidential politics is thoroughly racialized. As the sociologist William Form pointed out long ago, if only a bare majority of white working-class people voted consistently Democratic, we could have some kind of social democracy that would provide much more social justice than the conservative regimes we are used to. The good news is that the influence of liberal and progressive voters of color is increasingly being felt in certain states. In California an optimist might even envision a rebirth of Democratic liberalism a couple of elections down the road, based largely on votes of people of color. The two-party, Electoral College system ensures that almost half of voters of color are marginalized or totally ignored.