Many Republicans believe that their party needs to improve its image among the new generation of young and nonwhite voters who have helped President Obama win two terms. Yet there is a reason most Republican politicians have not tailored their positions on major issues toward younger voters: Doing so would risk angering the party’s base, which is predominantly old, white and culturally conservative.
Enter the Supreme Court.
With the legality of same-sex marriage being argued on Tuesday, the court could allow Republicans to abandon an unpopular position without abandoning their principles or risking a primary challenge. History would effectively be bailing out the party.
Sometimes history helps Democrats, as when the Cold War ended and made the long-held view that they were weak on national security less salient. This year, if the Supreme Court rules that same-sex marriage bans are unconstitutional, the court could free Republicans from defending a policy that makes it far harder to confront their generational and demographic challenges.
A court ruling for national same-sex marriage could sharpen the debate over the subject in the short term. But it would end the state-by-state battles over the issue, probably bringing the national political debate over same-sex marriage to a far quicker end.
There’s no guarantee that the Republicans would accept history’s offering. As my colleague Adam Nagourney points out, opposition to same-sex marriage could become a powerful issue for conservative presidential candidates like Mike Huckabee, Rick Santorum or Ted Cruz, who have big incentives to appeal to the socially conservative voters that dominate the Iowa caucuses. They could even champion a constitutional amendment to reverse the decision.
Without a ruling, it is hard to imagine the Republicans abandoning their opposition to same-sex marriage anytime soon. Polls show that two-thirds of Republicans continue to oppose same-sex marriage, in no small part because white evangelical Christians, who oppose same-sex marriage by a three-to-one margin, make up around 40 percent of Republicans. The young Republicans voters who are relatively supportive of same-sex marriage — if still divided — are less likely to turn out in primary elections than their older and more culturally conservative counterparts.
But over the medium term, a Supreme Court ruling would probably resolve the debate over same-sex marriage and push it to the sidelines. There are big reasons Republicans would benefit. As many as 60 percent of adults support same-sex marriage, and the margin is even larger among young voters.
White Voters Are Divided by Religion
The divide between white evangelicals and non-Christians is larger than the gap between white and nonwhite voters.
Presidential preferences among non-Hispanic white voters, by religion
Obama
Romney
Other/DK
18%
76
6
30
65
6
47
48
5
65
28
7
The consequences could be even greater down the line, in four or eight years, or beyond. If Republicans don’t make a big effort to make gains among nonwhite voters, or if they do but fail, they’ll need to broaden their appeal among white voters. That might require them to do better among relatively secular voters than they have in the past.
For all of the focus on the “white working class” or the “gender gap” or the urban-rural divide, the real fissure among white voters is along religious lines. The divide between white evangelical Christians and nonreligious white voters is about as large as the gap between white and nonwhite voters, and it dwarfs the education, income, gender or regional gaps.
The Republican advantage among white voters is a product of this division. There are more white evangelical voters than white non-Christian voters, and so the white vote tilts Republican. The remaining white non-evangelical Christian voters, like mainline Protestants and Roman Catholics, have split roughly evenly between the two parties. To the extent that the Republicans have a slight edge among them, it is because of the South.
This was a winning formula for Republicans. There were enough evangelical voters to overwhelm the Democratic alliance between the secular left and nonwhite voters.
Religious Trends Are Helping the Democrats
Religion of non-Hispanic white voters by age and religion.
Evangelical Christian
Christian, Non-evangelical
Non-Christian
28%
37
33
30
40
29
33
46
20
35
51
13
That formula is in trouble. The growing nonwhite share of the electorate has played a well-documented role in eroding the viability of the traditional G.O.P. path to the presidency, but the growing number of non-Christian white voters — the religiously unaffiliated, atheists, agnostics, Jews and others — will pose a problem as well.
Among voters under age 45, there were fewer evangelical voters than non-Christian whites, according to a compilation of pre-election surveys of nearly 14,000 respondents. Among 18-to-29-year-olds, white non-Christians outnumbered white evangelicals by a five-point margin. In comparison, evangelicals outnumbered non-Christians by a three-to-one margin among non-Hispanic whites over age 65.
This shift in the religious composition of white voters is a big part of why Mr. Obama fared so much better among 18-to-29-year-old whites than among white voters over age 30. He would have fared better among 18-to-29-year-olds than any other age group of whites even if 18-to-29-year-olds voted the same way as voters ages 65 and older, religious group for religious group.
High and growing turnout among white evangelical voters, along with growing Republican margins among white evangelicals, helped Republicans offset this trend. According to the exit polls, white evangelical voters have grown to 36 percent from 29 percent of white voters, while the Republican share of the evangelical vote increased to 79 percent from 69 percent between 2000 and 2012. There is also evidence that Republicans have made modest but smaller gains among white Catholics over the same period.
But as younger, less Christian voters age and their turnout rises, it becomes harder to imagine the Republicans continuing to compensate with higher turnout and support among white evangelicals. In the pre-election polling data, 84 percent of white evangelicals said they would definitely vote, more than any religious or racial group. It’s also hard to see how Republicans will win a much larger share of the white evangelical vote, which supported Mr. Romney by a margin equal to the president’s margin among nonwhite voters.
If Republicans are running out of room to expand their margins among evangelical voters, then additional gains among white voters will have to come from nonevangelicals. And if you assume that cultural issues are the principal reason white voters break so strongly along cultural lines, then further Republican gains among white voters could be well served by a strategic retreat from same-sex marriage.
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