Replay of Reagan-Era Voting Patterns Is Not Good News for Democrats

Walter F. Mondale on the ballot. Bruce Springsteen on the record charts. And Republicans popping champagne on election night.

Almost everything about the 2002 election season felt retro -- like 1984, in fact. The Republican triumph this year didn’t approach the scale of that year, when Ronald Reagan rolled to a 49-state victory over Mondale, then the Democratic presidential nominee. But the debate between the parties this fall -- and the ways that competition divided the electorate -- often seemed to reprise the early 1980s. Which is not good news for Democrats.

Understanding exactly what happened and why in this month’s election is more difficult than usual because technical problems have prevented the release of the Voter News Service exit poll, the principal tool in recent years for assessing how the electorate aligned and which issues moved voters.

But revealing data are still available, both in the county-by-county results and in election day polls by Republican Bill McInturff and Democrat Stan Greenberg. And much of this evidence advances a trend that first emerged in the 1998 congressional election: the resurfacing of problems that plagued the Democrats through the 1980s, when Republicans dominated the White House and the national debate.

Compared with the 1980s, Democrats are stronger today on several fronts. Under Bill Clinton -- with his socially liberal, fiscally moderate “New Democrat” message -- the party expanded its reach among white suburbanites and moderates outside the South. For the most part, it has held those gains.

In the 1980 and 1984 presidential races, the Democratic nominee lost independent voters by more than 20 percentage points each time. But according to the Greenberg and McInturff surveys, Democrats ran at least even with Republicans among independents in the 2002 congressional vote, just as Al Gore split independents almost evenly with George W. Bush in the 2000 presidential contest.

Democrats also continue to run much better today than in the 1980s with white women, many of whom are attracted to the party’s support for gun control and legal abortion.

Outside the South, Democrats still look strong in the big suburban communities immediately around the major cities. Once reliably Republican, suburbs such as Oakland County in Michigan, Bergen County in New Jersey and Montgomery County in Philadelphia all backed Gore in 2000 -- and Democrats in 2002. Overall, Greenberg’s poll showed the two parties running even in the suburbs this year.

But on other electoral battlegrounds, the GOP is reestablishing the advantages that produced its dominance in the Reagan era. Key among them:

White men: They were the backbone of the Reagan coalition -- in 1984, they gave Reagan a staggering 35-percentage-point margin over Mondale. In his two presidential races, Clinton reduced that deficit to around 10 points or less (partly because Reform Party candidate Ross Perot siphoned many white men away from the GOP). Now the gap is widening again: White men gave Republicans a 21-point margin in the 2002 vote, according to Greenberg’s poll.

The resurgent GOP advantage among white men is so powerful that it could threaten one of the most important Democratic assets: the labor movement’s turnout machine. Greenberg found that Democrats led Republicans this year among all union households by just 14 points -- half the margin of 1998--and only by six points among white union households. That’s sufficiently reminiscent of Reagan’s blue-collar appeal that it may soon be time to start talking about Bush Democrats.

Married women: They leaned Republican in the 1980s, which helped the GOP moderate the gender gap. (Then, as now, single women, who tend to be more liberal on social issues, voted mostly Democratic.) Clinton made progress here too, carrying married women in 1996 with a message built around “tools” for parents.

Now, values and security issues are nudging married women back toward the GOP. Republicans carried married women comfortably in the 1998 congressional race, ran even in the 2000 presidential race and, Greenberg found, posted a 10-point advantage in 2002.

Rural voters: They gave Reagan and President George Bush big margins in the 1980s, then divided almost evenly in the Clinton years. Now, Democrats are down on the farm again. Big gains in small places have been key to the recent Republican upsurge: GOP congressional candidates this year carried rural voters by more than 20 percentage points, just as Bush did in 2000.

The solid South: This region is resurfacing as the cornerstone of GOP strength. In the 1990s, Democrats enjoyed a mini-revival through Dixie, capturing several states with Clinton, adding two Senate seats and winning six governorships. But in the 2000 presidential race, Bush won every Southern state. And in 2002, Republicans recaptured three governor’s mansions, ousted Sen. Max Cleland (D-Ga.) and easily held four open Southern Senate seats that had been in GOP hands.

Driving these demographic and geographic tilts are shifts in the debate between the parties. Values issues such as guns and abortion -- following the backlash against the Clinton scandals in the late 1990s -- have been central to the GOP surge, especially in the South and the countryside.

Even more important this year was a reversion to the 1980s pattern where the Democrats appear to be the “Mommy” party, preferred on issues of caring and compassion, and Republicans the “Daddy” party, trusted to defend the nation. In Greenberg’s election day poll, voters gave Republicans a 40-point advantage over Democrats on keeping America strong. It doesn’t take much more to understand the stampede of white men back to the GOP.

Democrats compounded their problem by failing to articulate a comprehensive alternative vision for defending the nation. Indeed, Democratic candidates lacked overarching messages this year on almost any subject -- from economic opportunity to government reform.

Instead, in a final echo of Mondale in the 1980s, most Democrats tried to patch together majorities by wooing individual constituencies with targeted programs, such as prescription drug coverage for seniors. That was a recipe for disaster in the Reagan years. And based on this month’s results, it’s no more appetizing for voters today.

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Ronald Brownstein’s column appears every Monday. See current and past Brownstein columns on The Times’ web site: www.latimes.com/brownstein.