GOP Hopes Increased Diversity Attracts New Voters

Latinos have contributed critically to the Democratic Party in the Election 2010. Latino voters turned out to be decisive in several races and even pushed a turnout on the election night. For example, majority leader Harry Reid won the Nevada senate seat by a slim margin because of a Latino turnout. Both California Sen. Barbara and Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet's victories are attributed to Latino voters. Learning a lesson from the Election 2010, the Republican Party is now trying to increase its diversity in order to attract minority voters.

However, the Republicans' stance on immigration reform has kept them from more Latino voters. Particularly, in terms of the Arizona immigration law, Latinos are the targets of SB 1070. Therefore, the Republicans started allowing African American - Tim Scott- to join their party, targeting at another minority group other than Latinos.

I do not think the Republican Party could win over the minority groups by adding one or two African/Latino Republicans. Even though the Democratic Party lost a large number of women, independent, young, and African American voters in the Election 2010, polls from CNN show that a majority of non-white men and non-white women voters are still in favor of the Democratic Party. 75% of non-white men voters and 78% of non-white women voters voted for the Democratic Party in this election. However, non-white men voters and non-white women voters together only occupied 20% of the entire vote, much less than the percentage of white-men voters, that is 40%. Interestingly, white women voters is the majority voters in the entire election, even compared to white-men voters, who occupied 39% votes.

Therefore, I think it would be more practical for the Republican Party to strive for white-women voters. Because, in addition to the aforementioned percentage in the election occupied by white-women voters, the difference of white-women voters' preference in this election is very slight: 49% of white-women voters voted for the Democratic Party and 50% of white-women voters voted for the Republican Party.