What makes the clock tick? Time, populations, voters, and votes for the president in the United States

Abstract

Our present analysis expands on the number of theoretical disciplines involved in the explanation of votes to presidential races in the United States. We do so by replacing the theoretically “thin” trend variable, previous studies have used, with the demographic factor.

The demographic factor, which is obviously highly statistically correlated with the non-theoretical time trend, was hypothesized to have a significant impact upon partisan popularity and presidential races. As the demographic growth is due mostly to immigration and naturalization, and natural growth, especially among the poor, one would expect the growth to be beneficial to Democrats.

The performance of both demographic operationalizations and both demographic equations, we utilize in the paper, proved perfect in terms of predicting the victor in all 17 contests examined.

Policy implications due to the evident demographic effects on voting call for a firm support by the Democrats to a “greater” or “larger” America in terms of its population. Democrats stand to gain from an ongoing increase in the population and a consequent growing need for policies supporting the public interest due to the obvious disadvantages to scale in absorbing many newcomers from all growth sources.