First Read looks at the demographics:
What happened last night was a demographic time bomb that had been ticking and that blew up in GOP faces. As the Obama campaign had assumed more than a year ago, the white portion of the electorate dropped to 72%, and the president won just 39% of that vote. But he carried a whopping 93% of black voters (representing 13% of the electorate), 71% of Latinos (representing 10%), and also 73% of Asians (3%). What’s more, despite all the predictions that youth turnout would be down, voters 18-29 made up 19% of last night’s voting population — up from 18% four years ago — and President Obama took 60% from that group.
Weigel weighs in:
Had Rick Perry not run for president, and been so attackable on college tuition for immigrants, the issue might have stayed dormant. But Romney opened up on Perry and touted his support of the Arizona/Alabama immigration bills. The result: Only 27% of the Hispanic vote, the lowest for any Republican in a generation. Romney won only 39% of this vote in Florida. In 2004, George W. Bush won 54% of that vote. Yes, sure, fine, it's more Puerto Rican and less Cuban than it was eight years ago. But this drop-off is untenable.
Ben Smith and Zeke Miller put it this way:
The groups on whom Obama depended are the ones that are growing; white men, the core Republican constituency, are a shrinking minority. For the first time In 2011, minority births surpassed white births in the United States, and the longer demographic trend places white Americans in the minority by 2041. The Republican party will spend much needed time in the wilderness after this election, even as the open race for unofficially 2016 kicks off today. The future of the Grand Old Party will be determined by how well it adapts to the brand new Liberal America — indeed the Obama America — that is now here to stay.
Massie's view:
Republicans will win presidential elections again – they may well be favourites to prevail in 2016 – but … the difference now is that when all things are equal in a “normal” election Democrats have a slight but important advantage whereas 30 years ago it was Republicans who enjoyed that minor but significant supremacy. And when the country is evenly divided these small things matter.
And Joyner wonders how long it will take for the GOP to wake up:
The 1980 model Republican Party will not win the White House ever again. Since 1860, when the Whigs fractured and died, our two major parties have managed to survive and even thrive by constantly re-inventing themselves. After a string of defeats, the Democrats rebooted in 1992, nominating a Southern moderate and jettisoning the more unpopular parts of their agenda, at least at the national level. At some point, the GOP will do the same. The only question is how many more elections they’ll lose clinging to a “traditional America” that’s a distant memory.
The Dish 
