The Big Impact of Small Voting Shifts

Some detailed demographic analysis of where Democrats lost and where Republican gained.

Democrats won only among Americans earning under $30,000. That's an economic formula for political failure.

The 30- to 44-year-old voters who experienced the roller-coaster economy of the past decade are starting to break to the GOP. Four years ago, according to Greenberg, this group divided evenly between the parties. In this past election, it favored the Republicans by 52% to 44%. A big reason: They don't see any positive economic vision from the Democratic Party.

Democratic turnout was down 1.3 percentage points this year, while Republican turnout edged up 0.5 points. While that may sound small, it accounts for more than half of the election's entire partisan shift.

At first glance, the 49% to 49% tie in the suburbs sounds like good news for Democrats, who have historically been at a disadvantage beyond the urban core. But the bad news for the Dems is that white suburban voters favored Republicans by 54% to 44%.

Married women favored the Republicans, 54% to 42%, while their husbands opted for the GOP by 57% to 38%. At the same time, there was no change in the huge gender chasm among single voters: Unmarried women favored the Democrats by 38 points, while single men leaned Republican by 11. The result: The Democratic losses among married women played a significant role in numerous defeats.

Political strategists will be poring over these numbers.