Republicans Still The "Small Tent" Party

For many years now it has been a political pearl of wisdom that the Republican Party is mainly composed of Whites while the Democratic Party is more inclusive and contains a mix of races and ethnicities (a "big tent" party). In recent years the Republicans have claimed they are reaching out to other groups. In an attempt to convince Americans of this, they even elected a token African-American as the head of the Republican National Committee (although his power has been limited and many in the party are not happy with him).

But despite their claimed efforts at widening party membership (which has been more talk than action), it looks like the Republican Party has not changed much. It is still the party of White. The Gallup organization recently released information about the make-up of the two major parties. The information was compiled as a result of polls taken between January 2nd and August 15th of 2010, and surveyed a total of 222,743 people (with a margin of error of only 1%).

Here is the racial make-up of both parties (and those who identify themselves as Independents):

REPUBLICANS

Whites...............88%

Hispanics...............5%

Blacks...............2%

Other races...............4%

Race unspecified...............1%

DEMOCRATS

Whites...............62%

Hispanics...............11%

Blacks...............21%

Other races...............5%

Race unspecified...............0%

INDEPENDENTS

Whites...............71%

Hispanics...............15%

Blacks...............6%

Other races...............7%

Race unspecified...............1%

It looks like the Republicans still have a long way to go before they can become an inclusive "big tent" party. And that's not going to happen until they stop trying to use race to scare Whites into sticking with them -- and their teabagger element has certainly not helped them in that regard this year. Unless they can rein in the teabagger racial tendencies pretty soon, they may even become whiter than the current 88% (which is not good in a country where Whites will be the minority in less than fifty years).