Is Republican Voter Suppression Destroying the GOP?

The long-term result of Republican voter suppression will be a GOP that is uncompetitive in modern American elections. Obviously, suppressing or trying to suppress nonwhite votes; as critics accuse Kobach; and Kemp Georgia’s former secretary of state, of doing is not a sustainable strategy.

Republicans will be noncompetitive because they will only appeal to whites when a majority of the voters are nonwhite. Markedly, this is already happening in nonwhite majority states like California and Texas.

For instance, Democrat Gavin Newsom won the California governor’s race by 14.2 points. For the record, Newsom won 57.1% of the vote while Republican John Cox received 42.9% of the vote.

One reason why Cox did so poorly is that California Republicans are incapable of appealing to nonwhite voters. The California GOP has no appeal for nonwhite voters because its base is lily white.

For example, 86% of Republican voters are still white the Pew Research Center estimates. Thus, to win a Republican primary a candidate must appeal only to the white vote.

Republican voter suppression will not help the GOP in the long term for two reasons. First, voter suppression only works when elections are close such as in Georgia and Florida. When the number of nonwhite vote exceeds whites by 10% or 20% voter suppression will no longer work.