What really happened in 2002?

Steve Sailer has analyzed the 2002 election in demographic terms. The results are extremely interesting, and perhaps surprising, but surprising only to those who have not been following Sailer’s ongoing bout with the conventional wisdom. He has ungraciously headed his piece “Sailer 1, stupid party strategists 0.”
According to Sailer’s analysis of 2002 ethnic voting patterns, “The GOP’s fraction of the black vote declined, from eleven to nine percent. Asians continued to move to the left, with the Republican share falling from 40 percent to 34 percent. Conventional Republican commentators like Barone assumed that Asians, being prosperous and law-abiding — the ‘new Jews,’ as he thinks of them — would automatically assimilate into the GOP. Unfortunately for Republicans, they are now voting like the ‘old Jews!'” Ouch!
FOOTNOTE: Sailer’s analysis here is primarily descriptive rather than prescriptive. I do not necessarily agree with any particular plan of action that Sailer may draw from the analysis. I offer Sailer’s analysis because I subscribe to the maxim originally propounded in another context by the prominent Republican from whom I always strive to take my bearings: “If we could first know where we are, and whither we are tending, we could better judge what to do, and how to do it.”
UPDATE: Readers Dafydd ab Hugh and Casey Abell impute a racist or racialist motive to Sailer’s analysis. Ab Hugh writes: “In discussing Steve Sailer’s frankly — and disturbingly — racialist rant on the 2002 elections, you mentioned that the GOP’s share of ‘Asians’ (whatever that includes) and blacks, you left out one datum…one that even Sailer dismisses as irrelevant: that the GOP’s share of Hispanic votes went up, not down.
“So let me get this straight: it’s enormously significant that the black vote went down two points (from 11% to 9%), but it’s meaningless that the larger Hispanic vote went up THREE points, from 35% to 38%, because ‘the Hispanic vote always fluctuates in parallel with the white vote.’ Yeah.
“You didn’t mention Sailer’s biggest point: that the GOP should start ignoring people who aren’t white. You sort of cover it with a disclaimer… but I think if you had mentioned Sailer’s ‘white is right’ orientation, we might have had some more context for why he makes the predictions he does.”
Casey Abell adds: “One thing omitted from the comment was Sailer’s unremitting opposition to removing Saddam from power. Sailer hangs out at VDare with wildly anti-Israeli columnists like Sam Francis and Paul Craig Roberts, so it’s not surprising that he wanted the mass murderer to keep his palaces. But I do not understand why you would link to such a site, without at least a disclaimer.”

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