Democrats Could Claim a New American Majority. Will They?

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The Alabama special election for the Senate affirms that the coalition that elected and re-elected an African-American as president of the United States remains a majority of the country’s population. By combining a large and inspired turnout of voters of color with the meaningful minority of whites who consistently vote progressive — even in a state like Alabama — Democrats can win across the country.

A majority of people who voted for Doug Jones in Alabama were black — 56 percent, in fact, according to the exit polls. Mr. Jones’s stunning election victory highlights the path to victory for Democrats. The question is whether they will be smart enough to follow it.

African-American voters were a decisive force in the election, showing up in huge numbers and casting nearly all their votes — 96 percent — for Mr. Jones. They made up a larger percentage of the electorate than they represent in the state as a whole (29 percent versus 27 percent). Overperformance by African-Americans — in an election decided by about 21,000 votes — amounted to 38,000 more Democratic votes than would have been cast had African-Americans been just 27 percent of the that side’s total.

The task should be easier in other states, considering Alabama’s history of supporting racial segregation. It’s no accident that Barack Obama received just 15 percent of the white vote in 2012 in that state. The composition of a progressive multiracial coalition — what I call the New American Majority — in the rest of the country, however, is much more promising.

For the record, Mr. Jones and his campaign did not win the black vote based on intention and action. Despite being told repeatedly that his victory would require a huge black voter turnout, the Jones campaign did not spend its money in a fashion that reflected a true appreciation of the voters he needed to win. Of the $9 million spent by late November, nearly $7 million was for television ads aimed at white voters and online fund-raising to continue to pay for those ads.

Mr. Jones was helped by weak Republican turnout. But what made the difference in Alabama were independent, under-the-radar, grass-roots, on-the-ground voter turnout efforts by black leaders and organizers in black neighborhoods across the state. Leaders such as DeJuana Thompson, Latosha Brown and Marvin Randolph organized and conducted programs that mobilized a large number of African-American voters. Organizations such as BlackPAC blanketed the state with canvassers doing the old-fashioned work of picking people up and escorting them to the polls. These groups and leaders are the “hidden figures” of the Alabama election, and in many ways such independent efforts rescued the Jones campaign from its disproportionate focus on white Republican voters.

Given the misdirected spending priorities, Democrats were lucky that many groups in Alabama, especially black organizers (and especially black women), stepped in, picked up the slack and turned out the vote. Looking ahead to 2018, can Democrats progress from being lucky to being smart? Being smart means learning the lessons of Alabama and moving money in ways that will continue to chalk up wins.

The outlook for 2018 is hopeful with the right plans. Yes, Alabama’s outcome was partly because Roy Moore was a poor candidate with excessive baggage. But this formula for victory is more applicable in other states because most white voters outside of Alabama are not as conservative as those inside the state.

By emphasizing turnout in 2018 — especially of voters of color — Democrats can take control of the Senate, the House of Representatives and at least five statehouses. Republicans’ margin in the Senate has now slipped to just a two-seat advantage, and the Senate contests in Arizona, Nevada and Texas are all winnable if there is a robust turnout of voters of color. Texas may be considered as conservative as Alabama, but its actual demographics are much more favorable: Only 53 percent of Texas eligible voters are white (and a quarter of the whites are strong Democrats). Mr. Trump won Texas by 800,000 votes, but there were four million eligible, nonvoting people of color in 2016, three million Latinos alone.

In the 2018 races for governorships, six states could swing from red to blue with the right voter mobilization plan and the proper funding and support. Maryland and Illinois are decisively Democratic, for example, but have Republican governors because Democratic turnout has been abysmal in the off-year elections.

The demographics in other Southern and Southwestern states — Georgia, Florida, New Mexico and Arizona — have brought them within striking distance with a well-funded Sun Belt game plan. The average margin of difference in statewide elections in Georgia, for example, has been 230,000 voters over the past decade, and there are 1.2 million black, Latino and Asian eligible voters who did not vote in the last election.

Ultimately priorities are expressed through budgets, and the allocation of political dollars will show whether Democratic strategists have learned the right lessons from the Alabama upset. Which leaders will spend the millions of dollars to win in 2018? In 2016, every Democratic-aligned organization with a budget over $30 million was run by a white person — in a party where 47 percent of the voters are people of color.

Mr. Jones was quick to thank his white consultant Joe Trippi, to whom he gave $5 million to run television ads, but there was scant mention of people like Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, who organized voter-contact and canvassing efforts that delivered the winning votes.

If Democrats want to win, they will elevate and give broad budgetary authority to strategists and organizers with long histories and deep ties in the country’s communities of color. They sent Doug Jones to the United States Senate, and they can bring Democrats back to prominence and power in states and districts across the country.