CNN harps on an old theme (as reported at TheBlaze):

CNN Article: Republican Voters are ‘White, Aging and Dying Off,’ And the Party Could, Too

Ho–hum.

The GOP has been written off before — notably in the 1930s and 1940s, the early 1960s, and 1990s. But the strangest things keeps happening: New voters don’t always live down to the left’s expectations; new voters become older voters; and, most surprisingly, a lot of voters are not to be pigeon-holed as easily as leftists would like them to be.

Here is a picture of how GOP presidential candidates have fared since the Civil War: not a steady decline, but oscillation around a mean (approximately 50 percent of the two-party popular vote):

Recent history is perhaps more relevant. Here is an interesting piece of recent history that must cause the left some discomfort:

(I have included my current estimate of the pro-GOP vote in 2012. The blue shading indicates elections held during the terms of Democrat presidents.)

I do not mean to say that current trends are entirely favorable to the GOP. The following table compares the “Redness” (and “Blueness”) of States in recent presidential elections (1996-2008) with their Redness in earlier elections (1972-1988). (I go back only to 1972 because that is when the Southern States became solidly Republican, following the Wallace interlude of 1968).

The bad news (for the GOP) is that the Blue States (in 1996-2008) which are trending Red (IA, MN, OR, PA, WI) have 53 electoral votes (EVs), whereas the Red States that are trending Blue (AZ, CO, FL, NV, VA) have 68 EVs. Further, the States that have become significantly Redder (AL, AK, ID, IN, KS, KY, MN, MO, MT, NE, ND, OK, SD, TN, TX, UT, WI, WY) control 150 EVs; the States that have become significantly Bluer (CA, CT, HI, IL, ME, MD, MS, MI, NV, NH, NJ, NY, RI, VT, WA) control 199 EVs. (Here, the trend for a State is considered significant when the State’s average index of Redness for 1996-2008 varies from its average for 1972-1988 by more than one standard deviation of the State’s Redness index for the entire period, 1972-2008.)

The good news is that the Red States (in 1996-2008) have 281 EVs, as against 257 for the Blue States. If the GOP is “doomed,” it a long way from dead. It has been closer to death in the past than it is today, and yet it is now alive and well.

Only a fool says that anything (other than death and taxes) is inevitable. The death of the GOP is not among life’s inevitabilities.

Related posts:
What Happened to the Permanent Democrat Majority?
More about the Permanent Democrat Majority