I stumbled on this topic when I was thinking of posting in the AL-05 diary that this was one of the districts that had swung the hardest to the right from 2000 to 2004, as measured by Gore % vs. Kerry %. That left me wondering if that was really the case, though, and I did some quick database manipulation. In fact, while Kerry did suffer an embarrassing drop in this district (4.3% lower than Gore, from 43.8% in 2000 to 39.5% in 2004), it was only the 35th worst drop for the Dems. Many of the ones that were worse really surprised me, and since this is a good place for discussing minutiae like this, I thought a diary on the topic might be a good conversation-starter. (PVI, as most of us here know, is the best shorthand for a district’s lean, but it averages out the results from 2000 and 2004 and one weakness it has it that it doesn’t indicate the direction the votes moved between 2000 and 2004.)
Biggest drops:
| Rank |
District |
% change |
PVI |
| 1 |
NY-09 |
11.2% |
D+14 |
| 2 |
TN-06 |
9.5% |
R+4 |
| 3 |
AL-04 |
9.4% |
R+16 |
| 4 |
NY-13 |
7.9% |
D+1 |
| 5 |
CA-47 |
7.7% |
D+5 |
| 6 |
TN-04 |
7.5% |
R+3 |
| 7 |
FL-19 |
6.5% |
D+21 |
| 8 |
TN-07 |
6.5% |
R+12 |
| 9 |
NJ-04 |
6.5% |
R+1 |
| 10 |
TN-01 |
6.1% |
R+14 |
| 11 |
OK-02 |
5.9% |
R+5 |
| 12 |
TX-15 |
5.7% |
R+1 |
| 13 |
CA-43 |
5.6% |
D+13 |
| 14 |
OK-03 |
5.5% |
R+18 |
| 15 |
AL-03 |
5.5% |
R+4 |
| 16 |
OK-04 |
5.2% |
R+13 |
| 17 |
TX-27 |
5.2% |
R+1 |
| 18 |
NY-03 |
5.1% |
D+2 |
| 19 |
FL-20 |
5.1% |
D+18 |
| 20 |
NJ-02 |
5.1% |
D+4 |
I see four different trends at work here… none of which indicate a potentially damaging long-term trends in any of these areas.
1) 9-11 districts, for want of a better word. These are white ethnic districts in the New York metro area (and where retirees from these districts are found, i.e. the Jersey Shore and Broward County, Florida) where the impacts of 9-11 were felt the most, both actually and in terms of perception, and there was a rally-around-the-President effect (whether it was out of fear or jingoism is unclear, but it’s not likely to be as much of a factor next time).
2) Tennessee, where Gore benefited (somewhat) from favorite son status and Kerry necessarily fell off.
3) Predominantly white districts in Oklahoma and Alabama, two states that the Kerry campaign essentially wrote off and where highbrow Yankees are particularly unlikely to play well. Not so much of a problem if we have a presidential candidate running a 50-state strategy this time.
4) Certain heavily Latino districts in Texas’s Rio Grande Valley and southern California suburbs, where apparently Bush’s Latino outreach efforts paid off some dividends. These districts already lean a bit more conservative than the more urban heavily Latino districts, and at any rate, with the 2006 election as an indicator, the GOP’s new tactics on immigration are likely to wipe out these gains and then some.
Biggest gains:
| Rank |
District |
% change |
PVI |
| 1 |
VT-AL |
8.3% |
D+8 |
| 2 |
CA-06 |
8.2% |
D+21 |
| 3 |
MN-05 |
8.2% |
D+21 |
| 4 |
CA-01 |
8.0% |
D+10 |
| 5 |
AK-AL |
7.9% |
R+14 |
| 6 |
CA-08 |
7.5% |
D+36 |
| 7 |
CO-01 |
7.5% |
D+18 |
| 8 |
WA-07 |
7.4% |
D+30 |
| 9 |
GA-13 |
7.4% |
D+12 |
| 10 |
CA-09 |
7.4% |
D+38 |
I decided to stick with only 10 on this table because these aren’t as surprising: strongly Dem, mostly urban districts where there was a strong Nader effect in 2000 and most left-leaning voters returning to Kerry in 2004. The only exceptions are Alaska (again, explained by the lack of Nader) and GA-13, a suburban district where the African-American percentage of the population has shot up tremendously.