There’s already been a lot of analysis of the evolving political trends from 2004 to 2008 (including from me, although still nothing beats that widely-circulated New York Times county-change map) based on preliminary election returns. But with the exception of dreaminonempty‘s remarkable and must-see map diary over at Open Left, no one has really focused much on what longer-term trends look like, especially at the county-by-county level.
One question I was left with after this election was what areas have changed so much that they used to stick with the Democrats (or Republicans) even in their absolute darkest hour, but now favor Republicans (or Democrats). The darkest hour for Democrats was a pretty easy choice (Walter Mondale); for Republicans, I was initially thinking of Barry Goldwater, but his pre-Civil Rights Act map is just too different from today’s map to be useful, so I settled for the GOP’s second biggest recent failure, Bob Dole.
As I suspected, Mondale/McCain counties were clustered mostly in the same Appalachian swath where Obama underperformed the most at the statewide level; much of this transition is very recent, as a number of these counties (especially eastern Kentucky and western Pennsylvania) even went for Kerry. There were also some southern counties that are around 50/50 white/black, where enough white voters used to be yellow-dog Dixiecrats to put even Mondale barely over the edge, but collapses in white rural southern voting for Dems at the presidential level has allowed Republicans to take those counties more recently.
To my surprise, there were actually more Mondale/McCain counties than there were Dole/Obama counties. (In case any righties are trolling this article looking for some scraps of solace, there’s your takeaway: OBAMA UNDERPERFORMS MONDALE!!!) There are 97 Mondale/McCain counties, and only 85 Dole/Obama counties (or independent cities).
However, there’s a key difference. While the Mondale/McCain counties are rural and very small (and generally stagnating or getting smaller), the Dole/Obama counties include many of the nation’s largest population centers. The Mondale/McCain counties have a median 2000 population of 16,000, while the Dole/Obama counties have a median population of 103,000. The sum population of all Mondale/McCain counties? 3,197,000. For all Dole/Obama counties: 25,846,000. There’s pretty much the story of the 2008 election right there.
More specifically, there are only five Mondale/McCain counties with a 2000 census population over 100,000. Four are collar counties around Pittsburgh (Beaver, Fayette, Washington, and Westmoreland). These are counties that used to be manufacturing and coal-based union strongholds, hence the willingness to vote Dem even in the face of all that was Mondale. Unfortunately, these counties all share one common thread: little in-migration, and an elderly population aging in place (all of these counties are 17-18% 65+, a rate unseen pretty much anywhere else other than Florida)… and these counties become both smaller and more conservative each year as former unionists die off. (Bear in mind John Murtha’s comments too, as most of these counties are the core of his district.)
The fifth county is Anoka County in the Minneapolis suburbs, where there may have been something of a favorite son effect in 1984, but this is also an area where exurbanification and the mega-church religious right seems to be edging out traditional rural Lutheran Minnesota values (as seen by this county’s choice of congresscritter: Michelle Bachmann).
By contrast, the four largest Dole/Obama counties all have a population over one million: Harris (Houston) and Dallas in Texas, and San Diego and Riverside in California. These are all counties that are young, fast-growing, and most ominously for the GOP, are on the verge of tipping to Hispanic pluralities in the next decade.
Now maybe that can be shrugged off because California and Texas weren’t in play this year, but in the 800,000-1,000,000 population range are a number of swing counties in swing states that basically swung the election: Orange County, Florida (Orlando), Marion County, Indiana (Indianapolis), Hamilton County, Ohio (Cincinnati), and Fairfax County, Virginia (DC suburbs). And below that, fully 43 of the 85 Dole/Obama counties have populations over 100,000. Even the loss of the Pittsburgh-area collar counties can be more than compensated, population-wise, with the four eastern Pennsylvania counties that went Dole/Obama: Berks, Chester, Dauphin, and Monroe.
Here’s a map of the Mondale/McCain counties (in red) and the Dole/Obama counties (in blue):
Continue over the flip for full lists of the counties…
Mondale/McCain counties
AL: Colbert, Jackson, Lawrence
AZ: Greenlee
GA: Crawford, Greene, Marion, McIntosh, Mitchell, Taylor, Telfair, Webster, Williamson
IL: Franklin
IA: Dallas, Davis, Monroe, Ringgold
KY: Ballard, Breathitt, Floyd, Harlan, Knott, Letcher, Livingston, Lyon, Magoffin, Marshall, Morgan, Muhlenberg, Perry, Pike, Union, Webster
LA: Allen, Pointe Coupee, West Baton Rouge, West Feliciana
MI: Keweenaw
MN: Anoka, Chisago, Jackson, Pennington
MO: Mississippi, Oregon, Reynolds
NC: Tyrrell
OK: Coal, Haskell, Hughes
PA: Armstrong, Beaver, Fayette, Greene, Lawrence, Washington, Westmoreland
SC: Edgefield
TN: Benton, Cannon, DeKalb, Franklin, Grundy, Henry, Hickman, Humphreys, Lake, Lincoln, Overton, Perry, Robertson, Smith, Stewart, Trousdale, Van Buren, Warren, White
TX: Cottle, Dickens, Fisher, Morris, Newton, Orange, Robertson, Stonewall, Swisher
VA: Buchanan, Dickenson, Russell
WV: Brooke, Clay, Fayette, Hancock, Lincoln, Logan, Mingo, Wyoming
Dole/Obama counties
AL: Jefferson
CA: Alpine, Butte, Mono, Nevada, Riverside, San Diego, San Luis Obispo, Trinity
CO: Arapahoe, Jefferson, La Plata, Larimer, Ouray, San Juan
FL: Orange
GA: Douglas, Newton, Rockdale
ID: Teton
IL: Boone, Carroll, DuPage, Kane, Kendall, McHenry, McLean, Sangamon, Stephenson
IN: Marion, Tippecanoe
MD: Charles
MI: Berrien, Clinton, Eaton, Jackson, Kent, Leelanau
MN: Olmsted
MS: Oktibbeha
MT: Lake, Lewis & Clark, Gallatin
NE: Douglas, Lancaster
NV: Carson City, Washoe
NH: Belknap, Carroll
NJ: Somerset
NM: Los Alamos
NC: Forsyth, Pitt, Wake, Watauga, Wilson
ND: Cass, Grand Forks
OH: Hamilton
PA: Berks, Chester, Dauphin, Monroe
SC: Barnwell, Charleston
SD: Brookings
TX: Dallas, Harris
UT: Grand
VA: Albemarle, Chesapeake, Danville, Fairfax, Fairfax city, Harrisonburg, Henrico, Loudoun, Manassas, Manassas Park, Prince William, Staunton, Winchester
WA: Island
WI: Calumet, Waupaca
…only thing I wonder is given that Mondale was such a blowout and thus you’d have fewer counties to choose from whether perhaps Bush-Dukakis might’ve been a better year to compare than 1984?
Though interestingly with Ross Perot in the race Bob Dole in 1996 actually did receive almost the same percentage of the vote (40.7) as Walter Mondale (40.6).
The Texas developments are especially heartening. It is still going to take a few more election cycles, but the trend in Texas is clear — I think it’s going to emerge as a battleground state, and then slowly trend blue. Regardless of how long it takes, the days of Republicans taking it for granted are coming to an end. I just wish it wasn’t so damn expensive, as we need to find and fund good candidates to take a run at statewide offices there.
were Obama winning Butte, Nevada, Riverside, and San Berdanino counties in California. These pretty much never go Democratic on a presidential election, especially during a close. The last Democrat to win them had to take 62% of the nationwide vote to do so. Obama won them with just 53% of the nationalwide vote. Even more of an indicator is that both Gore and Kerry improved over past Democratic performances. If Republicans lose these counties then California becomes irrevocably Democratic and Republicans would probably lose one of their northern California mountain districts. I’m thing Dan Lungren though, base his new district in Democratic trending Butte, Nevada, while throwing in a Democratic portion of Sacremento and absorbing highly liberal Yolo county, (home of the University of California). That would make the district Democratic leaning. Mike Thompson can afford to lose Yolo, his district would still lean Democratic, will still have been trending that way for the better part of three decades, and he is a very etrenched incumbent anyway, and Yolo would probably be replaced with liberal close in San Francisco suburbs.
areas, Obama came close to winning conservative, suburban county Hanover, which normally favors republicans, and backed GW by a 56-44 margin in 2004, on the east coast of NC, and it also has a population of over 100,000. He also did very well in normally Republican Frederick in Maryland. It looks like Prince George’s and Montgomery county are starting to rub off on this populous Republican bastion.
This is the birthplace of the Republican Party. One of the few “attractions” in the county. Of course, it was a different party back then.
I grew up here and not only did the party vote for Obama, but also for Schaurer for US Cong. Amazing amazing results. We used to call Jackson county the buckle of the Bible belt. I’ve long since moved away, but have family nearby still, and to me this is the most surprising result of the entire 08 election.
Obama traded the blue collar west for the white collar east. Obama did worse in western Pennsylvania than just about any Democrat who’s won statewide, ever.
that Anoka county has moved back towards Democrats. Obama only lost 50-48 their, compared to much worse margins in all the other suburbs in the Republican belt that gives Republicans a solid base in state elections. It moved farthest right about 2000-2002, but has since moved back to the left. Democrats picked up Bachman’s State Senate seat in Anoka back in 2006.
I wonder if Bachman becomes the next Marilyn Musgrave, a Republican in a strong Republican district whose popularity keeps getting whittled away every cycle by viscious challenges. At least Terri Bonoff gets a chance in MN-03 now, then we can see who was right. But anyway, I see the similarities in their character and controversial, and now Bachman has not gotten a majority of the vote twice in row, and her margin decreased this time despite being an incumbent. It went from nine, to five. Hopefully it won’t take two more cycles before we beat her. I think she gets the dubious honor this year of being the incumbent elected with the smallest percentage of the vote. That doesn’t bode well for her if Democrats can get that State Senator from Anoka who won her open Senate Seat in 2006, and keep the independence party off of the ballot.
to keep the numbers of counties fairly low. There are hundreds more counties that Dukakis won but Mondale didn’t, that have since fallen into Republican hands. Dukakis, for instance, won almost every county in West Virginia and Iowa, and won many more counties in rural Minnesota than Mondale did. And with the help of Lloyd Bentsen, he made surprisingly strong inroads into rural Texas and Oklahoma, winning maybe a third to a half of the counties in those states too (although losing those states overall handily because of the urban areas).
1988’s a good idea, though; if you click through that link to dreaminonempty’s diary, you’ll see he uses 1988 as his first reference point. 1988 makes a very good bookend with 2004 for measuring change, as it smooths out some of the variables; in both cases you had a charisma-challenged Massachusetts resident against a Bush.
go for Dole to begin with, and how did Obama win Danville?
North California could safely support two Democratic incumbents. There would not be much risk, and all it would do is make CA-03 and and CA-04 even more Republican, while giving Democrats a strong district to run in. I think Charlie Brown would be a great candidate, and I think he lives in either Nevada or Butte.
Having two seats would be protectionist policy, because if you wanted to go Tom DeLay with Sacremento and Yolo you could easily create three swing districts out of CA-03, CA-05, (which is actually Democrat Doris Matsui’s district, not Lungren’s, sorry for that mistake), and CA-02. But that would be stretching out votes very thin.
that in 2002 the Dems got spooked by the Gary Condit thing (remember him?) and felt like they had to protect his district. They still got rid of the last republican in the bay area, but yeah, otherwise it was pretty painless for the GOP. If CA loses a seat this time around, I wouldn’t expect the legislature to be so kind this time. You’ll probably start to see a lot more districts like Jerry McNerney’s (but a little more democratic) that include both coastal and inland california. That will make it really tough for people like Lungren and McKeon to get reelected.
By the way, I loooove this map. Been looking at it all afternoon at work. I remember as a boy tracking all the Mondale counties.
As for Minnesota, I’d like to point that there is an error in one of the four Mondale/McCain red counties. Pennington County in northwestern Minnesota went neither for Mondale nor McCain. Red Lake County, its neighbor to the south, went Mondale in 1984, but Pennington County went for Reagan. In 2008, the initial count erroneously gave McCain an additional 200 votes in one Pennington County precinct. The figure has since been adjusted and, minus those 200 McCain votes, Obama won Pennington County.
You’re assessment is dead-on about Anoka County. It used to be a blue-collar suburban county, but it’s population has more than doubled since 1984 and is now exurban-centric. Old Anoka County (Fridley, Anoka) still votes Democrat as they did in 1984. New Anoka County (Andover, Ham Lake) votes overwhelmingly Republican. I don’t share ArkDem’s enthusiasm about its trendline either. Obama did shrink the GOP margin from four years ago, but nowhere near the state average.
Chisago County to the north of Anoka is the same story. In 1984, it was a rural enclave of proud Swedish descendants with about 20,000 residents. Now it’s an exurban enclave of commuters with about 50,000 residents.
The other Mondale/McCain county in Minnesota is Jackson County in southwestern Minnesota, an Irish Catholic-heavy rural farm county of 11,000 people. It surprised me that Jackson County didn’t go blue this year as the needle moved pretty significantly in Obama’s favor in all the counties surrounding it in both Minnesota and northern Iowa, but the GOP margin of victory in Jackson County shrunk from only six points for Bush to four points for McCain. Appears to simply be a pocket where McCain didn’t bleed much support for whatever reason because the county as a whole still leans narrowly Democrat.
We narrowly missed having another Mondale/McCain county in Minnesota. Obama won Aitkin County, a VERY rural county in Minnesota’s north woods by only 10 votes. While race may have been a small factor stunting Obama’s numbers here, the biggest factor was undoubtedly guns, which are huge in northeastern Minnesota. Check out the county figures from Minnesota’s 8th district from 2004 and 2008 and you’ll notice Obama did not improve upon Kerry’s numbers by much there. I’m pretty sure guns, and specifically the NRA scare-mongering ads all over northern Minnesota radio stations, was the cause. It’s a mystery to me, however, why guns were not just as much of a factor in demographically similar northern Wisconsin, which went almost solidly blue.
Minnesota’s only Dole/Obama county is Olmsted County, home to southern Minnesota’s population center of Rochester. If someone had told me even 10 years ago that Rochester was poised to become a Democratic-leaning county by 2008, I’d have laughed them out of the room. The transformation has been that sudden. I first noticed the county softening in its support for the GOP in 2000, when Bush prevailed by only eight points over Gore and Senator Rod Grams won by a very unimpressive two points over Mark Dayton in Olmsted County. Every election cycle since has shown dramatic improvement for the county.
As for Iowa, Dallas County west of Des Moines is the Iowa equivalent of Anoka County, MN. It’s population center used to be the meatpacking town of Perry. Now it’s population center is Waukee, the fastest-growing town in Iowa which barely existed in 1984.
The other three are rural counties in southern Iowa, where the culture is very southern and where race (and guns) froze Obama’s numbers in place from where Kerry’s were in most places. The common joke in Iowa is that we should hand over our southern two tiers of counties to Missouri….it would raise the average IQ of both states.
Apologies to Missourians for that last potshot….
The only other state I can speak
That’s home to Paducah, by the way, in western Kentucky. It wasn’t a Mondale county, but Reagan won it by less than a half a percentage point in 1984. By contrast, McCain beat Obama by more than 25 points there in 2008. Even Dan Mongiardo couldn’t beat Jim Bunning in McCracken County in the 2004 Senate race. Does anybody know what’s going on in Paducah that has turned it into such a GOP stronghold?
Is it a heavily Native-American county?