Tag: Republicans

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

A few maps of Ohio’s presidential elections are posted below, for your enjoyment. Each map comes with some brief analysis.



(Note: Because the Times stopped updating before all absentee/provisional ballots were counted, this map does not fully reflect the actual results. I have corrected the discrepancy.)

Senator Barack Obama wins Ohio by 4.6%, a solid but unimpressive victory. Mr. Obama performs poorly in traditional Democratic areas – the northeast and even Cleveland – but offsets this with unique strength in Columbus and Cincinnati. Senator McCain runs strongly in the Republican base.

More below.

President George W. Bush wins Ohio by a close but decisive margin. Senator John Kerry does extremely well – winning Columbus and Cleveland by what his campaign wants – but Mr. Bush’s exurban strength famously overwhelms this strength. Nevertheless, Ohio votes more Democratic than the nation, the first time since 1972.

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Vice President Al Gore gives up Ohio before election-day; Governor George W. Bush wins the state by 3.5%. Perhaps, campaign strategists later muse, they should not have abandoned the state.

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Incumbent Bill Clinton cruises to a comfortable victory – the best Democratic performance since LBJ (and before that, FDR). The former Arkansas governor runs strong in the industrial northeast and the Appalachian southwest, while severely undercutting Senator Bob Dole’s margins in Republican territory. It’s a classic Democratic victory.

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It’s an exact replica of the 1996 map – except this time the Democratic strongholds are a bit less blue, the Republican strongholds a bit more red, and Ross Perot is running strong. Governor Clinton wins by a mere 1.8%.

It’s been a bit since the Massachusetts election, in which unknown Republican Scott Brown emerged to upset the favored Democrat Martha Coakley in one of union’s deepest-blue states. Since then, Democrats have been recalibrating their strategy.

In a previous post, I outlined the results of how a tied election might look like. Let’s take a look at the prediction:

Now let’s see the actual results:

More below.

A clear pattern emerges: counties that the model forecast Ms. Coakley to win turned out more Democratic than expected, while counties that the model forecast Mr. Brown to win turned out more Republican than expected. The model, in predicting results, relied – incorrectly – on a uniform Republican shift from previous elections which Democrats won. The actual deviations indicate that Massachusetts shifted in a polarized manner: Democratic strongholds shifted Republican to a lesser extent than the state at large, independent areas shifted far more.

Here is a table of the results:

A number of outlets – especially us folks at swingstateproject – have gone even further, taking a look at the results by town. Here is the NYT:

The red areas constitute suburban Massachusetts, home to many of the white working-class Catholics that supported for Senator Hillary Clinton. These areas usually almost always vote Democratic, but they do so based off economic appeals rather than any innate liberalism (much like how West Virginia used to vote).

Republicans generally win Massachusetts by taking away suburban Massachusetts. Mr. Brown’s coalition replicated previous Republican victories:

Interestingly, President Barack Obama did relatively poorly in these suburbs – his performance was the worst since President Bill Clinton’s first run in ’92. He still won them, of course (Massachusetts, lest people forget, is a Democratic stronghold), but by less than previous Democratic candidates. In fact, Mr. Obama underperformed throughout the Northeast, which is something few people know.

The areas Ms. Coakley won generally constitute the “liberal Massachusetts” Republicans love to insult. They are college towns and generally well-off, liberal places.

On the other hand, a number of  towns do not fit these stereotypes. Minorities in Boston, for instance, are responsible for it being a Democratic stronghold (unfortunately for Ms. Coakley, they did not turn out). Much of the rural west, which supported Ms. Coakley by a wide margin, is very white and not that wealthy.

If there is any good news from this election for Massachusetts Democrats, it is that they now have this information. The data provided by Mr. Brown’s surprise victory should prove useful for redistricting, future campaigns, and even predicting the future of Massachusetts politics. Hopefully they will not be caught off guard a second time.

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

This is the second part of two posts analyzing the Texas panhandle, a rock-hard Republican stronghold. It will focus upon two quite unique counties. The first part can be found here.

Strange Counties

Two counties are labeled in the above map: Cottle County and King County. This is the case because the two are the sites of several unique and quite inexplicable voting patterns. One example: although the counties are located beside each other, their two patterns can be characterized as polar opposites.

More below.

Demographically, however, Cottle and King could not be more similar. Both are extremely thinly populated (King County contains less than 500 hundred residents) and fairly poor. These places literally define the saying “in the middle of nowhere.” In 2008, both Cottle and King were similarly favorable to Republicans: Cottle gave Senator John McCain 72.20% of the vote, while King – well, I’ll get to King in a moment.

Things weren’t always this way, however. For a long, long time Cottle County constituted a bastion of Democratic strength in the middle of nowhere. This was all the more remarkable given its deep-red neighbors compared to the sheer stubborn determination of one Cottle County to vote Democratic. In election after election, as Democrat after Democrat was broken in Texas (and sometimes the nation as well), this little county reliably ended up in the blue county. Most remarkably, the county voted (by a margin numbering less than one percent) for Senator George McGovern, a Democratic candidate so weak that not a single county voted Democratic in 20 states that year. Mr. McGovern was adept at losting Democratic strongholds, many in far more liberal territory than the Texas panhandle – and yet Cottle County still went blue in 1972. In fact, when Cottle County voted for Governor George W. Bush in 2000, this constituted its first time ever voting Republican.

If Cottle County epitomized Democratic strength, King County represents the pillar of modern-day Republicanism. In 2008, it constituted the single most Republican county in the nation; 92.64% cast the ballot for Senator John McCain, 4.91% for President Barack Obama. CNN even ran story about King County’s love affair with Republicans, which mainly seems based upon evangelical faith and traditional small-town conservatism.

In and of itself this is not so strange; the puzzling part comes when one looks to the 2008 Democratic primary. A total of 27 people named one Barack Obama as their choice – yet on November 4th only 8 did so. This means that at least 19 people were motivated enough to endorse Mr. Obama in March and then changed their minds or sat out the election. More cynically, one might read this as a calculated endorsement designed to wreak havoc upon the opposing party – but then why vote for Mr. Obama, when supporting Senator Hillary Clinton would prolong Democratic suffering?

The Panhandle and the Future of Texas Politics

Today, the voters in the Texas panhandle are quite hostile to liberalism in general. They may have supported Democrats in the past, but they will most likely not do so in the forseeable future (and if the Demcoratic Party changes enough to naturally appeal to small-town conservatives in the Texas panhandle, it probably ought to change its name to “Republican.”)

The Texas panhandle may be interesting for analysis, but the future of both parties does not lie there. In total, only two percent of the state’s population resides in the panhandle. Rather, the heart of Texas lies about the great metropolitan areas surrounding its cities – Dallas, Fort Worth, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. There Democrats are rising, but Republicans still are dominant – the opposite situation from half-a-century ago.

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

This is the first part of two posts examining the Texas panhandle, a rock-hard Republican stronghold. The second part can be found here.



In the Texas panhandle and the empty plains surrounding it, Democrats go to die. There is no place in the country more Republican than this rural region, where conservatism is ingrained bone-deep and from birth. Not even the most Mormon stretches of Utah, or whitest areas of the Deep South, exceed the Republicanism of this part of Texas.

Yet, in the vast emptiness of the Texas prairie there are a number of interesting patterns – some of which are quite strange to behold.

More below.

Yellow-dog Democrats

Believe it or not, much of the most Republican place in the nation used to be Democratic territory, voting for the blue candidate even when the rest of America did not. Now, of course, the same could be said for the entire American South, which routinely gave badly losing Democratic presidential candidates over 70% (and often 90%) of the vote. Texas was no exception to this rule; President Truman lost a grand total of eight counties during the 1948 election, for instance.

The difference with the Texas panhandle, however, was that parts of it continued to vote Democratic even as the Solid South collapsed. In 1956, for instance, President Dwight Eisenhower won re-election by a solid 15.40% and cracked the South. One such crack included Texas, which Mr. Eisenhower won by 11.28%. Mr. Eisenhower carried the state backed mainly by its Republican-leaning cities (an oxymoron nowadays), while much of rural Texas voted for Democrat Adlai Stevenson. This included almost the entire panhandle:



This Democratic-leaning trend continued for some time, even after the 1964 realignment of the South. The panhandle cast a strong ballot for Senator Hubert Humphrey and President Jimmy Carter (both times), while a number of counties voted to Governor Dukakis and even hapless Senator Walter Mondale. As late as 1996, when President Bill Clinton lost Texas by 4.93%, there still remained a flicker of yellow-dog Democratic strength:



It was one President George W. Bush who finally crushed this Democratic tradition; since his time, the panhandle has begun voting uniformly Republican. But for all its current love of Republicans, it must be noted that this phenomenon is relatively recent – although long in coming.

Republican Congressional $ Numbers

CD 1 – No Repub Filed

CD 2 – No Reports Filed Yet



CD 3 – No Reports Filed yet

CD 4 –

1 – Gardner for Congress

Raised 197,553.40 – Spent 86,386.37 – COH – 383,338.56

2 – Dean Madere – No Report Filed yet

3 – Diggs Brown – No Report Filed yet

4 – Tom Lucero – No Report Filed yet

CD 5 – Lamborn for Congress

Raised 49,079.60 – Spent 28,863.85 – COH – 110,531.82

CD 6 – Coffman for Congress

Raised 105,770.00 – Spent 40,731.31 – COH – 360,917.27

CD 7 –

1. Ryan Frazier for Colorado

Raised 218,824.00 – Spent 60,345.98 – COH – 280,355.38

2. Lang Sias – No report filed yet

Democratic Congressional $ Numbers

I am tossing them up

CD 1 – Diana Degette for Congress

Raised 98,421.38 – Spent 94,687.97 – COH 84,553.27

CD 2 – Friends of Jared Polis

Raised 72,771.88 – Spent 29,516.12 – COH 120,250.31

CD 3 – John Salazar for Congress

Raised 187,160.00 – Spent 61,000.41 – COH 847,099.45

CD 4 – Not Filed yet

CD 5 – No Dem running yet

CD 6 – Flerlage for Congress

Raised 19,329.00 – Spent 13,490.62 – COH 23,556.44

CD 7 – Perlmutter for Congress

Raised 215,201.30 – Spent 82,473.39 – COH 1,045,319.11

This is the first part of a series of posts analyzing the swing state Virginia. The second part can be found here.

During the ’08 campaign, the political beltway famously defined Virginia as a Republican stronghold gone Democratic. For ten straight presidential elections, the state had reliably turned up in the Republican column. President Barack Obama, however, promised to change that – and he did.

More below.

Virginia indeed is becoming bluer – but not as much as one might think. The state moved Republican sooner than the rest of the South, but never became as deep red as places like Alabama. The actual trend from ’04 to ’08 is less prominent than one might think:

I think this in fact slightly understates Republican strength. Mr. Obama, after all, fit extremely well with Virginia’s Democratic base – blacks and rich NoVa residents. He might have overperformed. In many ways, Virginia still constitutes a purple state, perhaps even a red-leaning one. Democrats must run competent candidates and/or do this in favorable national environments; if both conditions are missing, they may get pummeled ala Creigh Deeds.

This may change in the future. As its wealthy, diverse, and Democratic-leaning NoVa suburbs continue growing; Virginia may soon become more Democratic than even Pennsylvania. This trend was much noted in 2008.

What is less noted is the degree to which the media has overstated this change. These demographic shifts are the work of decades, not one election; they occur very gradually. Moreover, even as bluing NoVa expands, Virginia’s western regions continue to redden – especially the once Democratic-leaning panhandle. This blunts the NoVa effect. Virginia may be turning Democratic, but Democrats should not underestimate continued Republican strength.

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

This is the second part of two posts analyzing Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial election. The previous part can be found here.

When Democrats nominated State Senator Creigh Deeds, they nominated a rural, moderate Democrat designed to win the small towns and rural regions of western Virginia. In an ideal situation, Mr. Deeds would have carved out a coalition similar to former Governor Mark Warner’s.

In 2001, Mr. Warner won a 5.13% victory over Attorney General Mark Earley, based largely upon rural support in western Virginia.

Mr. Warner is famous among Democrats for this achievement (remember, this was just two months after 9/11). He went on to become a successful and very popular governor; in 2008, Mr. Warner ran for Senate and won double his opponent’s vote. Since Mr. Warner, no other Democratic candidate has ever built a coalition similar to his.

More below.

Below is Virginia’s political lean during the 2001 gubernatorial election:

These maps indicate the results of a hypothetically tied election, which is useful to determine the political lean of each county (i.e. whether a certain place voted more Democratic or Republican than the state as a whole). For example, last year Indiana voted for President Barack Obama – but relative to the country as a whole, it leaned Republican.

For comparison, here is the correlating map for Creigh Deeds (if Mr. Deeds had tied Mr. McDonnell), which I mapped in my last post:

As the maps indicate, Creigh Deeds failed miserably at recreating the rural Warner coalition. Despite being a rural candidate, Mr. Deeds did far worse in rural western Virginia.

Instead, Mr. Deeds appears to have done best in urban Virginia: Northern Virginia, Richmond, and the Norfolk-Virginia Beach metropolitan area. Rather than repeating Mark Warner’s coalition, the performance of Creigh Deeds appears far closer to that of President Barack Obama’s:

Mr. Obama won through a urban-suburban alliance, compared to the urban-rural alliance of Mr. Warner.

Here is Mr. Obama’s performance without the lean:

To be fair, I would prefer the Obama coalition to the Warner coalition: suburban strength is more lasting than votes built upon dying small towns.

Nevertheless, it is discomfiting to note the extent to which a candidate like Creigh Deeds – a rural, moderate Democrat who distanced himself from Mr. Obama – replicated the president’s performance. For better or for worse, it seems, Democratic candidates will from now on be attached hip-to-hip with Mr. Obama.

(Note: All statistics are derived from http://www.uselectionatlas.org/ ).

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Results are soon pending in the special election to replace Senator Ted Kennedy. Once a guaranteed Democratic victory, the race has become surprisingly competitive due to a bad national environment and a lackluster campaign run by Democrat Martha Coakley. In fact, several polls have put Republican Scott Brown in the lead, striking panic amongst the Democratic establishment.

Interpreting incomplete results can be difficult if one is not familiar with how different areas in a state vote. Senator John McCain, for instance, led the vote in Virginia during much of election night; this was because deep-red rural Virginia reported first. After Democratic strongholds in Northern Virginia began posting, Barack Obama quickly pulled away (he ultimately won by 6.30%). Because Massachusetts is rarely competitive outside of gubernatorial elections, geographic unfamiliarity probably extends to even most politically active folk.

I have therefore created a map indicating what a tied election would probably look like:

More below.

Interpreting incomplete results can be difficult if one is not familiar with how different areas in a state vote. Senator John McCain, for instance, led the vote in Virginia during much of election night; this was because deep-red rural Virginia reported first. After Democratic strongholds in Northern Virginia began posting, Barack Obama quickly pulled away (he ultimately won by 6.30%). Because Massachusetts is rarely competitive outside of gubernatorial elections, geographic unfamiliarity probably extends to even most politically active folk.

This map takes data from all statewide elections since 2004, derives the electoral lean of each county, and then averages these results to produce the picture. Here is the data by county:

Ironically, Republicans do better in the most populous counties – the opposite case for the nation in general. Republicans are strongest in the state’s suburbs; Scott Brown will need to win all of them to take the state (on the other hand, these wins need not be exceptionally large). On the other hand, Democrats do best in the city Boston and the more rural western reaches of the state.

Thus on election day when the results start coming in, take a look at the above table and compare it to the actual performances each candidate is posting. Whichever candidate is generally outperforming the table will likely win the election. Finally, look at who is winning Hampden and Bristol counties – the two places that vote closest to the state as a whole. If Martha Coakley is winning them, expect a Democratic victory. If Scott Brown is, then a Republican shocker is in the works. If the two are split, it will a nail-biter that goes deep into the night. There have been not many of those lately.

Whatever the case, tomorrow Tuesday ought be an exciting day for politics buffs. There are not many races where the result has been so uncertain – where practically anything can happen and it would not be surprising for the polls to be completely off. It will be quite interesting to watch.

This is the first part of two posts analyzing Virginia’s 2009 gubernatorial election. The second part can be found here.

A normal observer might see the above map and naturally conclude that the Democratic candidate lost a landslide election. This is not always the case. In the 1968 presidential election, for instance, the state of New York looked like this:

Although it does not look like it, Democratic candidate Hubert Humphrey won the state: 49.76% to 44.30%.

In November 2009, however, State Senator Creigh Deeds did in fact receive a thorough pummeling from Attorney General Bob McDonnell. An unappealing candidate running in a tough national climate, Mr. Deeds lost the race 41.25% to 58.61%.

More below.

Creigh Deeds only won two types of counties: his home district and Democratic strongholds. The former include the two blue counties along the state’s eastern border. The latter are populated by two Democratic constituencies: firstly, blacks in Virginia’s 3rd congressional district and secondly, wealthy suburbanites south of Washington (Virginia’s 8th congressional district).

Surprisingly (and disturbingly) Mr. Deeds lost Fairfax County, the key to recent Democratic success in Virginia. Rich, diverse, and heavily populated – Northern Virginia suburban voters were largely responsible for Democratic victories by Governor Tim Kaine, Senator Jim Webb and President Barack Obama.

Mr. McDonnell’s victory in Fairfax indicates one of two things. Either the Democratic Party has not entrenched itself in NoVa – or it is moving back to the Republicans. The latter possibility is highly worrisome and not simply confined to Virginia.

There is little more that the above map indicates – one cannot tell much from a map that just shows red counties. Differentiating the mass of red reveals more:

This image maps the results based on degree of support. It shows a substantial east-west divide hidden in the first map. Western Virginia voted Republican with far more intensity; eastern Virginia tended to be more moderate in its support of Mr. McDonnell.

Notice how intensely Republican the western panhandle is voting. These voters – poor, white, rural Appalachian folk – used to vote Democratic based on economic appeals. This trend subsisted even in fairly recent times: John Kerry won a couple counties; Senator Jim Webb took three. Former president Bill Clinton did even better (he lost the state by 1.96%):

Creigh Deeds, a moderate politician representing an Appalachian district, was supposed to appeal to the rural voters populating western Virginia; as the map makes evident, he failed to do so (outside his home districts). I suspect Barack Obama  may have something to do with this; his poor performance amongst Appalachian voters may be affecting Democratic candidates everywhere. Given the many Democratic politicians elected from Appalachia, this – if true – would definitely be a bad thing for Democrats.

Finally, it is possible to map the results if Mr. Deeds had tied Mr. McDonnell:

This indicates the relative Democratic or Republican lean of each county – a county may vote Republican but still lean Democratic compared to the overall result, and vice versa. Massachusetts, for example, voted Republican in Ronald Reagan’s 1984 landslide – but nobody would accuse it of being a Republican state. It went red, but relative to the rest of the nation was more Democratic.

The next section will compare this map with similar images derived from previous Democratic coalitions.

(Note: All statistics are derived from http://www.uselectionatlas.org/).

–Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

By: Inoljt, http://mypolitikal.com/

Several days after the 2008 presidential election, the New York Times produced a famous map of voting shifts since 2004.  Most politics buffs have seen this map; according to it, Appalachia “voted more Republican, while the rest of the nation shifted more Democratic.”



There is something else occurring here, however, which the map hides – and which almost nobody has perceived. This trend goes strongly, strongly against conventional wisdom.

To unearth this trend, let’s move back one election – to former Vice President Al Gore’s 2000 tie with former President George W. Bush. Before going below the fold, I invite you to guess – which states did Mr. Gore do better than President Barack Obama?

Here are the states he performed best relative to President Barack Obama. In all these, Mr. Gore did at least five percent better than Mr. Obama.

By and large, these states are what one would expect. All are located in the midst of Appalachia or the Deep South, regions rapidly trending Republican. All were fairly unenthused by Obama’s themes sounding change and hope.

Here are the remaining states in which Gore improved upon Obama:

This result is something quite different. Arizona – Senator John McCain’s home state – is not surprising, nor is Appalachian Kentucky.

Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey, on the other hand – these constitute core Democratic strongholds. The vast majority of pundits would characterize them as becoming more Democratic, if anything at all. Indeed, there has been much ballyhoo about the Northeast’s Democratic shift – how Republicanism is dead in the region, how every single New England congressman is a Democrat, how Obama lost only a single county in New England.

That Al Gore performed more strongly than Barack Obama in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey runs strongly against this hypothesis. Remember, too, that Obama won the popular vote by 7.3% while Gore did so by only 0.5%. If the two had ran evenly, this trend would have been far more pronounced. The state in which Obama improved least upon Gore, for instance, was not Alaska or Mississippi – but New York, where Gore did only 1.88% worse than Obama. The map below indicates this:

Much of the movement derives from the Republican candidates in 2000 and 2008. George Bush was a terrible fit for northeastern voters, with his lack of intellectual depth and cowboy persona. John McCain, on the other hand, was a man many northeasterners admired – he had a strong brand of independence and moderation, which the campaign tarnished but did not destroy. McCain was a person New England Republicans could feel comfortable voting for – and they did. (Fortunately for Democrats, there are not too many Republicans left in the Northeast.)

All in all, the Northeast’s relative movement right constitutes a very surprising trend. Few people would anticipate that Al Gore did better than Barack Obama in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and New Jersey. It defies conventional wisdom and the common red-blue state dynamic, which holds that the northeast is permanently Democratic. Finally, given increasing political polarization, this relative trend the other way probably is a good thing for the country.