The Electoral Map

According to the Democratic Party, New York’s East River is a polluted, dangerous place thanks to John McCain. The GOP nominee is taking a tour of the waterway today and the DNC released a memo and map detailing all of the pollution cleanup, infrastructure improvements and Homeland Security funding for the River that McCain has apparently opposed.

McCain’s East River Tour (Democrats.org)

Some of us think the battle for the White House will reach new and unfamiliar states.  But not Karl Rove. Writing in the Wall Street Journal, he jeers:

The battlegrounds will look familiar. It will be the industrial heartland from Pennsylvania to Wisconsin, minus Indiana (Republican) and Illinois (Democrat); the western edge of the Midwest from Minnesota south to Missouri; Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada in the Rocky Mountains; Florida; and New Hampshire.

Mr. Obama will argue he puts Virginia and North Carolina into play (doubtful), and may make an attempt at winning one or two of Nebraska’s electoral votes (it awards its electoral votes by congressional district). Mr. McCain will say he can put New Jersey and Delaware and part of Maine (it splits its vote like Nebraska) in play. But it’s doubtful he’ll win in Oregon or Washington State, although he believes he can.

And this is coming from the guy who spent $20 million in California against Al Gore.

A McCain presidency means steady military spending which means a sustained flow of money to Northern Virginia’s economy.

Unlike other high-tech areas such as Silicon Valley or North Carolina’s Research Triangle, the seed money for NOVA’s booming Dulles Corridor came from Pentagon outsourcing that began in the Reagan and Clinton years and accelerated with Homeland Security outsourcing in the Bush years. As I wrote in National Journal in August, 2007:

“Major federal contractors like Booz Allen Hamilton, General Dynamics, and SAIC set up their headquarters in Fairfax. They, in turn, subcontracted work to what [Fairfax County Board of Supervisors Chairman Gerry] Connolly calls ‘technology specialty’ firms, which then hired professionals such as lawyers and accountants. A snowball effect ensued. Fairfax welcomed 103,925 new jobs ‘over a 15-year period ending in 2005,’ according to a December 2006 report by Monthly Labor Review. ‘No other county in the Washington area came close.’”

The young professionals at those firms in Tyson’s Corner, Reston and Ashburn are part of Obama’s core constituency. But, the ideology and lifeblood of those firms is rooted in an aggressive foreign policy that is one part of the Bush legacy that McCain would be sure to continue.

Don’t get me wrong – This doesn’t mean McCain would win Fairfax County four years after Bush became the first Republican candidate to loose it in 40 years. What it means, however, is that NOVA will not be the kind of slam dunk for Democrats that it’s been in recent statewide elections.

In Mecklenberg County, N.C., which is home to Charlotte, Barack Obama cruised to victory with 70%. But if you look at the map below of where Hillary Clinton did well, it looks like she ran much better in the outskirts of the web.

Clinton in Mecklenberg County, N.C. (Charlotte Observer)

The results out of South Bend tell it all: Barack Obama’s success in urban counties and with young voters cut into Hillary Clinton’s success in blue collar, working-class areas.

St. Joseph’s County, which is where South Bend and North Dame are located, was such an interesting county to watch because it has strong traditions of both ethic, working-class Catholics, who have been favoring Clinton, and young, more liberal college students, who have been choosing Obama.  Obama ended up winning this crucial battleground with 53%, which explains in part why he was able to hold Clinton to only 51% statewide.

Elsewhere in Indian, Clinton showed dominance in the southern parts on the state, racking up huge margins along the Ohio River Valley, just like she had done in the Buckeye State.  Obama ran very strong in Indianapolis and  Lake County, which borders on Chicago.

Indiana Electoral Map (New York Times)

Barack Obama ran up huge margins in the fast-growing counties around the Research Triangle, in the big cities like Charlotte (Mecklenberg County), in the medium-sized cities like Winston-Salem and in the heavily black counties bordering Virginia.  Hillary Clinton, for her part, continued to show her strength in Appalachia, winning every county west of Charlotte besides the outdoorsy outposts of Buncombe and Watauga Counties.

I’ve thought all along that North Carolina is a state tailor-made for an Obama win: It has hoards of young, independent voters in the fast-growing parts of the state, a large student and bohemian population and a large black electorate.  But his 14 point win on Tuesday was more impressive than even I would have expected.

Here’s Nick Beaudrot of Cogitamusblog.com’s fine map of the Tarheel State:

North Carolina Electoral Map

The richest, most highly-education and most African American areas of Allegheny County, Pa. (Pittsburgh) preferred Barack Obama in the Pennsylvania primary while outlying, more Republican areas choose Hillary Clinton.  Thanks to maps produced by Jay O’Callaghan, the moderator of the Yahoo! group ElectionWatcher2008, we can compare the Pittsburgh electoral map to vital demographic groups in the city.

Allegheny County, Pa. Electoral Map

African-Americans in Allegheny County, Pa.

Income in Allegheny County, Pa.

Education in Allegheny County, Pa.

Cillizza has an interesting post about an Obama campaign memo using an electoral map to argue in favor of his electability. There’s nothing odd about using maps in campaign memos — the McCain camp and the Giuliani camp both leaned on maps to push narratives of electability.

What is strange is the map itself.

The Obama camp identified three tiers: “Big States,” “Traditional Battlegrounds” and “New States.” The “Big States” are pretty standard, but I have some questions about the “Traditional Battlegrounds” and the “New States.”

• North Dakota and Montana? Really? There’s a potentially potent mix of fierce independents and civic-minded voters of Northern European descent that might like Obama’s post-partisan appeals, but these states are pretty red in presidential elections.
• Texas? It’s clear that the Obama camp relied too heavily on that bizarre series of Survey USA 50 state polls about a month back. They should know better.
• The mid-Atlantic: Is North Carolina more competitive than Virginia? I would say North Carolina is trending in the same ways that Virginia did in the last decade if anything.
• Washington State: Is the Obama camp just assuming this is a lay-up?
• And last but certainly not least: Where are Ohio and Florida? These two states are Clinton’s best arguments for electability. Does the Obama camp have a coherent strategy on these two behemoths?

Obama’s Strange Electoral Map — Dark blue is the “Big States,” royal blue is the “Traditional Battlegrounds,” and light blue is the “New States”

Indiana has always been known to be Hoosier red.  But Indiana politics guru Brian Howey explains that “There appears to be two kinds of Republicans” in 2008:

“The ‘Obamacans’ as the Illinois senator likes to call them - earnest Republicans deeply disappointed in their own party’s performance on the budget, economy, social issues and the Iraq War - and the Rush Limbaugh Republicans who are planning to crossover to vote for Sen. Clinton because they perceive her to be the weakest rival to U.S. Sen. John McCain in the November election.”

Republican pollster David Winston had a insightful column in Roll Call on Tuesday about the prospects of John McCain putting California into play, but he also had these interesting comments about New Jersey:

“McCain may have been at odds with a part of the GOP base on immigration and other issues. But as it turns out, he may be perfectly positioned to take advantage of Obama’s Hispanic problem, not just in California, but in blue states like New Jersey as well.

“In 2004, Hispanic voters made up 10 percent of the New Jersey electorate. Kerry won the state with 53 percent, close enough to make New Jersey a target state for Republicans in 2008.

“Clinton’s 38-point margin over Obama with Hispanic voters in the New Jersey primary, coupled with McCain’s moderate conservatism, could be a potent prescription for a tight race in November with even small movement in key groups like Hispanics or working-class swing voters.”

So could McCain win the Garden State? I’ve argued that he could pull together a winning combination of ethnic Catholics and Volvo Republicans.

But a new Monmouth University/Gannett poll out today has me thinking twice. According to the survey, Barack Obama would defeat McCain by a whoppin’ 24 points and Hillary Clinton would best him by 14 points.

If McCain wins New Jersey, it’ll just be the icing on the cake of his Pennsylvania victory.

Washington Wire reporter Amy Chozick notes that Clinton has boasted about roots in Scranton, South Texas, the Big Apple, Little Rock, the Golden State and the Midwest. “Even Clinton’s accent occasionally subtly changes from a Southern drawl to a Midwestern twang during some stump speeches.”

Next thing we know she’ll be claiming to be a Cubs fan and a Yankees fan. Oh, wait…

Beer swigers prefer Clinton and wine sippers like Obama, right?

Not so simple, according to Poblano’s map at FiveThirtyEight.com. It turns out “Obama leads Clinton 13-10 in wine states, and 12-7 in beer states.”

Wine States Versus Beer States

The McCain camp has divided the electoral map into 11 regions and assigned a campaign director to each one.

John Peschong’s region has the most electoral votes but Jon Seaton’s will probably be the most pivotal.  One glaring question is why the McCain team would split the three key states in the Upper Mississippi River Valley — Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin — into three separate regions?

What do you think?  Who has the easiest and most difficult region to win for McCain?

McCain Campaign’s 11 Regions

Soren Dayton posted a fascinating analysis at Red State last week detailing the ward-by-ward electoral map of Philadelphia and concluding that Barack Obama ’s poor performance in ethic Catholic neighborhoods might signal a “realignment that puts the Northeast and the Rust Belt back in play” (If you haven’t seen it yet, it’s a must-read and has great maps to reinforce his argument).

I emailed Soren after he posted it and mentioned that while Obama has certainly been struggling with ethic Catholics, he’s excelled with mainline, Midwestern Protestants and has won key states in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. Obama’s weakness with ethics in Rust Belt states could be offset by his strength with the civic-minded Lutherans (and to a lesser extend Methodists) or Northern European descent in the Upper Midwest.

Soren emailed back his response, noting that there really is no data to back up the point that mainline Protestants are supporting Obama, and in any event, mainline Protestants who are Democrats are a pretty liberal bunch. Think Jim McGovern, he suggested. Soren also addressed Rust Belt ethics, noting that “The urban Catholic thing is probably different enough from the Jacksonian/Scots-Irish thing,” and that this voting bloc still has functioning machines in many Eastern industrial cities.

I agree with Soren on ethic Catholics, but I’m still not sure if it would offset Obama’s appeal in the Upper Midwest. Here’s my response to Soren:

I don’t have specific data to prove my point, but I think you’re underestimating Obama’s strength with the type of voters in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. He won the overwhelmingly white caucus states of Iowa and Minnesota (and working class whites in Wisconsin) because voters in these state hail from a Northern European heritage that values effective government over ideology. And they’re attracted to Obama’s abstract post-partisan messages of good-government and “hope” and are willing to overlook his liberalism.

Cultural issues like abortion might work with Southern Baptists and Rust Belt Catholics, but the Dutch Calvinists and German Lutherans of the Upper Midwest have a different agenda. They think in terms of efficiently rather than ideology, as evidenced by the fact that Iowa has always had the best schools and highest graduation rates, Minnesota has always had the highest voter participation rate and well-funded public radio and Wisconsin has the only publicly-owned pro sports franchise.

The Rust Belt Catholics that you mentioned, on the other hand, are certainly a vulnerable point for Obama. He’s been losing ethic Catholics as a dangerous rate, and Tom Schaller has noted that “In every presidential election since 1972 the winner of the Catholic vote has won the national popular vote, something no other religious group – Jews, evangelicals, Protestants – can boast.” Bush took 52 percent of Catholics in 2004 and Democrats won 55 percent of the demographic group in 2006.

Assuming he’s the nominee, Obama’s best chance to offset McCain’s targeting of ethic Catholics in the Rust Belt and industrial East Coast cities would be to target what I call Volvo Republicans. These “Obamacans,” as the candidate has called them, are prevalent in the Philadelphia and Northern Virginia suburbs. They’re the kind of Matthew Dowd-type of Republicans who have said they’d feel queasy attacking Obama (But that was before the Wright controversy, and I wonder if that episode may have had a lasting effect).

If McCain can secure those suburban, Volvo Republicans and win a strong proportion of ethic, conservative Catholics in cities Philadelphia, he has a good chance of winning Pennsylvania and even putting New Jersey and other Northeastern states into play. But he’s going to have a tougher time countering Obama’s appeal with mainline Protestants in the Upper Midwest, especially if the GOP decides to focus on hot-button cultural issues.

… And gives McCain a lot of credit for picking up on early warnings.  Broder writes, “McCain for one seems to have grasped that warning. Over the past week, as he toured the South from Selma to Little Rock, he clearly was signaling a shift from the traditional GOP way of courting Dixie voters.”

Hillary Clinton’s sweep of Pennsylvania hill country was the latest indication that she is much more popular in Appalachia than her rival Barack Obama. Hillary has been has been posting big wins in congressional districts like Virginia’s Ninth and Ohio’s Sixth and racking up huge margins in Appalachian counties from the Tennessee River to the Susquehanna.

I’ve noted before that Clinton is dominating hill country, and J-Mart has written about her Scots-Irish advantage and Michael Barone has discussed her appeal to Jacksonians.

To test these theories, I identified the congressional districts I consider to be in Appalachia, and then mapped out the electoral results.  From south to north, I included Alabama’s 5th; Georgia’s 9th; South Carolina’s 4th; Tennessee’s 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th; North Carolina’s 5th, 10th and 11th; Kentucky’s 5th; Virginia’s 6th and 9th; West Virginia’s 1st, 2nd and 3rd; Maryland’s 6th; Ohio’s 6th; and Pennsylvania’s 4th, 5th, 9th, 12th, 14th and 18th.

North Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky have yet to vote, but if the electoral maps of the rest of Appalachia are any indication, Hillary can expect huge wins in the Appalachian pockets of these states.

Electoral Map of Appalachia — In this map, Clinton is red and Obama is blue.  The darker the shade, the higher the margin of victory.

Electoral Map of Appalachia (Race42008.com) — Obama is green and Clinton is blue.

More maps up later today, but here’s a preliminary one.

Just as I predicted, Barack Obama won Rendell’s base and Hillary Clinton swept Casey Country.  Except Clinton did much better in the burbs and exurbs surrounding Philly than Casey did.  I’ll let Chuck Todd explain:

“Obama looked to be a lock to win the Philly ‘burbs; the only question was by how much. But he didn’t win them. Overall, Obama carried just seven of the state’s 67 counties. In his successful gubernatorial primary win over Bob Casey in 2002, Ed Rendell carried 10 counties — and the big difference between Rendell’s path and Obama’s was that Rendell carried Montgomery and Bucks counties, while Obama lost MontCo narrowly and got clobbered in Bucks.”

2002 Democratic Primary for Governor

Pennsylvania Electoral Maps (Philadelphia Inquirer)

PoliticalMaps.org has a stellar roundup of Pennsylvania maps.

In Pennsylvania’s 2002 Democratic primary for governor, Ed Rendell beat Bob Casey 56-44% but took only 10 of the commonwealth’s 67 counties.  He did it by racking up huge margins in Philadelphia and its burbs, the exurbs around the Lehigh Valley and in Centre County, which is home to Penn State.

In 2008, Rendell is supporting Hillary Clinton and Casey is backing Barack Obama, but we can expect a reverse outcome of the 2002 contest.  Obama is likely to do well in and around Rendell’s base of Philly and Clinton will likely sweep Casey Country.  The only difference is that Clinton will likely do better than Casey in the Philly exurbs and Lehigh Valley, cutting into Obama’s margins there and giving her the clear win statewide.

In the map below, Casey is green and Rendell is purple.  The deepest color means the candidate won by over 25 percent; the middle color reflects a win of 5-25 percent; and the palest color is a win of less than 5 percent.

Pennsylvania 2002 Democratic Primary for Governor

Registration is way up for Democrats, which should benefit Barack Obama, according to Politico’s Jeanne Cummings. The Politico also has a halfway decent map showing where registration is up, although the maps could be much better if A.) they were color-coded to show where registering is up, and B.) were able to be embedded into blogs such as this one.

Brookings also has a must-read about demographics in the Keystone State, with such interesting nuggets as “While often classed as a so-called ‘Rust Belt’ state, its eastern and south central regions are increasingly becoming part of the nation’s Northeast Corridor.”

Meanwhile, National Journal’s Gregg Sangillo predicts where Obama will struggle, placing a heavy qualifier on race:

“The large rural swath in the center of the commonwealth—famously dubbed ‘Alabama’ by Democratic strategist James Carville—is home to culturally conservative white voters. In addition, the state has the highest per capita membership in the National Rifle Association in the country, according to the gun group. This region could prove especially difficult for Obama to win, according to experts.

“It’s not just the center of the state that could prove resistant to Obama’s skin tone. In Scranton and surrounding northeast locales Hillary Clinton is hugely popular.”

Poblano at FiveThirtyEight.com suggests the best thing Obama can get from these folks is a non-vote:

“If Obama is to stay within a few points of Clinton on Tuesday, what he’ll need is for a lot of those unlikely/undecided voters in the central portion of the state to decide they’re fed up with the whole thing and not vote. So, Obama should probably be rooting for low turnout overall. For Obama to actually win on Tuesday — not just stay close — he will probably also need high turnout in Philadelphia, and maybe among a couple of other select groups like newly-registered voters (who favor Obama 3:2 according to Franklin & Marshall) and students.”

Real Clear Politics’ John McIntyre weighs the outcomes, declaring that if Obama wins the “race is effectively over,” but if Clinton wins by more 14 points, she “will be on a path to claim a popular vote win that will give her every bit as much of an argument as the legitimate ‘winner’. In this scenario anything could ultimately happen.”

Check back tomorrow morning for my predictions of how each candidate will do in each county. In the meantime, here’s a screen shot of the Politico‘s voter registration map: