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:
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.”
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.
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:
Strange Maps has a great chart about where the news breaks, and it’s no surprise that the highest concentration is inside the Beltway and the Big Apple.
TNR’sJosh Patashnik observes, “It’s certainly not all that big a surprise that New York and DC dominate coverage, but the scale of their domination is pretty impressive–more stories are datelined in DC than in the entire state of California. And look how puny states like Texas, Illinois, and Ohio appear compared to smaller eastern states like Massachusetts and Connecticut.”
Glenn Reynoldsseems underwhelmed, scoffing, “This map suggests that it has a lot to do with where reporters are already hanging out.”
Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza is releasing a new presidential electoral map line each Friday. Here is his latest list on Cillizza’s The Fix b.og, along with The Electoral Map’s own analysis. What do you think?
10. Florida (Bush, 52 percent)
The Fix: “Polling suggests that if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) is the nominee, then the state is a toss up; if Sen. Barack Obama (Ill.) is the Democratic standard-bearer — as is more likely — then presumptive GOP nominee John McCain holds a double-digit lead in current polling.”
The Electoral Map: Florida is as red as the Georgia Bulldog’s jerseys.
9. New Hampshire (Kerry, 50 percent)
The Fix: “There’s little doubt that McCain is extremely popular in the Granite State — especially with the independent voters who comprise the most crucial voting bloc. But New Hampshire is also one of the hotbeds of anti-war sentiment in the country.”
The Electoral Map: Expect McCain to make a strong push for New Hampshire. He’ll make it his home base on Northeastern swings through the moderate states of Maine, Connecticut and New Jersey.
8. Michigan (Kerry, 51 percent)
The Fix: “John Kerry won the state by just over 150,000 votes (out of more than 4.6 million cast) in 2004, and the ongoing question of whether and how Democrats will seat the Michigan delegation provides ammunition for Republicans to argue that the other party is trying to silence the voters of the state.”
The Electoral Map: Didn’t Patrick Ruffini say McCain will win the Gerald Ford Republicans? Well, Ford was from Grand Rapids.
7. Minnesota (Kerry, 51 percent)
“The Fix still believes Pawlenty is the frontrunner to serve as McCain’s runningmate, a scenario that if it comes to pass will make the Republican ticket quite competitive in Minnesota.”
The Electoral Map: I love how Republicans are making a play for the Gopher State by hosting their convention there, but Minnesota’s DNA is as liberal as Paul Wellstone.
6. Colorado (Bush, 52 percent)
The Fix: “The November election will be a seminal vote in determining the future direction of Colorado politics.”
The Electoral Map: Obama wins Colorado by wooing independents. Clinton looses to McCain.
5. Ohio (Bush, 51 percent)
The Fix: “A recent Quinnipiac University poll showed… Clinton leading McCain 48 percent to 39 percent while Obama took 43 percent to 42 percent for McCain — a potential problem for Democrats if Obama winds up as the nominee.”
The Electoral Map: Ohio is Clinton’s best argument. Her win in Strickland’s old sixth district along the Ohio River Valley was impressive.
4. Virginia (Bush, 54 percent)
The Fix: “The fact that three Virginia Democrats — Sen. Jim Webb, Gov. Tim Kaine and former governor Mark Warner — are all mentioned as potential vice presidential picks and you quickly see why Virginia is moving up The Line.”
The Electoral Map: The biggest misconception is that Virginia is now a tossup. First of all, it’s still a Republican state, even if it has chosen Democrats in the last two gubernatorial elections and watched a Republican Senate incumbent self-destruct. McCain will win with strong support in the Navy-heavy Hampton Roads and with moderate Republicans in Fairfax County, Loudoun County and Richmond.
3. New Mexico (Bush, 50 percent)
The Fix: “McCain gives Republicans a fighting chance in the state due to his neighbor appeal, but the state has been trending Democratic of late and either Clinton or Obama will be favored in the fall.”
The Electoral Map: Never been to New Mexico, but if it has a rivalry with Arizona in the same way that Virginia does with Maryland then John McCain might be in trouble.
2. Nevada (Bush, 50 percent)
The Fix: “As of last month, there were 441,676 active Democrats compared with 396,489 active registered Republicans.”
The Electoral Map: This state is growing so quickly, I haven’t come across one analyst who has a good read on it.
1. Iowa (Bush, 50 percent)
The Fix: “After a series of difficult reelection races in past cycles, Sen. Tom Harkin (D) faces no serious opposition from Republicans this fall — meaning he will almost certainly win a fifth term. Harkin’s race symbolizes Democrats’ ascendancy of late in the state — a trend line that should help whoever is the party’s presidential nominee.”
The Electoral Map: Iowa Democrats should be bullish after their 2006 drubbing.
Where’s Wisconsin??? Republicans have a better chance of winning the Badger State than Dems do of taking the Sunshine State.
This is my column from Politicotoday. What do you think — is New York’s pain Florida’s gain?
The era of the Empire State’s reign over America has come to an end, and a new dawn of political power, in the hands of the Sunshine State, is upon us. After the 2010 Census, New York will lose two congressional seats and Florida will gain two. It will put both states’ delegations at 27 seats and mark the first time that Florida has caught up with once-mighty New York.
It’s a remarkable milestone, considering that a couple of generations ago Florida was a swampy backwater and New York loomed large as America’s dominant state. In the 1930s, for example, Florida sent only five representatives to the House, while the Empire State commanded 45 seats and New Yorker Franklin D. Roosevelt controlled the White House. Since that decade, however, New York has lost —and Florida has gained — seats in seven straight congressional reapportionments.
At the height of New York’s political power, baseball, boxing and horse racing were the major sports in America. Today, boxing and horse racing are relics of another era, and baseball has survived only by reinventing itself as “America’s pastime.” Fittingly, the halls of fame of these three sports are located in Upstate New York. Today’s blockbusters, such as the Daytona 500 and the Super Bowl — which will take place in Tampa and Miami in the next two years — are held in Florida.
The Sunshine State has also welcomed five pro sports expansion teams in the past 15 years, evidence that it is flush with boomtowns from Fort Lauderdale to Fort Myers to the Interstate 4 corridor. New York, on the other hand, had the second-slowest population growth in 2007. “Upstate New York is in terrible shape,” Cooper Union professor Fred Siegel said. “It’s the only part of the Rust Belt that never recovered.” Even New York City could be losing 20,000 high-paying finance jobs in the next two years, according to Reuters.
Fewer jobs and people mean diminishing political and electoral clout. While New York was the anchor for Roosevelt’s presidential run, Florida swung the 2000 presidential election and will only become more pivotal when it has 29 Electoral College votes in the 2012 election. Presidential candidates will have to pay attention to issues that are important to the state, such as Social Security, prescription drug access, offshore drilling and national catastrophic funding.
“If the Florida delegation stays reasonably unified,” St. Petersburg Times correspondent Adam Smith suggested, “Florida could be critical in shaping national policies.” Florida will also have a stronger voice in shaping major economic issues such as labor and trade. “We’re generally a free trade state,” Smith said, adding, “factories aren’t getting closed down and jobs shipped overseas.”
Meanwhile, in Upstate New York, the GE plant in Schenectady employs one-tenth of the people that it did a generation ago, Kodak and Xerox are faltering in Rochester, and Carrier, the namesake of Syracuse’s dome, shuttered its air conditioning plant in 2004. In the same vein, Florida is a right-to-work state, while New York is not. “There will be a slide away from unionism as political clout shifts to the Sun Belt,” predicted Real Clear Politics associate editor Reid Wilson. Florida’s ascent could accelerate this process.
At the very least, the priorities of Congress will shift as it welcomes more representatives from towns such as Orlando, which National Geographic writer T.D. Allman has characterized as the “megachurching, franchising, exurbing, McMansioning of America.” Smith predicts that a location on the fast-growing I-4 corridor — perhaps “northern Tampa, Pasco County or Flagler County” north of Orlando — will get at least one more seat.
Meanwhile, New York will likely lose two districts Upstate — one Democratic and one Republican — if the GOP keeps its two-vote majority in the state Senate, meaning two fewer representatives with rural or industrial interests. If Democrats take the state Senate, they’ll likely cut one Upstate Republican district and redraw one of the two GOP seats in the New York metro area, resulting in one fewer voice for urban interests.
The Empire State is also losing the ability to bolster its economy through earmarks. “New York’s share of the loot has been dropping markedly,” Siegel said. “The loss of two more congressional seats will only add to that decline.” The best thing New York has going for it on this front is the presence of a political force such as Hillary Rodham Clinton, but even her future is uncertain, thanks in part to the disputed primary in Florida.
New York can boast about a high concentration of influential media and financial services. Demographer Joel Kotkin said the state has “held onto its image of pre-eminence” and that it “doesn’t seem to be aware” of its diminished national clout. But lately Florida has had a way of besting New York.
Former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani saw his presidential aspirations buried in the Florida primary. And even the New York Yankees, winners of 26 World Series championships, including seven during the Roosevelt years, have fallen on hard times: Their latest World Series appearance resulted in a loss to — who else? — the Florida Marlins.
New polls in New Jersey and Connecticut show John McCain tied with or leading both of his Democratic rivals in those two states. A new Rassmussen Reports survey of Garden State voters released today has McCain edging Barack Obama 43-42% and beating Hillary Clinton 45-42%. A Quinnipiac University poll of Connecticut voters released March 27 found Clinton sneaking by McCain 45-42%, and Obama trumping McCain 52-35%.
I’ve suggested before that McCain is going to make an early run at the blue Coasts. New Jersey trended toward George Bush between 2000 and 2004, and the prez increased his margins by 5.8% in Bergen County and 6.6% in Middlesex County. Connecticut is more Democratic but also is tougher to peg, having elected two independents statewide in recent years, including Lowell Weicker and Joe Lieberman, a McCain surrogate.
Google Maps has the town-by-town New Hampshire map.
In the Democratic race, Barack Obama won the majority of towns but Hillary Clinton racked up big margins where it counts. John Edwards won one town — Stark — where he posted 49 votes to Clinton’s 42. On the GOP side, John McCain won nearly every town except a dozen or so on the Massachusetts border that Mitt Romney took. Mike Huckabee won Dummer with 19 votes and Benton with 22, and Ron Paul’s sole victory was in Richmond.
Google Maps has saved me hours of Photoshopping work tonight by producing these great maps.
On one hand, I’m happy the Google folks are paying enough attention to the Caucuses to produce these great maps. On the other hand, I’d like to see how each candidate did in each county. Where did Huck and Obama run up the vote? Which pockets of the state voted for, say, McCain or Richardson?
These Google Maps are nice, but they’re also as blunt as the old red-blue U.S. map. Stop by The Electoral Map again in a couple hours for relative strength maps.
In the meantime, I posted the screen shots of the results below and the link to the Google Maps here.
Iowa Caucuses Democratic Electoral Map — Obama is blue; Edwards is red; and Clinton is yellow.
Iowa Caucuses Republican Electoral Map — Huckabee is blue and Romney is red.
As a side note, check back with The Electoral Map tonight for full Iowa Electoral Map results (including Republicans statewide, Democrats statewide, Huckabee by county, Romney by country, Obama by county, Clinton by county and Edwards by county)!
It’s easy to divide North America into red and blue, or Jesusland and the United States of Canada as one popular map described it in 2004.It’s also easy to cast the New Continent as a melting pot or as one big purple state of mixed identities.But both of those descriptions are false.
The truth is that North America is a quilt of different political backgrounds and heritages.Some of these are strong and storied. Others are emerging or evaporating.
The Northeastern part of the Untied States is blue country, but libertarian farmers in the Northeast Kingdom of Vermont have little in common with the bluebloods of Newport, R.I., who have little in common with Puerto Ricans in the Bronx.
Likewise, hog farmers in North Carolina share little with Mormons in Utah except for the fact that most of them both vote Republican.
Many of these American groups – or “tribes” as Doug Sosnik, Ron Fournier and Matthew Dowdcall them – are tight knit in of themselves, so it’s inaccurate to call our land a melting pot.But it also wouldn’t make sense to throw them into a red or blue vat.
Many demographers have attempted to identify all of the different groups or cast their boundaries.This is an impossible task and is bound for failure for two reasons. First, at some point you get into the business of microtargeting; and second, someone will always disagree with you.
The latest pollster/demographer to take a stab is Mark Penn, whose book “Microtrends” has been sitting on my desk waiting for me for a couple of months.
But a different book, Joel Garreau’s “The Nine Nations of North America” has already survived the test of time.First published in 1981, it outlined a model for the nine socioeconomic regions of the continent.
The map speaks for itself, but I’ll just make a couple of comments about its strengths and weakness and also offer a side note.
Strengths – Quebec and Dixie are indeed very unique regions. Secession is part of their DNA’s.
Weaknesses – “The Foundry” is very clumsy.
Side Note – Dixie correlates with SEC Country and the Breadbasket with the Big 12, while the Foundary is roughly Big Ten territory (if it were shifted a bit west).
Garreau’s “Nine Nations”:
I asked Joel Kotkin, the master demographer, what he thought of Garreau’s model and he emailed this response: “Garreau got the MexAmerica vs. Ecotopia right on the money. The divides are racial, cultural, climactic. Quebec is a no-brainer.”
Agreed.I also asked Kotkin what he thought about another map, one that the fine people at Strange Maps published last week.It was created by Matthew White and outlined what the continent would look like if it was “Balkanized.”
White outlines areas that:
“1. administered themselves as autonomous nations at some point in American history, or
2. shed blood to achieve or maintain their independence, or at least
3. threatened to.”
White’s “Balkanized North America”:
White has historical references for each of these would-be states on his Web site.
Kotkin noted that the map is very flawed, which I agree with.He also pointed out that the United States had “total control” of the West Coast and High Plains.
It’s also important to note that many of these territories never had the teeth to secede, such as Louisiana, Vermont or Florida. But that’s nitpicking. The strengths of this map are that many of these regions continue to carry a strong self-identity today, including Dixie, Texas (which was actually a C.S.A. state), Deseret and Vermont.
Editor’s note: I omitted the “Ten Regions of American Politics” because it’s just a model of the United States and not the continent.
Arkansas is often a forgotten state.Its six electoral votes are the fewest of any state in the South and it’s the smallest state west of the Mississippi River.“Arkansas is the land left over when Louisiana and Missouri were carved out of the Louisiana Purchase and what is now Oklahoma was fenced off as Indian Territory,” according the Almanac of American Politics.
But in 2008, Arkansas News columnist John Brummett thinks it could be the epicenter of American politics.
Brummett wrote in a column on Tuesday that he recently spoke with DLC Founder Al From, who predicts Arkansas’ former first lady is the likely Dem nominee and says there’s a good chance that the GOP ticket will include Mike Huckabee.
Would this make Arkansas a Tier I battleground state?And who would win this battle of the Arkansas heavyweights?
Arkansas has been red in the last two presidential elections, but a lot of people don’t realize how blue it is internally.Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe has a veto-proof Democratic legislature (a supermajority), and three out its four its members of Congress and both of its senators are Dems.
To be sure, the state has been drifting rightwards in recent elections, caused in part by changing demographics.Wal-Mart, based in the Bentonville in the northwestern pocket of the state, has attracted a new breed of voters.
The Washington Post wrote in 2005 that Bentonville is pulling in “professionals from amenity-rich cities like New York, San Francisco, Atlanta and Miami, who bring not only their six-figure salaries, but an appetite for Jaguars, sushi, pet day-care centers, Gucci shoes and Chanel sunglasses.”
Still, it’s generally a state of rural Democrats.Brummett told me in an email that Al Gore lost Arkansas because his “environmentalism frightened farmers.”He added that Democrats who win “make a connection through a blend of economic populism, cultural conservatism and inoffensiveness to the farm and business communities.”
Bill Clinton made that connection. Can Hillary?
The polling indicates that she would have a head start. A University of Arkansas survey taken October 7-18 found that a generic Dem candidate leads a generic GOPer 49-31%.It also found that 35% named Hillary Clinton in an open-ended question of whom they support. Huckabee took just 8%.
So I asked Brummett who would win a Hillary v. Huckabee election, both in Arkansas and nationwide?He emailed back this prediction:
“Hillary – here and nationwide.In Arkansas, because of Bill, because of damage to Republicans from Bush and because of Huckabee’s lack of a substantial base in the state. Even the state Republicans don’t like him.
“Nationally, because it’s a Democratic year, because of the war, because of certain economic factors and because she can’t be freshly smeared with negative attacks as Kerry was and Dukakis [was] long before — since people have heard plenty of bad stuff already, and are kind of inured to it in her case.”
At the very least, Brummett’s saying that Arkansas will be competitive.
But there’s also a question of whether the candidates pay attention to Arkansas. Are its six electoral votes really important enough to spend significant time and money?Brummett thinks so, noting that Al Gore lost the 2000 election by only five electoral votes. He added, “Arkansas’ six electoral votes were as decisive as Florida.”
To the maps: The first is John Kerry v. George Bush in 2004, in which Bush won 54-45%. The second map is the 2006 race of governor, in which Democrat Mike Beebe defeated Republican Asa Hutchinson 55-41%.
It’s that time of year again. Ninety-five percent of Congress puts in for earmarks, Ted Stevens and John Murtha request something absurd and John McCain gets a guy to dress up like a pig at the anti-pork press conference. It’s a time honored Washington tradition.
This year, most of the news has to do with what the presidential candidates are requesting. You may have heard about Hillary Clinton’s Woodstock earmark or seen The Hill article”Clinton tops 2008 rivals, gets $530M in earmarks.”
So in honor of one of Washington’s oldest traditions, today’s map comes from the Sunlight Foundation, which has charted all defense earmarks. I originally wanted to post two maps, one of New York State and one of Murtha’s district, but for some reason the Sunlight Foundation site is down. In the meantime, here’s an expanded version compliments of Google Earth Blog.
While we’re talking about pet projects, I’m also posting a telling map about the Farm Bill. If you’re interested in rural policy, the outdoors and politics like I am, then the recent TIME article “Down on the Farm” is a must-read. I’m not knocking the practice of bringing home the bacon, but U.S. agricultural is two shades shy of retarded.
There are plenty of problems with it, including the fact that almost all of the subsidies go to five traditional crops — wheat, corn, soybeans, cotton and rice — and that 60 percent of farmers do not receive subsidies. But one of the strangest aspects is who does receive them: “Millionaire ‘farmers’ like David Letterman, David Rockefeller and the owners of the Utah Jazz,” according to TIME. I personally know a family that collects subsidies for growing hay at their second home, a restored plantation in Brandy Station, Va.
Check out all of the “farmers” who are collecting subsidies in Manhattan. It comes from Agriculture Secretary Mike Johanns via The Corner’s Yuval Levin, who writes:
“The red dots indicate people who live in Manhattan (and so clearly are neither hurting for money nor tilling the soil on the family farm) but receive agricultural subsidies from the federal government. The larger red blobs mark people receiving more than a quarter of a million dollars in farm subsidies annually.”
Tonight we’ll have reports on the latest efforts to reform the Electoral College as well as bold predictions from the experts about what the electoral map will look like one year from today.
