The 2012 presidential election is a few days away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania:
New reports indicate that the 2012 presidential campaign is coming to Pennsylvania. After a spate of advertising during the summer, Pennsylvania — in a break from tradition — has largely avoided the volume of campaign commercials that states like Ohio and Virginia have seen.
But beginning Tuesday, Restore Our Future, a “super-PAC” supporting Mitt Romney, will blanket Pennsylvania with about $2 million worth of advertisements. President Obama’s advisers greeted that news on Monday by saying that the Obama campaign would also spend advertising money in the Keystone State between now and Election Day.
Pennsylvania has been a swing state in presidential elections since the 1950s. In the last 60 years, the candidate who carried the state has also won the national popular vote in every election but two. Over that time, Republicans have carried Pennsylvania in six elections, and Democrats have carried it in nine.
But while Pennsylvania has swung between the two parties, its relative partisan bent has remained remarkably consistent: slightly Democratic.
In fact, Pennsylvania is the only state in the nation that has been unfailingly Democratic-leaning relative to the national popular vote in every presidential election since 1950. With the exceptions of the landslide elections in 1964 and 1984, however, Pennsylvania’s leftward lean has been fairly narrow, between one and five percentage points. The fact that Pennsylvania is just slightly left-leaning and worth 20 electoral votes, tied for the fifth largest haul with Illinois, makes the state an attractive target for Republicans. Pennsylvania is not necessary for Mitt Romney to reach 270 electoral votes, but it would provide him with more flexibility,allowing him to lose two of the three smallest battleground states — New Hampshire, Nevada and Iowa — if he carried North Carolina, Florida and Virginia.
In addition, Pennsylvania has a lot of white, working-class voters who have never been especially enamored with President Obama (Hillary Clinton bested him by 10 percentage points in Pennsylvania’s 2008 Democratic primary). Pennsylvania is also relatively old, with the fourth largest share of residents 65 years and older. The Republicans took the state’s governor’s mansion and a United States Senate seat in 2010.
But Pennsylvania may be fool’s gold for the Romney campaign. The state is relatively inelastic; it has few true swing voters, and turnout tends to be the final deciding factor. In other words, the state’s Democratic-lean isn’t severe, but it is hard to reverse. Yes, Republicans have carried the state six times in the last 15 presidential contests. But in each of those wins the Republican won nationally by at least seven percentage points, a margin that is unlikely this year no matter who wins.
It has also become slightly harder for Republican presidential candidates to put together a winning map in Pennsylvania. The last time a Republican carried the state was in 1988, when President George H. W. Bush defeated Michael Dukakis. Mr. Bush carried the Philadelphia suburbs — Bucks, Chester, Delaware and Montgomery Counties — which have often been the pivotal swing vote.
“The Republicans won elections here in the 1980s because they were winning the Philadelphia suburbs,” Mr. Madonna said.
In contrast, the last time Pennsylvania was carried by a candidate who failed to win the national popular vote was in 2004. President George W. Bush won re-election by 2.5 percentage points but lost the Keystone State by 2.5 percentage points. Mr. Bush lost the all-important Philadelphia suburbs.
Those suburbs have become less-hospitable to Republican presidential candidates. Bucks and Chester Counties are still competitive, but Delaware and Montgomery Counties are reliably left-leaning in presidential elections.
Much of the eastern wing of the state has become more Democratic-leaning, but this has been counterbalanced somewhat by a trend toward the Republicans in western Pennsylvania.
In 1992, the campaign strategist for Bill Clinton, James Carville, described Pennsylvania as Philadelphia in the east, Pittsburgh in the west and Alabama between the two cities (that’s not the exact quote, but it conveys the sentiment).
There was an element of truth to Mr. Carville’s assessment at the time; the state was bookended by two urban pockets and the rest of Pennsylvania was more rural. But in the 20 years since Mr. Carville made the statement, the state’s political landscape has shifted considerably.
Now, a better breakdown of the state is between east and west. Most of central Pennsylvania is still rural, but the eastern third of the state has become Democratic-leaning and culturally and politically Northeastern. Western Pennsylvania has a more Midwest feel and has trended toward the Republican Party.
The regional difference is evident in the state’s two biggest cities. Philadelphia is heavily African-American and overwhelmingly Democratic. Pittsburgh is less diverse, more blue-collar and less overwhelmingly Democratic. The Republican candidate for governor, Tom Corbett, carried Pittsburgh’s Allegheny County in 2010.
The difference is also apparent in the suburbs and smaller cities. The Northeast corridor — stretching from Philadelphia’s suburbs in the south up through the Lehigh Valley and into Scranton’s Lackawanna County — has become more left-leaning over the past two decades. Part of the shift toward the Democratic Party, particularly in the Philadelphia suburbs, has been driven by women, as the Republican Party became increasingly associated with social issues like opposition to abortion and same-sex marriage. The realignment occurred throughout the Northeast and New England.
The northern part of the Northeast Corridor, in Lehigh Valley and Scranton, is more blue-collar and less left-leaning than the Philadelphia suburbs. But white college graduates and minorities — groups that skew Democratic — have increased as a share of eligible voters in the Philadelphia suburbs, the Lehigh Valley and the Harrisburg-York-Lancaster region in south-central Pennsylvania.
The south-central region, specifically York and Lancaster Counties, is the beginning of Republican territory. There’s a large Amish vote in Lancaster County, and the region tends to be more socially conservative, Mr. Meredith said.
Western Pennsylvania is culturally Midwestern, more socially conservative, and has moved towardthe Republican Party. Politically, it looks like Ohio, with a solidly but not overwhelmingly Democratic city, Pittsburgh, surrounded by heavily Republican suburbs in Westmoreland and Butler Counties.
Over all, the state’s leftward lean has increased just barely because as parts of the Philadelphia suburbs moved left, the old mining and mill towns in southwestern Pennsylvania moved right. The southwest corner of the state was historically Reagan Democrat territory, Mr. Madonna said, and has become more Republican-leaning in recent years.
The Bellwether: Bucks County
Bucks County is very likely to provide an early clue as to how Pennsylvania will vote. It has been an almost perfect bellwether, just one percentage point more Democratic-leaning than the state in 2008 and exactly matching the statewide vote in 2004 and 2000.
Southern Bucks County, around Levittown and Bensalem, is solidly Democratic. To the northwest, Bucks County becomes more politically competitive in suburban communities like Yardley (where this intrepid FiveThirtyEight writer happened to grow up) and Newtown. Northern Bucks County, around Quakertown, is more Republican-leaning.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 94 percent favorite in Pennsylvania, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. The state is hard to move independent of a shift in the national political environment and is unlikely to vote Republican in an election that is so close nationally.
The new Restore Our Future ad buy notwithstanding, the Romney campaign has not seriously contested Pennsylvania, a state that is hard to move without an all-out effort. In the last 30 days, Ann Romney, Mr. Romney’s wife, campaigned once in Pittsburgh, and Mr. Romney visited Philadelphia for a fund-raiser.
The state’s partisan makeup has changed just slightly since 2008. The Democratic voter registration advantage in Pennsylvania doubled to a little over a million in the run-up to the 2008 election, Mr. Madonna said.
“Since 2008,” Mr. Madonna added, “the voter registration numbers have remained remarkably consistent.”
If Mr. Romney wins nationally by three or more percentage points, Pennsylvania could come along also. But in a closer contest, the Keystone State is likely to remain blue for Mr. Obama.
Monday, October 29, 2012
Sunday, October 28, 2012
Presidential Geography: Michigan
The 2012 presidential election is a couple weeks away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Michigan.
Michigan:
The government’s rescue of the American automobile industry appears to have given President Obama a slight boost in Ohio, whose 18 electoral votes may very well decide the nation’s next president. Even at times when the presidential race has been a dead heat nationally, Mr. Obama has retained a consistent lead in Ohio, a state that has usually been slightly Republican-leaning relative to the country as a whole.
But in Michigan — the home of the auto industry — the political effects of the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler have received less attention. Mr. Obama carried Michigan by 16 percentage points in 2008, suggesting the state’s 16 electoral votes were out of reach for Mitt Romney, rescue or no rescue.
There are a few problems with this logic, however. First, Mr. Obama’s margin in 2008 was somewhat inflated. Senator John McCain essentially conceded the state, pulling his campaign out of Michigan about a month before the election. Polls showed Mr. Obama’s lead quickly ballooning. Had Mr. McCain contested Michigan through the final month, the 2008 margin might have been closer.
Mr. Romney was also born in Detroit and raised in suburban Bloomfield Hills. His father, George Romney, was governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969. Presidential candidates have historically received an average bonus of roughly seven percentage points in their home state. In fact, the last native Michigander to run for president, Gerald Ford, received that exactly, winning Michigan in 1976 by five percentage points while losing the national popular vote by two.
Nonetheless, the Romney campaign doesn’t seem to be seriously contesting Michigan. In the last 30 days, Ann Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan have each visited the state once, but neither Mr. Romney nor Mr. Obama has campaigned there.
In a campaign with a native son on the ballot, “Michigan has lost its battleground status,” Mr. Ballenger said.
Can Mr. Obama thank the auto rescue for keeping Michigan out of play? Partly, but Mr. Romney is also unlikely to get a big home-state bonus, local analysts said.
Republicans carried Michigan in five consecutive presidential elections from 1972 through 1988. But Michigan wasn’t a truly Republican-leaning state; it was a tipping point state. It was reliably Republican because the nation was reliably Republican. During that period the G.O.P. won the White House every year but 1976, and Michigan went red then anyway because of Ford.
As cultural conservatism gained sway in the Republican Party nationally, however, socially moderate voters in suburban Michigan began favoring Democrats. This realignment was not as pronounced as it was in New England or the rest of the Northeast; Michigan has a strong anti-abortion movement. But the Wolverine State was relatively balanced politically — “It was the old Ohio,” Mr. Ballenger said — and a small shift toward the Democrats tipped the scales.
Democrats have carried Michigan in the last five presidential elections. The state’s leftward lean increased from two percentage points in 1992, relative to the national popular vote, to nine points in 2008.
Detroit, though a shadow of its former size, is heavily African-American and overwhelmingly Democrat-leaning. About half of Mr. Obama’s margin of victory in the state in 2008 came from Wayne County, where Detroit is. Democrats are also dominant in college towns like Ann Arbor and East Lansing; the state capital, Lansing; and smaller industrial cities like Flint.
The traditional base of Republican support is in the southwest, around Grand Rapids, where many voters are fiercely anti-abortion, influenced by the socially conservative Reformed Church in America (formerly the Dutch Reformed Church).
North of Grand Rapids and Flint, the state is more sparsely populated. The northern part of the lower peninsula is solidly Republican. The Upper Peninsula is traditionally blue-collar Democratic, but socially conservative and wary of gun control and environmental regulations, according to The Almanac of American Politics.
The two main political battlegrounds in Michigan are just north of Detroit: Oakland and Macomb Counties.
Macomb County is the birthplace of the “Reagan Democrats,” the socially conservative, white, working-class Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan. Even after Reagan, Macomb County has been willing to vote Republican. George W. Bush carried it in 2004.
Macomb County is not as blue-collar as it once was, but it still has a lot of workers in the auto and related industries. Had there been no auto industry rescue, Macomb County voters — their connection to the Democratic Party already weak — might have moved even further to the Republican ticket. In fact, Mr. Romney may still carry the county; Mr. Obama won it with 53 percent in 2008.
The Bellwether: Oakland County
The other main swing county in Michigan is Oakland County, where Mr. Romney grew up. Oakland County has gone from a Republican bastion to a battleground as socially moderate voters in bustling suburban towns like Farmington Hills and West Bloomfield have trended Democratic. This area has also grown increasingly diverse, as middle-class African-American families have moved there from Detroit.
The partisan shift in Oakland County has made it an almost perfect bellwether for the statewide vote. It was one percentage point more Republican than the state in 2008 and roughly two points more Republican-leaning in 2004 and 2000. If Mr. Romney is having a really good night, and the Michigan vote is unexpectedly close, it will be apparent in Oakland County and Macomb County (itself a decent bellwether), which together accounted for almost a quarter of the vote in 2008.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 97 percent favorite to carry Michigan, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast.
It is impossible to know what would have happened if General Motors and Chrysler had not been rescued, but Michigan’s economy might have been in far worse shape than it is now. The state’s unemployment rate is relatively high, at 9.3 percent, but it has dropped precipitously from a peak of more than 14 percent.
In addition, Mr. Romney doesn’t appear to be getting a substantial home-state benefit, both Mr. Ballenger and Mr. Grossman said.
“I don’t think many voters consider Romney a home-state candidate, especially not compared to Ford,” Mr. Grossman said.
Ford represented Michigan in Congress for more than two decades. Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, spent most of his adult life living outside of Michigan and was never elected to any political office in the state.
Mr. Romney didn’t appear to receive much of a home-state bonus inMichigan’s 2012 Republican primary. He squeaked by Rick Santorum by just three percentage points.
The FiveThirtyEight model currently projects Mr. Obama to carry Michigan by seven percentage points and the nation by 1.5 points. That would make Michigan 5.5 percentage points Democratic-leaning relative to the national average, almost exactly where it was from 1996 to 2004.
It is possible the boost to Mr. Obama from the auto rescue and Mr. Romney’s home-state bonus are canceling one another out. Or, perhaps neither is having a substantial effect.
“Michigan has been slightly to the left of center for a while now,” Mr. Grossman said, “and it doesn’t seem to be moving a whole lot, in my view.”
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Michigan.
Michigan:
The government’s rescue of the American automobile industry appears to have given President Obama a slight boost in Ohio, whose 18 electoral votes may very well decide the nation’s next president. Even at times when the presidential race has been a dead heat nationally, Mr. Obama has retained a consistent lead in Ohio, a state that has usually been slightly Republican-leaning relative to the country as a whole.
But in Michigan — the home of the auto industry — the political effects of the rescue of General Motors and Chrysler have received less attention. Mr. Obama carried Michigan by 16 percentage points in 2008, suggesting the state’s 16 electoral votes were out of reach for Mitt Romney, rescue or no rescue.
There are a few problems with this logic, however. First, Mr. Obama’s margin in 2008 was somewhat inflated. Senator John McCain essentially conceded the state, pulling his campaign out of Michigan about a month before the election. Polls showed Mr. Obama’s lead quickly ballooning. Had Mr. McCain contested Michigan through the final month, the 2008 margin might have been closer.
Mr. Romney was also born in Detroit and raised in suburban Bloomfield Hills. His father, George Romney, was governor of Michigan from 1963 to 1969. Presidential candidates have historically received an average bonus of roughly seven percentage points in their home state. In fact, the last native Michigander to run for president, Gerald Ford, received that exactly, winning Michigan in 1976 by five percentage points while losing the national popular vote by two.
Nonetheless, the Romney campaign doesn’t seem to be seriously contesting Michigan. In the last 30 days, Ann Romney and Representative Paul D. Ryan have each visited the state once, but neither Mr. Romney nor Mr. Obama has campaigned there.
In a campaign with a native son on the ballot, “Michigan has lost its battleground status,” Mr. Ballenger said.
Can Mr. Obama thank the auto rescue for keeping Michigan out of play? Partly, but Mr. Romney is also unlikely to get a big home-state bonus, local analysts said.
Republicans carried Michigan in five consecutive presidential elections from 1972 through 1988. But Michigan wasn’t a truly Republican-leaning state; it was a tipping point state. It was reliably Republican because the nation was reliably Republican. During that period the G.O.P. won the White House every year but 1976, and Michigan went red then anyway because of Ford.
As cultural conservatism gained sway in the Republican Party nationally, however, socially moderate voters in suburban Michigan began favoring Democrats. This realignment was not as pronounced as it was in New England or the rest of the Northeast; Michigan has a strong anti-abortion movement. But the Wolverine State was relatively balanced politically — “It was the old Ohio,” Mr. Ballenger said — and a small shift toward the Democrats tipped the scales.
Democrats have carried Michigan in the last five presidential elections. The state’s leftward lean increased from two percentage points in 1992, relative to the national popular vote, to nine points in 2008.
Detroit, though a shadow of its former size, is heavily African-American and overwhelmingly Democrat-leaning. About half of Mr. Obama’s margin of victory in the state in 2008 came from Wayne County, where Detroit is. Democrats are also dominant in college towns like Ann Arbor and East Lansing; the state capital, Lansing; and smaller industrial cities like Flint.
The traditional base of Republican support is in the southwest, around Grand Rapids, where many voters are fiercely anti-abortion, influenced by the socially conservative Reformed Church in America (formerly the Dutch Reformed Church).
North of Grand Rapids and Flint, the state is more sparsely populated. The northern part of the lower peninsula is solidly Republican. The Upper Peninsula is traditionally blue-collar Democratic, but socially conservative and wary of gun control and environmental regulations, according to The Almanac of American Politics.
The two main political battlegrounds in Michigan are just north of Detroit: Oakland and Macomb Counties.
Macomb County is the birthplace of the “Reagan Democrats,” the socially conservative, white, working-class Democrats who voted for Ronald Reagan. Even after Reagan, Macomb County has been willing to vote Republican. George W. Bush carried it in 2004.
Macomb County is not as blue-collar as it once was, but it still has a lot of workers in the auto and related industries. Had there been no auto industry rescue, Macomb County voters — their connection to the Democratic Party already weak — might have moved even further to the Republican ticket. In fact, Mr. Romney may still carry the county; Mr. Obama won it with 53 percent in 2008.
The Bellwether: Oakland County
The other main swing county in Michigan is Oakland County, where Mr. Romney grew up. Oakland County has gone from a Republican bastion to a battleground as socially moderate voters in bustling suburban towns like Farmington Hills and West Bloomfield have trended Democratic. This area has also grown increasingly diverse, as middle-class African-American families have moved there from Detroit.
The partisan shift in Oakland County has made it an almost perfect bellwether for the statewide vote. It was one percentage point more Republican than the state in 2008 and roughly two points more Republican-leaning in 2004 and 2000. If Mr. Romney is having a really good night, and the Michigan vote is unexpectedly close, it will be apparent in Oakland County and Macomb County (itself a decent bellwether), which together accounted for almost a quarter of the vote in 2008.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 97 percent favorite to carry Michigan, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast.
It is impossible to know what would have happened if General Motors and Chrysler had not been rescued, but Michigan’s economy might have been in far worse shape than it is now. The state’s unemployment rate is relatively high, at 9.3 percent, but it has dropped precipitously from a peak of more than 14 percent.
In addition, Mr. Romney doesn’t appear to be getting a substantial home-state benefit, both Mr. Ballenger and Mr. Grossman said.
“I don’t think many voters consider Romney a home-state candidate, especially not compared to Ford,” Mr. Grossman said.
Ford represented Michigan in Congress for more than two decades. Mr. Romney, a former governor of Massachusetts, spent most of his adult life living outside of Michigan and was never elected to any political office in the state.
Mr. Romney didn’t appear to receive much of a home-state bonus inMichigan’s 2012 Republican primary. He squeaked by Rick Santorum by just three percentage points.
The FiveThirtyEight model currently projects Mr. Obama to carry Michigan by seven percentage points and the nation by 1.5 points. That would make Michigan 5.5 percentage points Democratic-leaning relative to the national average, almost exactly where it was from 1996 to 2004.
It is possible the boost to Mr. Obama from the auto rescue and Mr. Romney’s home-state bonus are canceling one another out. Or, perhaps neither is having a substantial effect.
“Michigan has been slightly to the left of center for a while now,” Mr. Grossman said, “and it doesn’t seem to be moving a whole lot, in my view.”
A Brother's call for a more serious approach to gun violence and reform
This past July, a shooting in a Colorado movie theater shook the nation. It was another shooting in a series of tragic incidents over the years that includes Tucson, AZ and Virginia Tech. After the Aurora shooting in July, survivors were going to grips with life after such a life altering experience.
One person, Stephen Barton, has taken the additional step to hopefully avoid any such incidents from occurring again. Barton is a Brother of Phi Sigma Pi National Honor Fraternity and he not only exemplifies the same organization I am part of but exemplifies what is great about America when average citizens challenge politicians and the country.
He provided the following in the Washington Post:
This summer, I almost died when a man with several guns opened fire on a packed movie theater audience at the midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
I had stopped in Aurora, Colo., for the night with my best friend. We were on a cross-country bicycling tour of America’s heartland and had already covered 2,750 miles through 10 states. Countless strangers along the way had offered us food, housing, money and, in one case, a salsa-dancing night held in our honor. Aside from a few careless drivers, not a single person ever came close to harming us.
All of that changed in Aurora.
I remember the tear-gas canister flying across the theater, the booming reverberation of the shotgun near the theater’s front-right emergency exit, the blinking light of the muzzle. There was abrupt pain as more than two dozen shotgun pellets pierced my face, neck, chest, arms and hands. Suddenly, I was a victim of gun violence.
Only the courage and skill of Aurora’s first responders and medical professionals made me a survivor.
I was lucky, but 12 of my fellow moviegoers were not. Their loved ones are left to mourn their violent and irrevocable departure. They are among the 34 American families who mourn the husbands, wives, daughters and sons who are murdered with guns in our country every day.
After the shooting, our national leaders offered their heartfelt condolences and sympathies, which I sincerely appreciate. But instead of starting a discussion on how to prevent such horrific tragedies, they effectively told the American people that it was too soon to talk about gun legislation — even though 48,000 Americans will be murdered with firearms during the next president’s term.
If we can’t talk about guns after one of our country’s worst mass shootings, when can we?
Toward the end of the town-hall presidential debate, the deafening silence on this topic was finally broken by Nina Gonzalez, a mother from Long Island who asked President Obama what he planned to do about assault weapons, particularly after failing to take up the issue in his current term. Moderator Candy Crowley introduced the question as one “we hear a lot.”
Unfortunately, both candidates’ answers were ones we hear a lot, too. Obama expressed interest in renewing the ban on assault weapons, but he didn’t discuss other gun-violence prevention measures. Mitt Romney argued that we don’t need new laws, focusing instead on the impact that family structure has on violence. Neither candidate acknowledged that 40 percent of guns sold in this country are sold privately and are not subject to a background check under federal law.
Neither candidate mentioned that 21 states have submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System since it was launched in 1998.
Our government hasn’t done a “much better job in terms of background checks,” as Obama said in last week’s debate, nor will gun violence just fix itself, as Romney implied.
Legislation pending in Congress, the Fix Gun Checks Act, addresses these issues directly by requiring background checks on every gun sale and increasing the penalties for states that do not submit mental-health records.
Polling by Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns found this summer that 74 percent of gun owners who are members of the National Rifle Association and 87 percent of nonmembers who own guns support requiring a background check for every gun sale. In other words, the public overwhelmingly supports common-sense gun regulations that are hard on criminals and minimally obtrusive for law-abiding citizens.
Although the cars that nearly ran me over a few times during our bike trip are regulated and require registration nationwide, the lethal guns I saw being sold out of the back of a pickup truck when I bicycled through northern Louisiana are subject to barely any regulation.
Nina Gonzalez and I are among the more than 270,000 Americans who have signed a petitiondemanding a plan from both presidential candidates to reduce gun violence (www.demandaplan.org). We’ll never know whether a stronger background check system would have prevented the shooting in Aurora, but we do know that it will help save thousands of lives during the next president’s term.
Are you listening, President Obama and Mr. Romney?
One person, Stephen Barton, has taken the additional step to hopefully avoid any such incidents from occurring again. Barton is a Brother of Phi Sigma Pi National Honor Fraternity and he not only exemplifies the same organization I am part of but exemplifies what is great about America when average citizens challenge politicians and the country.
He provided the following in the Washington Post:
This summer, I almost died when a man with several guns opened fire on a packed movie theater audience at the midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises.”
I had stopped in Aurora, Colo., for the night with my best friend. We were on a cross-country bicycling tour of America’s heartland and had already covered 2,750 miles through 10 states. Countless strangers along the way had offered us food, housing, money and, in one case, a salsa-dancing night held in our honor. Aside from a few careless drivers, not a single person ever came close to harming us.
All of that changed in Aurora.
I remember the tear-gas canister flying across the theater, the booming reverberation of the shotgun near the theater’s front-right emergency exit, the blinking light of the muzzle. There was abrupt pain as more than two dozen shotgun pellets pierced my face, neck, chest, arms and hands. Suddenly, I was a victim of gun violence.
Only the courage and skill of Aurora’s first responders and medical professionals made me a survivor.
I was lucky, but 12 of my fellow moviegoers were not. Their loved ones are left to mourn their violent and irrevocable departure. They are among the 34 American families who mourn the husbands, wives, daughters and sons who are murdered with guns in our country every day.
After the shooting, our national leaders offered their heartfelt condolences and sympathies, which I sincerely appreciate. But instead of starting a discussion on how to prevent such horrific tragedies, they effectively told the American people that it was too soon to talk about gun legislation — even though 48,000 Americans will be murdered with firearms during the next president’s term.
If we can’t talk about guns after one of our country’s worst mass shootings, when can we?
Toward the end of the town-hall presidential debate, the deafening silence on this topic was finally broken by Nina Gonzalez, a mother from Long Island who asked President Obama what he planned to do about assault weapons, particularly after failing to take up the issue in his current term. Moderator Candy Crowley introduced the question as one “we hear a lot.”
Unfortunately, both candidates’ answers were ones we hear a lot, too. Obama expressed interest in renewing the ban on assault weapons, but he didn’t discuss other gun-violence prevention measures. Mitt Romney argued that we don’t need new laws, focusing instead on the impact that family structure has on violence. Neither candidate acknowledged that 40 percent of guns sold in this country are sold privately and are not subject to a background check under federal law.
Neither candidate mentioned that 21 states have submitted fewer than 100 mental health records to the National Instant Criminal Background Check System since it was launched in 1998.
Our government hasn’t done a “much better job in terms of background checks,” as Obama said in last week’s debate, nor will gun violence just fix itself, as Romney implied.
Legislation pending in Congress, the Fix Gun Checks Act, addresses these issues directly by requiring background checks on every gun sale and increasing the penalties for states that do not submit mental-health records.
Polling by Frank Luntz for Mayors Against Illegal Guns found this summer that 74 percent of gun owners who are members of the National Rifle Association and 87 percent of nonmembers who own guns support requiring a background check for every gun sale. In other words, the public overwhelmingly supports common-sense gun regulations that are hard on criminals and minimally obtrusive for law-abiding citizens.
Although the cars that nearly ran me over a few times during our bike trip are regulated and require registration nationwide, the lethal guns I saw being sold out of the back of a pickup truck when I bicycled through northern Louisiana are subject to barely any regulation.
Nina Gonzalez and I are among the more than 270,000 Americans who have signed a petitiondemanding a plan from both presidential candidates to reduce gun violence (www.demandaplan.org). We’ll never know whether a stronger background check system would have prevented the shooting in Aurora, but we do know that it will help save thousands of lives during the next president’s term.
Are you listening, President Obama and Mr. Romney?
Tuesday, October 23, 2012
Presidential Geography: Arizona
The 2012 presidential election is a couple weeks away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Arizona.
Arizona:
While the Republican primaries were still unfolding, the Obama campaign suggested it could compete in Arizona. That looks to have been a bit optimistic: polls show Mitt Romney leading comfortably.
But the idea that Arizona would be a battleground in 2012 made some sense. President Obama made substantial gains in the Southwest in 2008, carrying three of Arizona’s neighbors — Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico — that had voted Republican in 2004. Arizona was the exception, but Mr. Obama had a good excuse: there was an Arizonan on the ballot, Senator John McCain.
In 2012 that would not be an issue; Mr. Romney has a lot of “home” states (he was governor of Massachusetts, grew up in Michigan and has a vacation home in New Hampshire), but Arizona isn’t one of them.
In addition, Democrats have some advantages in the Grand Canyon State. It is almost one-third Hispanic, the fourth-highest share in the nation, and polls show Latinos favoring Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney by about two to one. Arizona is also the ninth-most-urban state by population, with a majority of its residents clustered in and around Phoenix.
Nonetheless, Arizona simply isn’t that near to the tipping point. In a presidential election that is at all close nationally — and the 2012 race is certainly close — Arizona is not a truly competitive state, yet. (More on that yet in a moment.)
Hispanics may comprise about 30 percent of the state, but they make up 25 percent of the state’s voting-age population, because they skew much younger than non-Hispanic whites. In addition, roughly one-third of Arizona Latinos are undocumented and cannot vote. Even among Hispanics who can vote, turnout has lagged behind that of non-Hispanic whites.
In percentage terms, Hispanics account for roughly half as much of the Arizona electorate, 16 percent, as they do the state’s overall population, 30 percent.
And even though the state’s Latino voters have helped move Arizona toward the political left, the state started far to the political right. Republicans carried Arizona in every presidential race from 1952 to 1992, the only state to stay Republican over that period. Arizona was home to Barry Goldwater, one of the most conservative Republicans to run for president since 1952. Mr. Goldwater exemplified the political ethos of the state: conservative, with a strong libertarian streak.
Arizona is a Republican-leaning state largely because Maricopa County is a Republican-leaning county. With about 60 percent of the electorate, Maricopa County’s political preferences tend to carry the day.
While Phoenix itself skews Democratic, most of the vast suburbs do not. “The East Valley — including Scottsdale, Chandler, Gilbert and Mesa — tend to be quite Republican,” Mr. Berman said. The East Valley also has a large Mormon community. (Arizona is the fifth-most Mormon state, but members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make up just 5 percent of the state over all).
The Republican Party also dominates in western and southeastern Arizona. Mohave and Yavapai Counties, in the northwest, are older, more rural, less diverse and more socially conservative than the Phoenix suburbs.
Maricopa County is so big that even though it leans Republican, Democrats get the bulk of their votes there, too. But the main Democratic-leaning county in Arizona is Pima County, which is more than one-third Hispanic and includes Tucson, where the University of Arizona is situated
Politics in Arizona’s less populated counties tends to be determined by a mix of demographics and religion. Democrats normally carry Coconino County, which includes Flagstaff and is about a quarter Native American and 15 percent Hispanic; Apache County, which is about 72 percent American Indian; and Santa Cruz County, which is almost 83 percent Hispanic.
Graham County is reliably Republican. It is 31 percent Hispanic but also 26 percent Mormon. Navajo County has been more marginally Republican. It is 43 percent American Indian but 20 percent Mormon.
The Bellwether
Maricopa County accounts for so much of Arizona’s electorate that it is almost guaranteed to be a good bellwether for the statewide vote. It was just one percentage point more Republican-leaning than the state in 2008 and was just two percentage points more Democratic-leaning in 2004 and 2000.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 98 percent favorite in Arizona, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. But the days when Republicans can count on carrying the Grand Canyon State may be numbered.
More and more voters are registering as independents. The number of unaffiliated voters has surpassed the number of registered Democrats and is soon expected to overtake the number of Republicans, Mr. Berman said. The ideological middle of Arizona’s electorate may also gain more sway if voters pass Proposition 121, an initiative on the November ballot that would replace the current party primaries with one primary open to all voters. In the open primary system, the top two finishers advance to the general election regardless of party.
But the most powerful potential factor pushing Arizona to the political center remains the state’s Latino population and the prospect that Latino turnout rates will rise. Even with depressed turnout, Hispanics doubled as a share of the electorate to 16 percent in the 2008 presidential election from 8 percent in 1992.
As in Texas, it’s long been predicted that this is the year Arizona Latinos will really go to the polls.
“Everyone’s been waiting for Latinos to flex their political muscle,” Mr. Garcia said.
Mr. Merrill added, “I’ve been here 40 years, and it hasn’t happened so far.”
The November elections may not draw a flood of new Latino voters, but there are reasons to expect an uptick. “The Hispanic population is much more mobilized and engaged, in part because of the anti-illegal immigration campaign that was for a couple years the thing that got the Republicans going here,” Mr. Merrill said.
Latino voters have also been energized by the push to pass the Dream Act for undocumented young people and Mr. Obama’s decision to stop the deportation of young undocumented immigrants under certain conditions, Mr. Garcia said.
Signs of an energized Hispanic electorate are apparent in the Democratic Senate candidate Richard H. Carmona‘s surprisingly strong campaign against Representative Jeff Flake, who was thought to have the seat of Senator Jon Kyl, who is retiring, locked up. Arizona hasn’t had a Democratic senator in almost 18 years.
Mr. Carmona, who is Puerto Rican, is currently a modest underdog in the FiveThirtyEight forecast; Mr. Flake is a 69 percent favorite. But “the Carmona-Flake race is an interesting example of Arizona starting to moderate a little bit,” Mr. Cieslak said. “It’s going to come down to the wire.”
If the Republican Party does not improve its standing among Hispanics, it seems almost inevitable that Arizona will become substantially more competitive. Hispanics will make up one in four registered voters by 2030, according to an analysis by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
“I think this is the last election you could win without the Latino vote,” Mr. Garcia said.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Arizona.
Arizona:
While the Republican primaries were still unfolding, the Obama campaign suggested it could compete in Arizona. That looks to have been a bit optimistic: polls show Mitt Romney leading comfortably.
But the idea that Arizona would be a battleground in 2012 made some sense. President Obama made substantial gains in the Southwest in 2008, carrying three of Arizona’s neighbors — Nevada, Colorado and New Mexico — that had voted Republican in 2004. Arizona was the exception, but Mr. Obama had a good excuse: there was an Arizonan on the ballot, Senator John McCain.
In 2012 that would not be an issue; Mr. Romney has a lot of “home” states (he was governor of Massachusetts, grew up in Michigan and has a vacation home in New Hampshire), but Arizona isn’t one of them.
In addition, Democrats have some advantages in the Grand Canyon State. It is almost one-third Hispanic, the fourth-highest share in the nation, and polls show Latinos favoring Mr. Obama over Mr. Romney by about two to one. Arizona is also the ninth-most-urban state by population, with a majority of its residents clustered in and around Phoenix.
Nonetheless, Arizona simply isn’t that near to the tipping point. In a presidential election that is at all close nationally — and the 2012 race is certainly close — Arizona is not a truly competitive state, yet. (More on that yet in a moment.)
Hispanics may comprise about 30 percent of the state, but they make up 25 percent of the state’s voting-age population, because they skew much younger than non-Hispanic whites. In addition, roughly one-third of Arizona Latinos are undocumented and cannot vote. Even among Hispanics who can vote, turnout has lagged behind that of non-Hispanic whites.
In percentage terms, Hispanics account for roughly half as much of the Arizona electorate, 16 percent, as they do the state’s overall population, 30 percent.
And even though the state’s Latino voters have helped move Arizona toward the political left, the state started far to the political right. Republicans carried Arizona in every presidential race from 1952 to 1992, the only state to stay Republican over that period. Arizona was home to Barry Goldwater, one of the most conservative Republicans to run for president since 1952. Mr. Goldwater exemplified the political ethos of the state: conservative, with a strong libertarian streak.
Arizona is a Republican-leaning state largely because Maricopa County is a Republican-leaning county. With about 60 percent of the electorate, Maricopa County’s political preferences tend to carry the day.
While Phoenix itself skews Democratic, most of the vast suburbs do not. “The East Valley — including Scottsdale, Chandler, Gilbert and Mesa — tend to be quite Republican,” Mr. Berman said. The East Valley also has a large Mormon community. (Arizona is the fifth-most Mormon state, but members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints make up just 5 percent of the state over all).
The Republican Party also dominates in western and southeastern Arizona. Mohave and Yavapai Counties, in the northwest, are older, more rural, less diverse and more socially conservative than the Phoenix suburbs.
Maricopa County is so big that even though it leans Republican, Democrats get the bulk of their votes there, too. But the main Democratic-leaning county in Arizona is Pima County, which is more than one-third Hispanic and includes Tucson, where the University of Arizona is situated
Politics in Arizona’s less populated counties tends to be determined by a mix of demographics and religion. Democrats normally carry Coconino County, which includes Flagstaff and is about a quarter Native American and 15 percent Hispanic; Apache County, which is about 72 percent American Indian; and Santa Cruz County, which is almost 83 percent Hispanic.
Graham County is reliably Republican. It is 31 percent Hispanic but also 26 percent Mormon. Navajo County has been more marginally Republican. It is 43 percent American Indian but 20 percent Mormon.
The Bellwether
Maricopa County accounts for so much of Arizona’s electorate that it is almost guaranteed to be a good bellwether for the statewide vote. It was just one percentage point more Republican-leaning than the state in 2008 and was just two percentage points more Democratic-leaning in 2004 and 2000.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 98 percent favorite in Arizona, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. But the days when Republicans can count on carrying the Grand Canyon State may be numbered.
More and more voters are registering as independents. The number of unaffiliated voters has surpassed the number of registered Democrats and is soon expected to overtake the number of Republicans, Mr. Berman said. The ideological middle of Arizona’s electorate may also gain more sway if voters pass Proposition 121, an initiative on the November ballot that would replace the current party primaries with one primary open to all voters. In the open primary system, the top two finishers advance to the general election regardless of party.
But the most powerful potential factor pushing Arizona to the political center remains the state’s Latino population and the prospect that Latino turnout rates will rise. Even with depressed turnout, Hispanics doubled as a share of the electorate to 16 percent in the 2008 presidential election from 8 percent in 1992.
As in Texas, it’s long been predicted that this is the year Arizona Latinos will really go to the polls.
“Everyone’s been waiting for Latinos to flex their political muscle,” Mr. Garcia said.
Mr. Merrill added, “I’ve been here 40 years, and it hasn’t happened so far.”
The November elections may not draw a flood of new Latino voters, but there are reasons to expect an uptick. “The Hispanic population is much more mobilized and engaged, in part because of the anti-illegal immigration campaign that was for a couple years the thing that got the Republicans going here,” Mr. Merrill said.
Latino voters have also been energized by the push to pass the Dream Act for undocumented young people and Mr. Obama’s decision to stop the deportation of young undocumented immigrants under certain conditions, Mr. Garcia said.
Signs of an energized Hispanic electorate are apparent in the Democratic Senate candidate Richard H. Carmona‘s surprisingly strong campaign against Representative Jeff Flake, who was thought to have the seat of Senator Jon Kyl, who is retiring, locked up. Arizona hasn’t had a Democratic senator in almost 18 years.
Mr. Carmona, who is Puerto Rican, is currently a modest underdog in the FiveThirtyEight forecast; Mr. Flake is a 69 percent favorite. But “the Carmona-Flake race is an interesting example of Arizona starting to moderate a little bit,” Mr. Cieslak said. “It’s going to come down to the wire.”
If the Republican Party does not improve its standing among Hispanics, it seems almost inevitable that Arizona will become substantially more competitive. Hispanics will make up one in four registered voters by 2030, according to an analysis by the Morrison Institute for Public Policy.
“I think this is the last election you could win without the Latino vote,” Mr. Garcia said.
Sunday, October 21, 2012
Presidential Geography: Indiana
The 2012 presidential election is a couple weeks away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Indiana.
Indiana:
Between the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, Indiana swung 22 percentage points to the left, from favoring the Republican George W. Bush by 21 points in 2004 to President Obama by a single point in 2008. It was the largest swing — in either direction — by a nonhome state since the 1992 election.
But the Hoosier State’s barely blue tinge faded quickly: Polls show Mitt Romney carrying it by double digits this year.
Indiana has not become a swing state.
The 2008 results — the first victory by a Democratic presidential candidate in Indiana since 1964 — were not caused by a shift in the state’s political fundamentals. Instead, 2008 was somewhat of an anomaly, caused by the intersection of mostly external factors and a favorable political environment for Democrats nationally.
First, the state’s Democratic primary in May, a hard-fought contest between Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, established a campaign infrastructure and raised enthusiasm among local Democrats, Mr. Downs said.
“The energy that was created in May was not that difficult to translate into November,” he said.
Geography also played a role. Indiana’s western neighbor is Mr. Obama’s home state, Illinois, and the Obama campaign was headquartered in Chicago. Volunteers from Illinois flooded across the border, while Indiana Democrats — who in past presidential contests had left Indiana to help campaign in neighboring battleground states — stayed to work in their home state.
At the same time, Senator John McCain’s campaign chose not to vigorously defend the state. “There was not a really good McCain structure,” Mr. Downs said.
The economy was a factor as well. About one in five Indiana jobs are based in manufacturing, one of the highest proportions in the country. As the economy fell apart before the election, manufacturing was one of the first sectors to be hit, and Indiana’s jobless rate climbed faster and higher than the nation’s. Hoosier voters were particularly keen on voting for change.
More generally, there was latent Democratic support in Indiana.
“Indiana is a red-leaning, ticket-splitting state,” Mr. Howey said, “and Hoosiers are not afraid to vote for the Democrat at the state level if they think that they’re the better candidate.”
Voters may have been accustomed to pulling the G.O.P. lever in presidential campaigns, but picking a Democrat wasn’t a completely alien concept. Indiana had Democratic governors from 1989 through 2004, and this year’s Senate race between Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, and Richard Mourdock, a Republican, is a tossup, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast.
In other words, Democratic presidential candidates had underachieved in Indiana until 2008, when Mr. Obama very much overachieved. The Obama campaign doesn’t have all those factors working in its favor this year, and the Hoosier state will most likely revert to its default partisan position: a reliably red state in presidential elections.
The Democrats have two main strongholds in Indiana. The first is Indianapolis, which has become much more Democratic-leaning over the last 10 to 15 years, Mr. Howey said, as more affluent, conservative-leaning voters moved to the suburbs.
In 2004, John Kerry carried Marion County, which consists almost entirely of Indianapolis, by about 6,200 votes. In 2008, Mr. Obama overwhelmed Mr. McCain in Marion County by roughly 106,000 votes.
The other Democratic-leaning area is Northwest Indiana, a region of working-class manufacturing towns that also had a sharp rise in the Democratic vote from 2004 to 2008. Gary’s Lake County is solidly blue, while the counties stretching from Gary east to St. Joseph County and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend are more marginally Democratic-leaning. Mr. Obama carried Northwest Indiana comfortably in 2008, but outside of Lake County the region is usually less left-leaning.
The rest of Indiana — outside of several counties dominated by university towns — is reliably Republican, particularly in presidential elections. The suburban communities in the “doughnut counties” that surround Indianapolis have become one of two bases of Republican power in the state. The doughnut counties are home to traditional suburban Republicans, fiscally conservative and family-oriented voters who tend to be more focused on issues like education than abortion and same-sex marriage, Mr. Howey said.
That contrasts with more socially conservative Northeast Indiana, the other base of G.O.P. support. The region around Fort Wayne, a mix of suburban, exurban and rural areas, is home to some of the most conservative voters the nation, Mr. Howey said.
The Bellwether: Vanderburgh County
Evansville’s Vanderburgh County, in southwest Indiana, has been a strong bellwether for the statewide vote in the last two presidential elections. It was one percentage point to the left of the state in 2008 and 2004, after being three percentage points more Democratic in 2000.
Southwest Indiana was historically dominated by “Butternut Democrats,” Indiana’s version of the socially conservative, working-class white voters in Southern states like Georgia and Alabama who were solid Democrats for generations but have been trending Republican. The realignment toward the G.O.P., just as in the South, happened first at the presidential level and then in state and local races.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 100 percent favorite to carry Indiana, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, and Indiana’s brief flirtation with Mr. Obama appears to have ended. In fact, one dynamic that may have helped Mr. Obama in 2008 may be hurting him now: Indiana’s willingness to oust incumbents.
“Hoosier voters are willing to throw the bums out no matter who they are,” Mr. Howey said.
The Indiana House of Representatives has shifted hands several times over the past decades, Mr. Howey said. So have several Congressional seats, and the incumbent governor was defeated in 2004. Just this year, Indiana Republicans ousted Richard G. Lugar, one of the Senate’s longest-serving members, in a primary.
Indiana’s seeming unwillingness to give incumbents the benefit of the doubt is working against Mr. Obama this year, particularly as Indiana’s jobless rate, at 8.3 percent, recently swung above the national average.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Indiana.
Indiana:
Between the 2004 and 2008 presidential elections, Indiana swung 22 percentage points to the left, from favoring the Republican George W. Bush by 21 points in 2004 to President Obama by a single point in 2008. It was the largest swing — in either direction — by a nonhome state since the 1992 election.
But the Hoosier State’s barely blue tinge faded quickly: Polls show Mitt Romney carrying it by double digits this year.
Indiana has not become a swing state.
The 2008 results — the first victory by a Democratic presidential candidate in Indiana since 1964 — were not caused by a shift in the state’s political fundamentals. Instead, 2008 was somewhat of an anomaly, caused by the intersection of mostly external factors and a favorable political environment for Democrats nationally.
First, the state’s Democratic primary in May, a hard-fought contest between Mr. Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton, established a campaign infrastructure and raised enthusiasm among local Democrats, Mr. Downs said.
“The energy that was created in May was not that difficult to translate into November,” he said.
Geography also played a role. Indiana’s western neighbor is Mr. Obama’s home state, Illinois, and the Obama campaign was headquartered in Chicago. Volunteers from Illinois flooded across the border, while Indiana Democrats — who in past presidential contests had left Indiana to help campaign in neighboring battleground states — stayed to work in their home state.
At the same time, Senator John McCain’s campaign chose not to vigorously defend the state. “There was not a really good McCain structure,” Mr. Downs said.
The economy was a factor as well. About one in five Indiana jobs are based in manufacturing, one of the highest proportions in the country. As the economy fell apart before the election, manufacturing was one of the first sectors to be hit, and Indiana’s jobless rate climbed faster and higher than the nation’s. Hoosier voters were particularly keen on voting for change.
More generally, there was latent Democratic support in Indiana.
“Indiana is a red-leaning, ticket-splitting state,” Mr. Howey said, “and Hoosiers are not afraid to vote for the Democrat at the state level if they think that they’re the better candidate.”
Voters may have been accustomed to pulling the G.O.P. lever in presidential campaigns, but picking a Democrat wasn’t a completely alien concept. Indiana had Democratic governors from 1989 through 2004, and this year’s Senate race between Joe Donnelly, a Democrat, and Richard Mourdock, a Republican, is a tossup, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast.
In other words, Democratic presidential candidates had underachieved in Indiana until 2008, when Mr. Obama very much overachieved. The Obama campaign doesn’t have all those factors working in its favor this year, and the Hoosier state will most likely revert to its default partisan position: a reliably red state in presidential elections.
The Democrats have two main strongholds in Indiana. The first is Indianapolis, which has become much more Democratic-leaning over the last 10 to 15 years, Mr. Howey said, as more affluent, conservative-leaning voters moved to the suburbs.
In 2004, John Kerry carried Marion County, which consists almost entirely of Indianapolis, by about 6,200 votes. In 2008, Mr. Obama overwhelmed Mr. McCain in Marion County by roughly 106,000 votes.
The other Democratic-leaning area is Northwest Indiana, a region of working-class manufacturing towns that also had a sharp rise in the Democratic vote from 2004 to 2008. Gary’s Lake County is solidly blue, while the counties stretching from Gary east to St. Joseph County and the University of Notre Dame in South Bend are more marginally Democratic-leaning. Mr. Obama carried Northwest Indiana comfortably in 2008, but outside of Lake County the region is usually less left-leaning.
The rest of Indiana — outside of several counties dominated by university towns — is reliably Republican, particularly in presidential elections. The suburban communities in the “doughnut counties” that surround Indianapolis have become one of two bases of Republican power in the state. The doughnut counties are home to traditional suburban Republicans, fiscally conservative and family-oriented voters who tend to be more focused on issues like education than abortion and same-sex marriage, Mr. Howey said.
That contrasts with more socially conservative Northeast Indiana, the other base of G.O.P. support. The region around Fort Wayne, a mix of suburban, exurban and rural areas, is home to some of the most conservative voters the nation, Mr. Howey said.
The Bellwether: Vanderburgh County
Evansville’s Vanderburgh County, in southwest Indiana, has been a strong bellwether for the statewide vote in the last two presidential elections. It was one percentage point to the left of the state in 2008 and 2004, after being three percentage points more Democratic in 2000.
Southwest Indiana was historically dominated by “Butternut Democrats,” Indiana’s version of the socially conservative, working-class white voters in Southern states like Georgia and Alabama who were solid Democrats for generations but have been trending Republican. The realignment toward the G.O.P., just as in the South, happened first at the presidential level and then in state and local races.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 100 percent favorite to carry Indiana, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, and Indiana’s brief flirtation with Mr. Obama appears to have ended. In fact, one dynamic that may have helped Mr. Obama in 2008 may be hurting him now: Indiana’s willingness to oust incumbents.
“Hoosier voters are willing to throw the bums out no matter who they are,” Mr. Howey said.
The Indiana House of Representatives has shifted hands several times over the past decades, Mr. Howey said. So have several Congressional seats, and the incumbent governor was defeated in 2004. Just this year, Indiana Republicans ousted Richard G. Lugar, one of the Senate’s longest-serving members, in a primary.
Indiana’s seeming unwillingness to give incumbents the benefit of the doubt is working against Mr. Obama this year, particularly as Indiana’s jobless rate, at 8.3 percent, recently swung above the national average.
Thursday, October 18, 2012
Presidential Geography: Rhode Island
The 2012 presidential election is a couple weeks away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Rhode Island.
Rhode Island:
In the Rhode Island State Legislature, “there are so few Republicans they barely give them parking spaces,” Ms. Moakley said.
Indeed, Rhode Island is among the most Democratic-leaning states. It ranks as the fourth bluest state in the nation in the FiveThirtyEight Presidential Voting Index, and Democrats have more than a 3-to-1 edge in voter registration, an overwhelming advantage.
Yet Rhode Island has not elected a Democratic governor since 1992. And one of its two United States senators was a Republican from 1976 to 2007: John Chafee, then his son Lincoln Chafee. The younger Mr. Chafee, now an independent, was elected governor in 2010.
What allows for such disparate results? Elasticity. Rhode Island is the most elastic state, a large swatch of its electorate are persuadable voters unaligned with either political party. Rhode Island has very few Republicans (10 percent of registered voters), a ton of Democrats (41 percent), but even more unaffiliated voters (49 percent).
In presidential races, those unaffiliated voters break largely for the Democrat. The last Republican to carry the state was Ronald Reagan in 1984. But at the state level, unaffiliated voters have often opted to elect socially moderate Republican governors as a check on the Democratic-controlled legislature, Mr. Mackay said.
Rhode Island has a lot of swing voters, partly because the state’s main demographic groups do not correlate strongly with either political party.Democrats have a solid base in the state’s Hispanic population (13 percent) and black population (7 percent). But outside of those communities voters do not fit perfectly into either major party. Many Democrats are former Rockefeller Republicans, and many Republicans are Reagan Democrats. Party affiliation is a weak bond for many Rhode Island voters.
In addition, Rhode Island’s largest religious populace, Roman Catholics, also tend to be swing voters. Nationally, every winning presidential candidate since the 1972 election has also carried the Catholic vote.
Rhode Island is the only majority Catholic state (52 percent) in the nation, according to Gallup (Massachusetts comes close). And unlike evangelical Christians and Mormons (who lean heavily Republican) or Jews (who lean Democratic), Catholic voters are split roughly down the middle. White Catholics lean slightly Republican, but Hispanic Catholics skew Democratic.
Providence is overwhelmingly Democratic, with mostly white, highly educated and affluent liberals around Brown University, a large Jewish community and more working-class and diverse Democrats in the city’s black and Latino populations.
Northern Rhode Island, around Woonsocket, is socially conservative but more supportive of an activist government on issues like Social Security, Mr. Mackay said. This is Reagan Democrat territory.
Conversely, in southern Rhode Island in Washington County, socially moderate, highly educated and wealthy voters live along the water in towns like Westerly and Charlestown. This is a region dominated by Rockefeller Republicans, the old base of the Republican Party in New England, who now vote for Democrats.
Between the two, Kent County, anchored by Warwick, is mostly suburban, relatively affluent and one of Rhode Island’s more competitive counties. This was the only county in Rhode Island where Senator John McCain carried more than 40 percent of the vote in 2008.
The Bellwether: Bristol County
Look to Bristol County for an early clue as to how Rhode Island will vote. It includes remnants of the state’s traditional economic drivers in Bristol and Warren, like fishing and manufacturing. But there’s also manifestations of a new knowledge-based economy in wealthy, suburban towns like Barrington, Mr. Mackay said. And over all, Bristol County is becoming more affluent and gentrified, Ms. Moakley said.
Bristol County was a few percentage points more Republican leaning than the state in the 2000 presidential election, but it matched the two-party vote shares in Rhode Island almost perfectly in 2004 and 2008.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 100 percent favorite to carry Rhode Island, according to the current FiveThirtyEight, and all signs point to it remaining reliably Democratic-leaning in presidential elections.
A resurgent Republican Party seems unlikely in Rhode Island. As long as the national Republican brand is strongly defined by cultural conservatism, socially moderate, fiscal conservatives in Rhode Island will most likely continue to vote Democratic.
This dynamic has been apparent by this year’s race for Rhode Island First Congressional District. Brenden Doherty, a Republican, was running as a moderate and seemed to be leading the incumbent, Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat. But as the presidential race kicked into full gear, Ms. Moakley said, Mr. Cicilline was able to tie Mr. Doherty with Mr. Romney and the national Republican Party. The latest polls show Mr. Cicilline in front.
Mr. Doherty could still win, of course, but the national Republican brand is a millstone for Rhode Island Republicans, making it harder for them to gain office.
Rhode Island still has socially moderate, fiscally conservative voters. It just doesn’t have a partisan home for them.
So while the odds are against state Republicans ascending to power, there could be “an increasing move toward independent candidates,” Ms. Moakley said.
“Because,” she added, “there’s so many people with no place to go.”
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Rhode Island.
Rhode Island:
In the Rhode Island State Legislature, “there are so few Republicans they barely give them parking spaces,” Ms. Moakley said.
Indeed, Rhode Island is among the most Democratic-leaning states. It ranks as the fourth bluest state in the nation in the FiveThirtyEight Presidential Voting Index, and Democrats have more than a 3-to-1 edge in voter registration, an overwhelming advantage.
Yet Rhode Island has not elected a Democratic governor since 1992. And one of its two United States senators was a Republican from 1976 to 2007: John Chafee, then his son Lincoln Chafee. The younger Mr. Chafee, now an independent, was elected governor in 2010.
What allows for such disparate results? Elasticity. Rhode Island is the most elastic state, a large swatch of its electorate are persuadable voters unaligned with either political party. Rhode Island has very few Republicans (10 percent of registered voters), a ton of Democrats (41 percent), but even more unaffiliated voters (49 percent).
In presidential races, those unaffiliated voters break largely for the Democrat. The last Republican to carry the state was Ronald Reagan in 1984. But at the state level, unaffiliated voters have often opted to elect socially moderate Republican governors as a check on the Democratic-controlled legislature, Mr. Mackay said.
Rhode Island has a lot of swing voters, partly because the state’s main demographic groups do not correlate strongly with either political party.Democrats have a solid base in the state’s Hispanic population (13 percent) and black population (7 percent). But outside of those communities voters do not fit perfectly into either major party. Many Democrats are former Rockefeller Republicans, and many Republicans are Reagan Democrats. Party affiliation is a weak bond for many Rhode Island voters.
In addition, Rhode Island’s largest religious populace, Roman Catholics, also tend to be swing voters. Nationally, every winning presidential candidate since the 1972 election has also carried the Catholic vote.
Rhode Island is the only majority Catholic state (52 percent) in the nation, according to Gallup (Massachusetts comes close). And unlike evangelical Christians and Mormons (who lean heavily Republican) or Jews (who lean Democratic), Catholic voters are split roughly down the middle. White Catholics lean slightly Republican, but Hispanic Catholics skew Democratic.
Providence is overwhelmingly Democratic, with mostly white, highly educated and affluent liberals around Brown University, a large Jewish community and more working-class and diverse Democrats in the city’s black and Latino populations.
Northern Rhode Island, around Woonsocket, is socially conservative but more supportive of an activist government on issues like Social Security, Mr. Mackay said. This is Reagan Democrat territory.
Conversely, in southern Rhode Island in Washington County, socially moderate, highly educated and wealthy voters live along the water in towns like Westerly and Charlestown. This is a region dominated by Rockefeller Republicans, the old base of the Republican Party in New England, who now vote for Democrats.
Between the two, Kent County, anchored by Warwick, is mostly suburban, relatively affluent and one of Rhode Island’s more competitive counties. This was the only county in Rhode Island where Senator John McCain carried more than 40 percent of the vote in 2008.
The Bellwether: Bristol County
Look to Bristol County for an early clue as to how Rhode Island will vote. It includes remnants of the state’s traditional economic drivers in Bristol and Warren, like fishing and manufacturing. But there’s also manifestations of a new knowledge-based economy in wealthy, suburban towns like Barrington, Mr. Mackay said. And over all, Bristol County is becoming more affluent and gentrified, Ms. Moakley said.
Bristol County was a few percentage points more Republican leaning than the state in the 2000 presidential election, but it matched the two-party vote shares in Rhode Island almost perfectly in 2004 and 2008.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 100 percent favorite to carry Rhode Island, according to the current FiveThirtyEight, and all signs point to it remaining reliably Democratic-leaning in presidential elections.
A resurgent Republican Party seems unlikely in Rhode Island. As long as the national Republican brand is strongly defined by cultural conservatism, socially moderate, fiscal conservatives in Rhode Island will most likely continue to vote Democratic.
This dynamic has been apparent by this year’s race for Rhode Island First Congressional District. Brenden Doherty, a Republican, was running as a moderate and seemed to be leading the incumbent, Representative David Cicilline, a Democrat. But as the presidential race kicked into full gear, Ms. Moakley said, Mr. Cicilline was able to tie Mr. Doherty with Mr. Romney and the national Republican Party. The latest polls show Mr. Cicilline in front.
Mr. Doherty could still win, of course, but the national Republican brand is a millstone for Rhode Island Republicans, making it harder for them to gain office.
Rhode Island still has socially moderate, fiscally conservative voters. It just doesn’t have a partisan home for them.
So while the odds are against state Republicans ascending to power, there could be “an increasing move toward independent candidates,” Ms. Moakley said.
“Because,” she added, “there’s so many people with no place to go.”
Monday, October 15, 2012
Presidential Geography: Maine
The 2012 presidential election is a few weeks away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Maine.
Maine:
The odds of an Electoral College tie are still very small, 1.3 percent according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast. But those odds have risen as Mitt Romney has narrowed President Obama’s lead. At the beginning of October the odds of a tie were 0.6 percent and several weeks before that they were 0.3 percent.
The closer the presidential race the more important each and every electoral vote becomes, including the single vote awarded to the winner of Maine’s Second Congressional District. Although Maine, over all, is reliably Democratic in presidential elections, it apportions its electoral votes by Congressional district, and the Second District is the more Republican-leaning of the two.
Can Mr. Romney carry Maine’s Second Congressional District? It’s not likely. But the political calculus in Maine is complicated by the state’s independent streak. Maine voters aren’t particularly attached to either main political party. Perhaps no state has been friendlier to third party candidates.
Maine was Ross Perot’s best state in 1992; Mr. Perot finished second with 30 percent of the vote, behind Bill Clinton but ahead of George Bush. Maine was also Mr. Perot’s best state in 1996, and one of Ralph Nader’s best states in 2000.
At the state level, Maine has had two independent governors since 1975 — James B. Longley and Angus King — and they almost elected another independent, Eliot Cutler, in 2010. This year, Maine seems poised to elect Mr. King to the Senate.
At the presidential level, no third-party candidate is especially strong this year, but Maine’s independent streak is rooted in its idiosyncrasies — neither party exactly fits the state’s political profile. Maine has a lot of swing voters, which leads to fairly schizophrenic election results. Maine is represented by two fairly liberal Democrats in the House, two moderate Republicans in the Senate and a Tea Party Republican in the governor’s mansion.
Maine has Republican characteristics: it is the whitest and oldest state in the nation. It’s also the second most rural state. At the state level, a Democrat has not won a majority in Maine since 1988, Mr. Strimling said (they have won pluralities).
On the other hand, Maine has gone blue in the last five presidential elections. It is mostly secular and relatively liberal on social issues. Maine was long a moderate Republican state, and went Democratic with the rest of New England and the Northeast as the Republican Party became more defined by cultural conservatism. Both Maine’s Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, are abortion rights advocates.
The main political divide in Maine is between the south coast and the vast interior north of Augusta, roughly mirroring the geography of the state’s two Congressional districts.
The First District is anchored by Portland, the state’s largest city. Portland is liberal, with large young, professional and gay communities.
The Second District is relatively poor and more Republican-leaning. The Second District’s Piscataquis County was the only county Senator John McCain carried in New England in his 2008 presidential run.
Interior Maine is more socially conservative than the coast. In 2009, Maine voters overturned a law the legislature had passed legalizing same-sex marriage. Coastal Maine supported same-sex marriage 53 percent to 47 percent. But that was too small of a margin to overcome the interior, which opposed it, 61 percent to 39 percent.
About 3,500 Republicans were added to the Second District by redistricting, and the Democratic-leaning towns of Waterville and Winslow were moved into the First District. The Second District still has Lewiston, a heavily Franco-American, Catholic and working-class town. Lewiston “has been by and large Democratic, but it can swing different ways,” Ms. Fried said.
Maine’s Second District “is a touch more Republican than it was in 2008, but the change is really very minimal,” said David Wasserman, a redistricting expert at Cook Political Report.
The Bellwether: Oxford County
Oxford County, along Maine’s western border, is dotted by blue-collar mill towns like Rumford and full of Franco-American voters who skew Democratic.
Oxford County has matched the statewide vote in Maine within about one percentage point in the last three presidential elections.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney’s surge in national polls is as likely to manifest itself in Maine — as one of the most elastic states — as anywhere. For decades Maine was defined by moderate, Rockefeller Republicanism, and in Mr. Romney’s debate performance he tacked toward the ideological center. That move might have played particularly well with moderate Maine voters.
Still, Maine is solidly Democratic-leaning in presidential elections. And although the Second District is more conservative than the First District, neither is Republican leaning. According to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, Mr. Obama is a 99 percent favorite in Maine over all, a 100 percent favorite in Maine’s First District and a 85 percent favorite in Maine’s Second District.
“If Romney does have a chance in Maine’s Second District,” Mr. Strimling said, “then Obama is in a lot of trouble.”
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Maine.
Maine:
The odds of an Electoral College tie are still very small, 1.3 percent according to the FiveThirtyEight forecast. But those odds have risen as Mitt Romney has narrowed President Obama’s lead. At the beginning of October the odds of a tie were 0.6 percent and several weeks before that they were 0.3 percent.
The closer the presidential race the more important each and every electoral vote becomes, including the single vote awarded to the winner of Maine’s Second Congressional District. Although Maine, over all, is reliably Democratic in presidential elections, it apportions its electoral votes by Congressional district, and the Second District is the more Republican-leaning of the two.
Can Mr. Romney carry Maine’s Second Congressional District? It’s not likely. But the political calculus in Maine is complicated by the state’s independent streak. Maine voters aren’t particularly attached to either main political party. Perhaps no state has been friendlier to third party candidates.
Maine was Ross Perot’s best state in 1992; Mr. Perot finished second with 30 percent of the vote, behind Bill Clinton but ahead of George Bush. Maine was also Mr. Perot’s best state in 1996, and one of Ralph Nader’s best states in 2000.
At the state level, Maine has had two independent governors since 1975 — James B. Longley and Angus King — and they almost elected another independent, Eliot Cutler, in 2010. This year, Maine seems poised to elect Mr. King to the Senate.
At the presidential level, no third-party candidate is especially strong this year, but Maine’s independent streak is rooted in its idiosyncrasies — neither party exactly fits the state’s political profile. Maine has a lot of swing voters, which leads to fairly schizophrenic election results. Maine is represented by two fairly liberal Democrats in the House, two moderate Republicans in the Senate and a Tea Party Republican in the governor’s mansion.
Maine has Republican characteristics: it is the whitest and oldest state in the nation. It’s also the second most rural state. At the state level, a Democrat has not won a majority in Maine since 1988, Mr. Strimling said (they have won pluralities).
On the other hand, Maine has gone blue in the last five presidential elections. It is mostly secular and relatively liberal on social issues. Maine was long a moderate Republican state, and went Democratic with the rest of New England and the Northeast as the Republican Party became more defined by cultural conservatism. Both Maine’s Republican senators, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe, are abortion rights advocates.
The main political divide in Maine is between the south coast and the vast interior north of Augusta, roughly mirroring the geography of the state’s two Congressional districts.
The First District is anchored by Portland, the state’s largest city. Portland is liberal, with large young, professional and gay communities.
The Second District is relatively poor and more Republican-leaning. The Second District’s Piscataquis County was the only county Senator John McCain carried in New England in his 2008 presidential run.
Interior Maine is more socially conservative than the coast. In 2009, Maine voters overturned a law the legislature had passed legalizing same-sex marriage. Coastal Maine supported same-sex marriage 53 percent to 47 percent. But that was too small of a margin to overcome the interior, which opposed it, 61 percent to 39 percent.
About 3,500 Republicans were added to the Second District by redistricting, and the Democratic-leaning towns of Waterville and Winslow were moved into the First District. The Second District still has Lewiston, a heavily Franco-American, Catholic and working-class town. Lewiston “has been by and large Democratic, but it can swing different ways,” Ms. Fried said.
Maine’s Second District “is a touch more Republican than it was in 2008, but the change is really very minimal,” said David Wasserman, a redistricting expert at Cook Political Report.
The Bellwether: Oxford County
Oxford County, along Maine’s western border, is dotted by blue-collar mill towns like Rumford and full of Franco-American voters who skew Democratic.
Oxford County has matched the statewide vote in Maine within about one percentage point in the last three presidential elections.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney’s surge in national polls is as likely to manifest itself in Maine — as one of the most elastic states — as anywhere. For decades Maine was defined by moderate, Rockefeller Republicanism, and in Mr. Romney’s debate performance he tacked toward the ideological center. That move might have played particularly well with moderate Maine voters.
Still, Maine is solidly Democratic-leaning in presidential elections. And although the Second District is more conservative than the First District, neither is Republican leaning. According to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, Mr. Obama is a 99 percent favorite in Maine over all, a 100 percent favorite in Maine’s First District and a 85 percent favorite in Maine’s Second District.
“If Romney does have a chance in Maine’s Second District,” Mr. Strimling said, “then Obama is in a lot of trouble.”
Presidential Geography: North Dakota
The 2012 presidential election is a few weeks away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is North Dakota.
North Dakota:
The recipe for Democratic success in North Dakota, a Republican-leaning state, has long been the same: be personable, be moderate and champion the farm.
But a new ingredient, Bakken shale oil, has recently been added to the state’s partisan mix. The boom in oil in western North Dakota may solidify the Republican hold on the state, or it could stir voters to take another look at Democratic policies.
North Dakota is a conservative state. It has been carried by Democrats just five times in 30 presidential elections. The state’s electorate is relatively old, predominantly white and socially conservative.
Yet Democrats have been able to compete and even thrive here, just as they have in South Dakota. North Dakota, a place with agrarian roots and a small population (roughly 684,000), has been particularly friendly to Democrats in elections for the United States Senate and House. From 1987 to 2010, North Dakota had an all-Democratic Congressional delegation.
Historically, farmers — at the mercy of commodity prices, the railroads, the banks, the weather and more — would turn to collective action and government for protection and stability. That impulse helped give rise to the Nonpartisan League, which was founded in 1915 by a former Socialist Party organizer. The league called for a state-owned bank and a state-owned grain elevator and mill (North Dakota still has all three).
In 1956, the Nonpartisan League merged with the state’s Democratic Party, and for years North Dakota’s streak of agrarian populism allowed Democrats to win elections. The state’s recent Democratic politicians — Senator Kent Conrad, former Senator Byron Dorgan and former Representative Earl Pomeroy — were cut from this tradition.
Today, many farms in North Dakota are no longer tilled by solitary yeoman. Family farms have largely been replaced by giant agribusinesses, Mr. Jendrysik said, and “the populism among the farm class is not there as much as it used to be.”
As that populist streak has faded, so has the Democratic Party. In the last decade, Mr. Jendrysik said, Republicans have “pretty much wiped the Democrats out in the legislature, and in terms of statewide offices, they’ve pretty much wiped the Democrats out there too.” Mr. Pomeroy lost re-election in 2010. Mr. Dorgan retired. Mr. Conrad is retiring.
Democrats are now limited to competing in the cities of eastern North Dakota, in Fargo and Grand Forks, as well as the state’s American Indian reservations. Democrats win solid majorities in counties dominated by reservations, but in Grand Forks County and Cass County, where Fargo is, Mr. Obama managed only slim victories in 2008, of 5 and 7 percentage points respectively.
As you travel west, North Dakota becomes less populated and more conservative. Mr. McCain carried almost every county in western North Dakota, including the main population center in the west, Bismarck, with 61 percent of the vote.
The oil bonanza is taking place west and northwest of Bismarck, and the scale is staggering. This year alone, North Dakota overtook California and then Alaska to become the nation’s second biggest producer of petroleum, behind only Texas. Six years ago North Dakota ranked ninth.
The oil rush has had a profound effect on the state. Incomes have surged in oil-producing counties, and the state’s general fund is flush with cash from new tax revenues. North Dakota was left virtually untouched by the recession; the state’s unemployment rate steadily fell throughout. In August, the last month for which data is available, North Dakota had the nation’s lowest jobless rate, 3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the influx of oil workers has strained infrastructure. Housing is in short supply, giant trucks are tearing up roads and pollution has become a concern.
The Bellwether: Richland County
Richland County, in the southeast corner of North Dakota, has been an imperfect bellwether in the last three president elections. It was two percentage points more Democratic-leaning than the state in 2008. But it was a bit more Republican-leaning than the state in 2004 and 2000.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 100 percent favorite in North Dakota, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, and the presidential race is unlikely to receive much attention there. Instead, North Dakota’s Senate race is center stage, and it may provide an early clue as to how the Bakken oil rush will influence North Dakota politics.
Both Representative Rick Berg, a Republican, and Democrat Heidi Heitkamp have come out in favor of across-the-board energy development, including the Keystone pipeline.
But the perception that national Democrats are hostile to nonrenewable energy sources has helped Republicans in other energy-producing states like West Virginia and Wyoming. And it may in North Dakota. Mr. Berg has tried to tie Ms. Heitkamp to national Democrats, Mr. Jendrysik said, and “Heitkamp is basically running away from the national Democratic Party.”
On the other hand, there are energy issues more favorable to the Democratic brand. The oil rush — specifically hydraulic fracturing and the flaring of natural gas — has raised environmental concerns, and “a lot of North Dakotans are proud of their environmental heritage and the land around them,” Mr. Harsell said.
In addition, a distrust of outsiders that was baked into the state by the experience of farmers could be reawakened. “Big Oil is owned by outside interests,” Mr. Harsell said.
How North Dakotans weigh the pros and cons of an oil-saturated economy will partly dictate the effect the Bakken rush has on state politics. This year’s senate race may provide an early indication whether North Dakotan Democrats can still maintain identities distinct from national Democrats.
According to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, the Republican, Mr. Berg, is a 77 percent favorite.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is North Dakota.
North Dakota:
The recipe for Democratic success in North Dakota, a Republican-leaning state, has long been the same: be personable, be moderate and champion the farm.
But a new ingredient, Bakken shale oil, has recently been added to the state’s partisan mix. The boom in oil in western North Dakota may solidify the Republican hold on the state, or it could stir voters to take another look at Democratic policies.
North Dakota is a conservative state. It has been carried by Democrats just five times in 30 presidential elections. The state’s electorate is relatively old, predominantly white and socially conservative.
Yet Democrats have been able to compete and even thrive here, just as they have in South Dakota. North Dakota, a place with agrarian roots and a small population (roughly 684,000), has been particularly friendly to Democrats in elections for the United States Senate and House. From 1987 to 2010, North Dakota had an all-Democratic Congressional delegation.
Historically, farmers — at the mercy of commodity prices, the railroads, the banks, the weather and more — would turn to collective action and government for protection and stability. That impulse helped give rise to the Nonpartisan League, which was founded in 1915 by a former Socialist Party organizer. The league called for a state-owned bank and a state-owned grain elevator and mill (North Dakota still has all three).
In 1956, the Nonpartisan League merged with the state’s Democratic Party, and for years North Dakota’s streak of agrarian populism allowed Democrats to win elections. The state’s recent Democratic politicians — Senator Kent Conrad, former Senator Byron Dorgan and former Representative Earl Pomeroy — were cut from this tradition.
Today, many farms in North Dakota are no longer tilled by solitary yeoman. Family farms have largely been replaced by giant agribusinesses, Mr. Jendrysik said, and “the populism among the farm class is not there as much as it used to be.”
As that populist streak has faded, so has the Democratic Party. In the last decade, Mr. Jendrysik said, Republicans have “pretty much wiped the Democrats out in the legislature, and in terms of statewide offices, they’ve pretty much wiped the Democrats out there too.” Mr. Pomeroy lost re-election in 2010. Mr. Dorgan retired. Mr. Conrad is retiring.
Democrats are now limited to competing in the cities of eastern North Dakota, in Fargo and Grand Forks, as well as the state’s American Indian reservations. Democrats win solid majorities in counties dominated by reservations, but in Grand Forks County and Cass County, where Fargo is, Mr. Obama managed only slim victories in 2008, of 5 and 7 percentage points respectively.
As you travel west, North Dakota becomes less populated and more conservative. Mr. McCain carried almost every county in western North Dakota, including the main population center in the west, Bismarck, with 61 percent of the vote.
The oil bonanza is taking place west and northwest of Bismarck, and the scale is staggering. This year alone, North Dakota overtook California and then Alaska to become the nation’s second biggest producer of petroleum, behind only Texas. Six years ago North Dakota ranked ninth.
The oil rush has had a profound effect on the state. Incomes have surged in oil-producing counties, and the state’s general fund is flush with cash from new tax revenues. North Dakota was left virtually untouched by the recession; the state’s unemployment rate steadily fell throughout. In August, the last month for which data is available, North Dakota had the nation’s lowest jobless rate, 3 percent, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
But the influx of oil workers has strained infrastructure. Housing is in short supply, giant trucks are tearing up roads and pollution has become a concern.
The Bellwether: Richland County
Richland County, in the southeast corner of North Dakota, has been an imperfect bellwether in the last three president elections. It was two percentage points more Democratic-leaning than the state in 2008. But it was a bit more Republican-leaning than the state in 2004 and 2000.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 100 percent favorite in North Dakota, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, and the presidential race is unlikely to receive much attention there. Instead, North Dakota’s Senate race is center stage, and it may provide an early clue as to how the Bakken oil rush will influence North Dakota politics.
Both Representative Rick Berg, a Republican, and Democrat Heidi Heitkamp have come out in favor of across-the-board energy development, including the Keystone pipeline.
But the perception that national Democrats are hostile to nonrenewable energy sources has helped Republicans in other energy-producing states like West Virginia and Wyoming. And it may in North Dakota. Mr. Berg has tried to tie Ms. Heitkamp to national Democrats, Mr. Jendrysik said, and “Heitkamp is basically running away from the national Democratic Party.”
On the other hand, there are energy issues more favorable to the Democratic brand. The oil rush — specifically hydraulic fracturing and the flaring of natural gas — has raised environmental concerns, and “a lot of North Dakotans are proud of their environmental heritage and the land around them,” Mr. Harsell said.
In addition, a distrust of outsiders that was baked into the state by the experience of farmers could be reawakened. “Big Oil is owned by outside interests,” Mr. Harsell said.
How North Dakotans weigh the pros and cons of an oil-saturated economy will partly dictate the effect the Bakken rush has on state politics. This year’s senate race may provide an early indication whether North Dakotan Democrats can still maintain identities distinct from national Democrats.
According to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, the Republican, Mr. Berg, is a 77 percent favorite.
Thursday, October 11, 2012
Presidential Geography: Alabama/Mississippi
The 2012 presidential election is a few weeks away and there is still time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Alabama and Mississippi.
Alabama/Mississippi:
One recurring theme in the states we have profiled so far has been the exodus of Southern whites from the Democratic Party, yielding a striking transformation. The Solid South — so named for the regional hegemony of Democrats — has been reversed, and states that were once Democratic from top to bottom are becoming (or already are) equally Republican.
The evolution has progressed particularly far in the Deep South, but Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas are all at different stages.
Arkansas is reliably red in presidential elections but still elects Democrats at the local level (although for how much longer is an open question). Republicans took over at every level in Louisiana and Georgia, although in Georgia growing diversity has aroused small glimmers of a Democratic revival.
In Alabama and Mississippi, however, the last vestiges of the Democratic South were wiped away in 2010 and 2011, respectively (Mississippi holds off-year elections), and Democrats do not have any clear path back to power.
Mitt Romney is essentially assured Alabama’s nine electoral votes and Mississippi’s six. Both states became reliably Republican in presidential elections in the early 1980s, “then little by little all of the dominoes began to fall,” Ms. Davis said. In the past two years the conversion was completed: Republicans now control both states’ legislatures and virtually every statewide office.
Moreover, because of the partisan makeup of Alabama and Mississippi, Republican control will most likely prove durable. Alabama and Mississippi are the two most inelastic states in the nation; they have very few swing voters and thus are largely impervious to changing political conditions at the national level. The same dynamic that kept Democrats in power for decades now favors the Republican Party: the partisan uniformity of the white majority.
“When white voters made the switch to the Republican Party, they went wholesale,” Mr. King said.
According to 2008 exit polls, white voters represented 65 percent of the electorate in Alabama and 62 percent in Mississippi. Neither is an overwhelming majority. But Senator John McCain won the white vote in Alabama, 88 percent to 10 percent, and President Obama carried African-Americans, 98 percent to 2 percent. The Mississippi breakdown was almost exactly the same, except Mr. Obama carried 11 percent of the white vote instead of 10 percent.
Mississippi has the highest share of black residents in the nation, 37 percent, and Alabama has the sixth highest, 26 percent. But both are too low to overcome the G.O.P. advantage among white voters.
In Alabama and Mississippi, the political landscape mirrors the racial landscape: the Democratic Party is strong where African-Americans are a majority or close to a majority, and Republicans prevail everywhere else.
Democrats are dominant in Alabama’s Black Belt (named for the color of the topsoil) and the Mississippi Delta region of Mississippi. Both areas have rich soil and were large cotton producers. Today, they are predominantly African-American, rural, poor and sparsely populated.
Of Alabama’s four biggest cities — Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile and Huntsville — Democrats are most competitive in the first two, which also have the highest share of African-Americans. In Mississippi, Republicans are a majority in all the main population centers except for Jackson’s Hinds County, which is 69 percent African-American.
Outside of the predominantly African-American areas, Alabama and Mississippi are deeply conservative and heavily Republican. (We profiled both states’ Republican electorates during the primaries. Here is Alabama. Here is Mississippi).
The Bellwethers: Talladega County, Ala., and Forrest County, Miss.
The best bellwether county in Alabama is Talladega County, home to the famous racetrack. Talladega County has been an imperfect barometer, however, consistently leaning several percentage points to the left of the state.
In Mississippi, Hattiesburg’s Forrest County was just a couple of percentage points more Republican-leaning than the state in 2000 and 2004. But in 2008, Forrest County exactly matched the statewide vote.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama has zero chance of carrying Alabama or Mississippi, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. And the local political analysts said the future looked just as grim for Democrats in both states.
Georgia’s fast-growing minority population has outpaced the growth of Republican-leaning whites, giving Democrats hope of competing there in the near future. In Alabama and Mississippi, however, the African-American population has been largely stagnant. Alabama’s Hispanic community is growing, but it is still just 4 percent of the state. In Mississippi, Hispanics are 3 percent.
A coalition of African-Americans and Hispanics could bring Democrats back from political oblivion, but only after substantially more growth in their populations takes place. As long as the white vote is so overwhelmingly Republican-leaning, Alabama and Mississippi will remain Republican-leaning as well.
And because both states have so few swing voters, “I think we’re looking at a generation, maybe 30 years, of Republican wins,” Ms. Davis said.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Alabama and Mississippi.
Alabama/Mississippi:
One recurring theme in the states we have profiled so far has been the exodus of Southern whites from the Democratic Party, yielding a striking transformation. The Solid South — so named for the regional hegemony of Democrats — has been reversed, and states that were once Democratic from top to bottom are becoming (or already are) equally Republican.
The evolution has progressed particularly far in the Deep South, but Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana and Arkansas are all at different stages.
Arkansas is reliably red in presidential elections but still elects Democrats at the local level (although for how much longer is an open question). Republicans took over at every level in Louisiana and Georgia, although in Georgia growing diversity has aroused small glimmers of a Democratic revival.
In Alabama and Mississippi, however, the last vestiges of the Democratic South were wiped away in 2010 and 2011, respectively (Mississippi holds off-year elections), and Democrats do not have any clear path back to power.
Mitt Romney is essentially assured Alabama’s nine electoral votes and Mississippi’s six. Both states became reliably Republican in presidential elections in the early 1980s, “then little by little all of the dominoes began to fall,” Ms. Davis said. In the past two years the conversion was completed: Republicans now control both states’ legislatures and virtually every statewide office.
Moreover, because of the partisan makeup of Alabama and Mississippi, Republican control will most likely prove durable. Alabama and Mississippi are the two most inelastic states in the nation; they have very few swing voters and thus are largely impervious to changing political conditions at the national level. The same dynamic that kept Democrats in power for decades now favors the Republican Party: the partisan uniformity of the white majority.
“When white voters made the switch to the Republican Party, they went wholesale,” Mr. King said.
According to 2008 exit polls, white voters represented 65 percent of the electorate in Alabama and 62 percent in Mississippi. Neither is an overwhelming majority. But Senator John McCain won the white vote in Alabama, 88 percent to 10 percent, and President Obama carried African-Americans, 98 percent to 2 percent. The Mississippi breakdown was almost exactly the same, except Mr. Obama carried 11 percent of the white vote instead of 10 percent.
Mississippi has the highest share of black residents in the nation, 37 percent, and Alabama has the sixth highest, 26 percent. But both are too low to overcome the G.O.P. advantage among white voters.
In Alabama and Mississippi, the political landscape mirrors the racial landscape: the Democratic Party is strong where African-Americans are a majority or close to a majority, and Republicans prevail everywhere else.
Democrats are dominant in Alabama’s Black Belt (named for the color of the topsoil) and the Mississippi Delta region of Mississippi. Both areas have rich soil and were large cotton producers. Today, they are predominantly African-American, rural, poor and sparsely populated.
Of Alabama’s four biggest cities — Birmingham, Montgomery, Mobile and Huntsville — Democrats are most competitive in the first two, which also have the highest share of African-Americans. In Mississippi, Republicans are a majority in all the main population centers except for Jackson’s Hinds County, which is 69 percent African-American.
Outside of the predominantly African-American areas, Alabama and Mississippi are deeply conservative and heavily Republican. (We profiled both states’ Republican electorates during the primaries. Here is Alabama. Here is Mississippi).
The Bellwethers: Talladega County, Ala., and Forrest County, Miss.
The best bellwether county in Alabama is Talladega County, home to the famous racetrack. Talladega County has been an imperfect barometer, however, consistently leaning several percentage points to the left of the state.
In Mississippi, Hattiesburg’s Forrest County was just a couple of percentage points more Republican-leaning than the state in 2000 and 2004. But in 2008, Forrest County exactly matched the statewide vote.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama has zero chance of carrying Alabama or Mississippi, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. And the local political analysts said the future looked just as grim for Democrats in both states.
Georgia’s fast-growing minority population has outpaced the growth of Republican-leaning whites, giving Democrats hope of competing there in the near future. In Alabama and Mississippi, however, the African-American population has been largely stagnant. Alabama’s Hispanic community is growing, but it is still just 4 percent of the state. In Mississippi, Hispanics are 3 percent.
A coalition of African-Americans and Hispanics could bring Democrats back from political oblivion, but only after substantially more growth in their populations takes place. As long as the white vote is so overwhelmingly Republican-leaning, Alabama and Mississippi will remain Republican-leaning as well.
And because both states have so few swing voters, “I think we’re looking at a generation, maybe 30 years, of Republican wins,” Ms. Davis said.
Monday, October 8, 2012
Presidential Geography: California
The 2012 presidential election is about a month away and there is still a lot of time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is California.
California:
President Obama was in California on Monday, but not to campaign. The Golden State is safely Democratic, and Mr. Obama’s trip was packed with high-dollar fund-raisers. But the fact that California isn’t a battleground state doesn’t mean it isn’t of electoral importance.
With more than 37 million residents, California’s population is about 66 times that of Wyoming, which has the smallest population of any state in the union. Roughly one in eight Americans live in California, and the state has a proportional impact on presidential politics.
From 1968 to 1988, California was the linchpin in the Republican “lock” on the White House. Republicans held the presidency for 16 of those 20 years, and more California Republicans occupied the oval office (Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon) than Democrats from any state. California clearly wasn’t the sole reason for the G.O.P.’s success, but it was a big part of it.
With California having 55 electoral voters, 17 more than second-place Texas, its transformation from a red to blue state in 1992 upended the electoral math. Beginning in 1992, Democrats have won three of five presidential elections, they haven’t lost the electoral college by more than 35 votes, and they have lost the national popular vote just once.
The political landscape in California used to be divided between north and south. The north was Democratic-leaning, and Southern California was Republican-leaning, largely because the defense industry was a major economic engine there, Mr. Kousser said. At one point California accounted for almost a quarter of the nation’s defense industry, Mr. Gerston said, and Republicans were seen as better friends of the Pentagon budget.
Then the Cold War ended. In the early 1990s, defense spending began to fall, and numerous military bases in California were closed. This helped spark an out-migration of mostly white, affluent and Republican-leaning residents, including many former defense-industry workers.
While the out-migration of Republican-leaning voters helped push California to the left, the influx into California of Hispanics and Asians had an even larger effect. Between 1980 and 2000, California’s Hispanic and Asian communities each doubled as a share of the state’s population: Hispanics from 16 to 32 percent, and Asians from 5 to 11 percent. California became a majority minority state after the 2000 census, and today non-Hispanic whites are less than 40 percent of the state’s population (although they still constitute the majority of voters).
While California was growing more diverse, its main economic drivers were changing. Although agriculture remains a major industry, defense faded and Hollywood and Silicon Valley grew. California saw an influx of highly educated young professionals, Mr. Gerston said.
The demographic migrations have turned the state’s political axis by 90 degrees. The Democratic share of the California vote has climbed in every presidential election since 1992 as every region in the state except the interior became more Democratic.
Now California’s political divide is vertical. The coast, where most of the population is clustered, has a majority of liberal Democrats and a minority of moderate Republicans. Inland California has a majority of conservative Republicans and a minority of conservative Democrats.
If you’re in California and can see the Pacific Ocean, you’re almost sure to be surrounded by Democrats. The Bay Area and Los Angeles County, which is almost 50 percent Hispanic, provide millions of Democratic votes.
The Bay Area is especially left-leaning. San Francisco — which is about a third Asian-American and a sixth Hispanic and has a large gay community — is probably the most liberal part of the state and one of the most liberal parts of the country.
“You move into the Bay Area and basically you need a visa to get in there as a Republican,” Mr. Cain said.
There are still a few parcels of Republican-leaning beachfront property, but these aren’t as red as they used to be. South of Los Angeles and north of San Diego, affluent Orange County was historically a Republican stronghold. Over the last dozen years, however, the Hispanic population in Orange County has risen and Democrats have made inroads. Senator John McCain carried Orange County by only four percentage points in 2008.
San Diego, too, was reliably Republican, and it is still more right-leaning than California’s other major cities partly because it has retained a substantial military presence.
Inland California is less densely populated and more conservative. Republicans along the coast tend to be fiscally conservative but socially moderate. The Inland Empire, the Central Valley, and Northern California (excluding the coast) are the most socially conservative parts of the state. They are less diverse, more evangelical and more agrarian. Many of these more rural communities are home to Reagan Democrats — white, working-class and socially conservative voters who traditionally voted Democratic but now favor Republicans.
The Bellwether: Santa Barbara County
In the 2000 presidential election, Santa Barbara County, historically a bastion of wealthy, country-club Republicans, was several percentage points to the right of California over all. But in the last two elections, Santa Barbara County has been within one percentage point of the statewide vote, as the area’s Hispanic population has risen, and Republicans have lost support over environmental policy. The state’s Democrats and coastal Republicans tend to support green policies, and the G.O.P. lost some support with its “drill, baby, drill” strategy, Mr. Cain said, in Santa Barbara County specifically and California generally.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 100 percent favorite to carry the state, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. California is controlled top to bottom by Democrats. But despite its reputation as a liberal wonderland, California has a strong antitax streak (accompanied by a weaker antispending streak). With the state in severe fiscal trouble and a two-thirds legislative majority required for any tax increase, Democratic California has instituted large spending cuts.
With Democrats in control and the state struggling so badly — the state’s unemployment rate remains above 10 percent — one might expect California Republicans to be making a comeback. But the opposite is true: the state’s G.O.P. appears stuck in a downward spiral.
And it is in this regard where California might again provide a glimpse of the future: the challenge for California Republicans, to win over the growing numbers of minority voters, is the same challenge the party faces nationally.
The G.O.P. does have some openings. “Latinos are conservative when it comes to abortion,” Mr. Kousser said. And California Republicans have had some success in recruiting Hispanic candidates, Mr. Cain said.
But, Mr. Cain added, “Republicans really have to come to grips with the growth of Latino voters.”
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is California.
California:
President Obama was in California on Monday, but not to campaign. The Golden State is safely Democratic, and Mr. Obama’s trip was packed with high-dollar fund-raisers. But the fact that California isn’t a battleground state doesn’t mean it isn’t of electoral importance.
With more than 37 million residents, California’s population is about 66 times that of Wyoming, which has the smallest population of any state in the union. Roughly one in eight Americans live in California, and the state has a proportional impact on presidential politics.
From 1968 to 1988, California was the linchpin in the Republican “lock” on the White House. Republicans held the presidency for 16 of those 20 years, and more California Republicans occupied the oval office (Ronald Reagan and Richard Nixon) than Democrats from any state. California clearly wasn’t the sole reason for the G.O.P.’s success, but it was a big part of it.
With California having 55 electoral voters, 17 more than second-place Texas, its transformation from a red to blue state in 1992 upended the electoral math. Beginning in 1992, Democrats have won three of five presidential elections, they haven’t lost the electoral college by more than 35 votes, and they have lost the national popular vote just once.
The political landscape in California used to be divided between north and south. The north was Democratic-leaning, and Southern California was Republican-leaning, largely because the defense industry was a major economic engine there, Mr. Kousser said. At one point California accounted for almost a quarter of the nation’s defense industry, Mr. Gerston said, and Republicans were seen as better friends of the Pentagon budget.
Then the Cold War ended. In the early 1990s, defense spending began to fall, and numerous military bases in California were closed. This helped spark an out-migration of mostly white, affluent and Republican-leaning residents, including many former defense-industry workers.
While the out-migration of Republican-leaning voters helped push California to the left, the influx into California of Hispanics and Asians had an even larger effect. Between 1980 and 2000, California’s Hispanic and Asian communities each doubled as a share of the state’s population: Hispanics from 16 to 32 percent, and Asians from 5 to 11 percent. California became a majority minority state after the 2000 census, and today non-Hispanic whites are less than 40 percent of the state’s population (although they still constitute the majority of voters).
While California was growing more diverse, its main economic drivers were changing. Although agriculture remains a major industry, defense faded and Hollywood and Silicon Valley grew. California saw an influx of highly educated young professionals, Mr. Gerston said.
The demographic migrations have turned the state’s political axis by 90 degrees. The Democratic share of the California vote has climbed in every presidential election since 1992 as every region in the state except the interior became more Democratic.
Now California’s political divide is vertical. The coast, where most of the population is clustered, has a majority of liberal Democrats and a minority of moderate Republicans. Inland California has a majority of conservative Republicans and a minority of conservative Democrats.
If you’re in California and can see the Pacific Ocean, you’re almost sure to be surrounded by Democrats. The Bay Area and Los Angeles County, which is almost 50 percent Hispanic, provide millions of Democratic votes.
The Bay Area is especially left-leaning. San Francisco — which is about a third Asian-American and a sixth Hispanic and has a large gay community — is probably the most liberal part of the state and one of the most liberal parts of the country.
“You move into the Bay Area and basically you need a visa to get in there as a Republican,” Mr. Cain said.
There are still a few parcels of Republican-leaning beachfront property, but these aren’t as red as they used to be. South of Los Angeles and north of San Diego, affluent Orange County was historically a Republican stronghold. Over the last dozen years, however, the Hispanic population in Orange County has risen and Democrats have made inroads. Senator John McCain carried Orange County by only four percentage points in 2008.
San Diego, too, was reliably Republican, and it is still more right-leaning than California’s other major cities partly because it has retained a substantial military presence.
Inland California is less densely populated and more conservative. Republicans along the coast tend to be fiscally conservative but socially moderate. The Inland Empire, the Central Valley, and Northern California (excluding the coast) are the most socially conservative parts of the state. They are less diverse, more evangelical and more agrarian. Many of these more rural communities are home to Reagan Democrats — white, working-class and socially conservative voters who traditionally voted Democratic but now favor Republicans.
The Bellwether: Santa Barbara County
In the 2000 presidential election, Santa Barbara County, historically a bastion of wealthy, country-club Republicans, was several percentage points to the right of California over all. But in the last two elections, Santa Barbara County has been within one percentage point of the statewide vote, as the area’s Hispanic population has risen, and Republicans have lost support over environmental policy. The state’s Democrats and coastal Republicans tend to support green policies, and the G.O.P. lost some support with its “drill, baby, drill” strategy, Mr. Cain said, in Santa Barbara County specifically and California generally.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 100 percent favorite to carry the state, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. California is controlled top to bottom by Democrats. But despite its reputation as a liberal wonderland, California has a strong antitax streak (accompanied by a weaker antispending streak). With the state in severe fiscal trouble and a two-thirds legislative majority required for any tax increase, Democratic California has instituted large spending cuts.
With Democrats in control and the state struggling so badly — the state’s unemployment rate remains above 10 percent — one might expect California Republicans to be making a comeback. But the opposite is true: the state’s G.O.P. appears stuck in a downward spiral.
And it is in this regard where California might again provide a glimpse of the future: the challenge for California Republicans, to win over the growing numbers of minority voters, is the same challenge the party faces nationally.
The G.O.P. does have some openings. “Latinos are conservative when it comes to abortion,” Mr. Kousser said. And California Republicans have had some success in recruiting Hispanic candidates, Mr. Cain said.
But, Mr. Cain added, “Republicans really have to come to grips with the growth of Latino voters.”
Sunday, October 7, 2012
Presidential Geography: Wyoming
The 2012 presidential election is about a month away and there is still a lot of time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Wyoming.
Wyoming:
Early on in Wednesday’s presidential debate, President Obama and Mitt Romney began sparring over energy, where to get it and how to achieve energy independence. It was probably at that point when the ears of Wyomingites perked up.
With just under 570,000 residents, Wyoming is the smallest state by population. Less than one-fifth of 1 percent of Americans live in Wyoming.
But Wyoming is also the 10th largest state in land area, and that land is filled with oil, natural gas and coal — especially coal. Wyoming is the nation’s top coal producer, accounting for 40 percent of all the coal mined in the United States in 2011. Wyoming is also one of the nation’s top natural gas producers and top oil producers.
Mining accounts for almost 1 in 10 Wyoming jobs, and — as is the case in West Virginia — the perception that the Democratic Party is hostile to coal has hurt the party in Wyoming. But Wyoming’s pro-coal position is just one of many characteristics that make the state a Republican bastion.
Wyoming is among the least diverse states. It is the top gun-owning state. Wyoming is also one of the least urban states. The biggest city, Cheyenne, isn’t very big; about 60,000 people live there. The state’s second-largest city is Casper, which has about 56,000 residents.
“Regardless of what the Census Bureau might call urban,” Mr. King said, “there really is not an urban area in Wyoming.”
It’s all a recipe for a reliably red state: according to Gallup’s State of the States survey, 59 percent of Wyomingites lean Republican and just 26 percent lean Democratic, placing it second behind Utah in Republican support. Wyoming was where Mr. Obama made his worst showing in 2008. He received less than 33 percent of the vote there.
Wyoming once had a fairly defined partisan landscape. In the south, blue-collar workers like those who built the Union Pacific Railroad favored Democrats, and the southern string of counties in Wyoming leaned left. In fact, Wyoming was once a national bellwether. From 1900 through 1940, Wyoming picked the winning presidential candidate in every election.
But those days are long gone. Wyoming is now a sea of red. There are now “degrees of Republicanism rather than Republican regions versus Democratic regions,” Mr. King said.
The northeast is probably the most Republican-leaning part of the state. It is also the state’s largest coal-producing area, mostly due to Campbell County. Counties in the southwest, which are also uniformly Republican, are heavily Mormon. Nine percent of Wyoming’s population are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The state is tied with Nevada for the third-highest percentage of Mormons in the country.
There are just two blue islands in the state. Mr. Obama won 61 percent of the vote in Teton County, in northwest Wyoming, where Jackson Hole has attracted affluent liberals from out of state. Mr. Obama also carried Albany County, home to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Hispanics, at 9 percent of the population, are the largest minority in Wyoming. They are concentrated in the southern and eastern part of state, Mr. Frankland said. Over the last decade and a half, many Hispanics have come to Wyoming for jobs in agriculture (Wyoming’s third largest industry) and tourism (the state’s second biggest industry).Yellowstone National Park and Jackson Holeeach attract millions of visitors a year.
The Bellwether: Natrona County
Over the last three presidential elections, Natrona County has become more Republican-leaning and an improved barometer for the statewide vote. In 2008, it matched the state almost exactly. Although the shift could bestatistical noise, Natrona County was three percentage points more Democratic than Wyoming over all in 2000, two points more Democratic in 2004 and one point more Republican than the state as a whole in 2008.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 100 percent favorite to carry Wyoming’s three electoral votes. Wyoming has not favored a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.
At the state-level, however, moderate Democratic governors have been very competitive. Former Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat who served from 2003 to 2011, had the highest approval ratings in the nation at one point. Wyoming’s electorate is small enough that moderate and charismatic Democrats can overcome the state’s partisan gravity.
But currently Republicans have a thorough hold on Wyoming, and the state’smain ideological fault line doesn’t even involve Democrats. It divides the relatively socially moderate, libertarian wing of the Republican Party and the more conservative side, Mr. Frankland said.
In the Wyoming Republican Party, “there’s a real divide between the libertarians and the social conservatives,” Mr. Frankland said. “And so we’ve had battles here in the state over abortion and other issues. The libertarian side seems to win out usually, but it’s an ongoing struggle within the Republican Party.”
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Wyoming.
Wyoming:
Early on in Wednesday’s presidential debate, President Obama and Mitt Romney began sparring over energy, where to get it and how to achieve energy independence. It was probably at that point when the ears of Wyomingites perked up.
With just under 570,000 residents, Wyoming is the smallest state by population. Less than one-fifth of 1 percent of Americans live in Wyoming.
But Wyoming is also the 10th largest state in land area, and that land is filled with oil, natural gas and coal — especially coal. Wyoming is the nation’s top coal producer, accounting for 40 percent of all the coal mined in the United States in 2011. Wyoming is also one of the nation’s top natural gas producers and top oil producers.
Mining accounts for almost 1 in 10 Wyoming jobs, and — as is the case in West Virginia — the perception that the Democratic Party is hostile to coal has hurt the party in Wyoming. But Wyoming’s pro-coal position is just one of many characteristics that make the state a Republican bastion.
Wyoming is among the least diverse states. It is the top gun-owning state. Wyoming is also one of the least urban states. The biggest city, Cheyenne, isn’t very big; about 60,000 people live there. The state’s second-largest city is Casper, which has about 56,000 residents.
“Regardless of what the Census Bureau might call urban,” Mr. King said, “there really is not an urban area in Wyoming.”
It’s all a recipe for a reliably red state: according to Gallup’s State of the States survey, 59 percent of Wyomingites lean Republican and just 26 percent lean Democratic, placing it second behind Utah in Republican support. Wyoming was where Mr. Obama made his worst showing in 2008. He received less than 33 percent of the vote there.
Wyoming once had a fairly defined partisan landscape. In the south, blue-collar workers like those who built the Union Pacific Railroad favored Democrats, and the southern string of counties in Wyoming leaned left. In fact, Wyoming was once a national bellwether. From 1900 through 1940, Wyoming picked the winning presidential candidate in every election.
But those days are long gone. Wyoming is now a sea of red. There are now “degrees of Republicanism rather than Republican regions versus Democratic regions,” Mr. King said.
The northeast is probably the most Republican-leaning part of the state. It is also the state’s largest coal-producing area, mostly due to Campbell County. Counties in the southwest, which are also uniformly Republican, are heavily Mormon. Nine percent of Wyoming’s population are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. The state is tied with Nevada for the third-highest percentage of Mormons in the country.
There are just two blue islands in the state. Mr. Obama won 61 percent of the vote in Teton County, in northwest Wyoming, where Jackson Hole has attracted affluent liberals from out of state. Mr. Obama also carried Albany County, home to the University of Wyoming in Laramie.
Hispanics, at 9 percent of the population, are the largest minority in Wyoming. They are concentrated in the southern and eastern part of state, Mr. Frankland said. Over the last decade and a half, many Hispanics have come to Wyoming for jobs in agriculture (Wyoming’s third largest industry) and tourism (the state’s second biggest industry).Yellowstone National Park and Jackson Holeeach attract millions of visitors a year.
The Bellwether: Natrona County
Over the last three presidential elections, Natrona County has become more Republican-leaning and an improved barometer for the statewide vote. In 2008, it matched the state almost exactly. Although the shift could bestatistical noise, Natrona County was three percentage points more Democratic than Wyoming over all in 2000, two points more Democratic in 2004 and one point more Republican than the state as a whole in 2008.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Romney is a 100 percent favorite to carry Wyoming’s three electoral votes. Wyoming has not favored a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964.
At the state-level, however, moderate Democratic governors have been very competitive. Former Gov. Dave Freudenthal, a Democrat who served from 2003 to 2011, had the highest approval ratings in the nation at one point. Wyoming’s electorate is small enough that moderate and charismatic Democrats can overcome the state’s partisan gravity.
But currently Republicans have a thorough hold on Wyoming, and the state’smain ideological fault line doesn’t even involve Democrats. It divides the relatively socially moderate, libertarian wing of the Republican Party and the more conservative side, Mr. Frankland said.
In the Wyoming Republican Party, “there’s a real divide between the libertarians and the social conservatives,” Mr. Frankland said. “And so we’ve had battles here in the state over abortion and other issues. The libertarian side seems to win out usually, but it’s an ongoing struggle within the Republican Party.”
Thursday, October 4, 2012
Presidential Geography: Colorado
The 2012 presidential election is about a month away and there is still a lot of time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Colorado.
Colorado:
Colorado, the host state of the first presidential debate on Wednesday night, is a fitting platform for President Obama and Mitt Romney to begin making their closing pitch to voters. Colorado is a persuadable state, with a relatively balanced partisan split and a large number of swing voters.
Moreover, if the debates represent Mr. Romney’s last, best chance at a comeback, Colorado and the West may present the most likely starting point. Mr. Obama’s standing, compared to 2008, has appeared to deteriorate more in the West — specifically the Mountain West — than in other regions. That shift is evident in Colorado, although Mr. Obama has maintained a narrow lead in surveys there.
But the fact that Colorado is a political battleground at all is a recent development. It was a reliably Republican state just 10 years ago, having favored G.O.P. presidential candidates in every election but two — 1964 and 1992 — since 1950.
In 2000, Al Gore won the national popular vote, but George W. Bush easily carried Colorado. In 2002, Republicans held the governorship, the state’s two United States Senate seats, five of Colorado’s seven seats in the United States Congress, as well as majorities in the Colorado State Senate and Statehouse.
But fast-forward six years, and everything had been reversed. Democrats held both Senate seats, five United States Congressional seats, and majorities in both houses of the Colorado legislature. Republicans were left with only two House seats, exactly what Democrats had been clinging to in 2002.
The Colorado political landscape had been remade, and swiftly, by a rapidly growing Hispanic population and an influx of young, highly educated migrants from the West Coast, particularly California.
“Since the 1990s,” Mr. Masket said, “the high-tech industry has drawn a lot of people out here.”
Colorado is now 21 percent Hispanic as well as one of the youngest and best educated states. Almost a quarter of 2008 voters had completed at least a year of postgraduate study, according to exit polls.
In 2010, Republicans gained back some of that lost territory, and the political balance in Colorado now sits between its 2002 and 2008 extremes.
About 80 percent of Colorado residents live in cities, suburbs and small towns along the Front Range, from Greeley and Fort Collins south to Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
Denver, the northern Denver suburbs in Adams County and Boulder form the bedrock of Democratic support in Colorado. Denver is young, single and liberal. It’s a diverse city, at 31 percent Hispanic and 10 percent black. Adams County is 38 percent Hispanic.
Boulder County is mostly white but just as liberal as Denver. Boulder is home to the University of Colorado and a vibrant tech industry.
Democrats also tend to prevail in heavily Hispanic Pueblo County, although by smaller margins than in Denver and Boulder counties.
Between Denver and Pueblo is the Republican base of support. Colorado Springs is both fiscally and socially conservative, home to Focus on the Family and a large share of evangelical Christians as well as Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base.
Republicans are also strong in the outer ring of Denver suburbs. The communities south of Denver and north of Colorado Springs — in affluent and culturally conservative Douglas County — are solidly Republican.
With a few exceptions — ski resort towns like Aspen and Telluride and heavily Hispanic central and southern counties — the rest of Colorado is rural, dotted by ranches and Republicans. The western slope of the Rocky Mountains and the eastern plains (everything east of the Front Range) are both conservative but in a classic, western, libertarian way.
The Bellwether: Arapahoe County and Jefferson County
Arapahoe County and Jefferson County are part of the inner ring of the Denver suburbs. This is where the political effects of Colorado’s changing demographic have been most evident. George W. Bush carried both counties in 2000 and 2004, but Mr. Obama carried them in 2008.
Both counties are good barometers of the statewide vote, but Jefferson County has been perfect in each of the past three presidential elections. Jefferson County is full of working-class suburbs, a pivotal voting group.
“The campaigns are hitting Jefferson County hard,” Mr. Hanson said, because voters there “are more likely to be undecided.”
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 75 percent favorite in Colorado, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. That’s lower than his odds of winning re-election all together. Despite the fact that Mr. Obama overperformed in Colorado in 2008 relative to the nation, he seems to have lost more ground there than in other, seemingly less hospitable battleground states.
That shift is indicative of the entire region. Comparing the 2008 exit pollswith the regional breakdown of Gallup’s national tracking poll, it becomes clear that Mr. Obama’s popularity has taken a disproportionate hit in the West.
What happened? To begin with, battleground states in the Mountain West areelastic. That is, Colorado and Nevada have an above average share of swing voters, and they tend to respond to the national political environment.
Roughly 35 percent of registered voters in Colorado are unaffiliated with a political party. Some aren’t true swing voters, Mr. Saunders said, but Colorado has “a lot of voters who are willing to wet their finger, put it up, and see which way the winds are blowing.”
And Mr. Obama had a much more favorable wind in 2008.
The economic recovery has been particularly anemic in Mountain West battleground states. Colorado and Nevada are still suffering with unemployment rates above the national average; Nevada’s is 12.1 percent, and Colorado’s is 8.2 percent. 28Still, even if the Mountain West is a good region for Mr. Romney to begin a comeback, he would need to carry swing states in other regions to win the White House. Colorado has nine electoral votes, and Nevada has just six.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Colorado.
Colorado:
Colorado, the host state of the first presidential debate on Wednesday night, is a fitting platform for President Obama and Mitt Romney to begin making their closing pitch to voters. Colorado is a persuadable state, with a relatively balanced partisan split and a large number of swing voters.
Moreover, if the debates represent Mr. Romney’s last, best chance at a comeback, Colorado and the West may present the most likely starting point. Mr. Obama’s standing, compared to 2008, has appeared to deteriorate more in the West — specifically the Mountain West — than in other regions. That shift is evident in Colorado, although Mr. Obama has maintained a narrow lead in surveys there.
But the fact that Colorado is a political battleground at all is a recent development. It was a reliably Republican state just 10 years ago, having favored G.O.P. presidential candidates in every election but two — 1964 and 1992 — since 1950.
In 2000, Al Gore won the national popular vote, but George W. Bush easily carried Colorado. In 2002, Republicans held the governorship, the state’s two United States Senate seats, five of Colorado’s seven seats in the United States Congress, as well as majorities in the Colorado State Senate and Statehouse.
But fast-forward six years, and everything had been reversed. Democrats held both Senate seats, five United States Congressional seats, and majorities in both houses of the Colorado legislature. Republicans were left with only two House seats, exactly what Democrats had been clinging to in 2002.
The Colorado political landscape had been remade, and swiftly, by a rapidly growing Hispanic population and an influx of young, highly educated migrants from the West Coast, particularly California.
“Since the 1990s,” Mr. Masket said, “the high-tech industry has drawn a lot of people out here.”
Colorado is now 21 percent Hispanic as well as one of the youngest and best educated states. Almost a quarter of 2008 voters had completed at least a year of postgraduate study, according to exit polls.
In 2010, Republicans gained back some of that lost territory, and the political balance in Colorado now sits between its 2002 and 2008 extremes.
About 80 percent of Colorado residents live in cities, suburbs and small towns along the Front Range, from Greeley and Fort Collins south to Boulder, Denver, Colorado Springs and Pueblo.
Denver, the northern Denver suburbs in Adams County and Boulder form the bedrock of Democratic support in Colorado. Denver is young, single and liberal. It’s a diverse city, at 31 percent Hispanic and 10 percent black. Adams County is 38 percent Hispanic.
Boulder County is mostly white but just as liberal as Denver. Boulder is home to the University of Colorado and a vibrant tech industry.
Democrats also tend to prevail in heavily Hispanic Pueblo County, although by smaller margins than in Denver and Boulder counties.
Between Denver and Pueblo is the Republican base of support. Colorado Springs is both fiscally and socially conservative, home to Focus on the Family and a large share of evangelical Christians as well as Fort Carson and Peterson Air Force Base.
Republicans are also strong in the outer ring of Denver suburbs. The communities south of Denver and north of Colorado Springs — in affluent and culturally conservative Douglas County — are solidly Republican.
With a few exceptions — ski resort towns like Aspen and Telluride and heavily Hispanic central and southern counties — the rest of Colorado is rural, dotted by ranches and Republicans. The western slope of the Rocky Mountains and the eastern plains (everything east of the Front Range) are both conservative but in a classic, western, libertarian way.
The Bellwether: Arapahoe County and Jefferson County
Arapahoe County and Jefferson County are part of the inner ring of the Denver suburbs. This is where the political effects of Colorado’s changing demographic have been most evident. George W. Bush carried both counties in 2000 and 2004, but Mr. Obama carried them in 2008.
Both counties are good barometers of the statewide vote, but Jefferson County has been perfect in each of the past three presidential elections. Jefferson County is full of working-class suburbs, a pivotal voting group.
“The campaigns are hitting Jefferson County hard,” Mr. Hanson said, because voters there “are more likely to be undecided.”
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 75 percent favorite in Colorado, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast. That’s lower than his odds of winning re-election all together. Despite the fact that Mr. Obama overperformed in Colorado in 2008 relative to the nation, he seems to have lost more ground there than in other, seemingly less hospitable battleground states.
That shift is indicative of the entire region. Comparing the 2008 exit pollswith the regional breakdown of Gallup’s national tracking poll, it becomes clear that Mr. Obama’s popularity has taken a disproportionate hit in the West.
What happened? To begin with, battleground states in the Mountain West areelastic. That is, Colorado and Nevada have an above average share of swing voters, and they tend to respond to the national political environment.
Roughly 35 percent of registered voters in Colorado are unaffiliated with a political party. Some aren’t true swing voters, Mr. Saunders said, but Colorado has “a lot of voters who are willing to wet their finger, put it up, and see which way the winds are blowing.”
And Mr. Obama had a much more favorable wind in 2008.
The economic recovery has been particularly anemic in Mountain West battleground states. Colorado and Nevada are still suffering with unemployment rates above the national average; Nevada’s is 12.1 percent, and Colorado’s is 8.2 percent. 28Still, even if the Mountain West is a good region for Mr. Romney to begin a comeback, he would need to carry swing states in other regions to win the White House. Colorado has nine electoral votes, and Nevada has just six.
Tuesday, October 2, 2012
Presidential Geography: Vermont
The 2012 presidential election is about a month away and there is still a lot of time for ads, debates, campaign stops, and polls. While the race will likely come down to about a dozen states, each state truly does play some role and even safe states for either party are needed to guarantee victory in November.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Vermont.
Vermont:
Vermont is a quirky state, politically speaking. It was President Obama’s second-best state in 2008, behind only his home-state of Hawaii. But Vermont is also the mostrural state and the second whitest, normally strong predictors of Republican leanings.
Moreover, Vermont was once among the most reliably Republican states. It favored the G.O.P. presidential candidate in every election from 1856 to 1960, the longest one-party streak of any state, Mr. Nelson said. Vermont elected all Republican governors from 1854 to 1963.
Vermont’s political landscape began to change in the 1960s and 1970s. City dwellers from nearby states like Massachusetts and New York began fleeing struggling metropolises like Boston and New York City. Heading north, these migrants had a choice of where to settle, and some self-sorting took place.
More conservatives tended to choose New Hampshire, attracted to its low taxes and “Live Free or Die” ethos. Vermont, where cows outnumbered people before 1963, tended to attract young, left-leaning and outdoors-loving professionals, both Mr. Nelson and Mr. Johnson said.
The overall effect on both states was to make them more politically competitive. In Vermont, the state’s first Democratic governor in over 100 years, Philip H. Hoff, who served from 1963-69, helped his party to maker further gains, Mr. Nelson said. (Vermont would take a little longer to elect Democrats in presidential races).
In 1970, as the migration into Vermont got going, the state passed a law, Act 250, to limit development. That, in turn, attracted more environmental-minded migrants.
Vermont’s population had been stagnant for decades, but with the influx of “new Vermonters” the state began to grow. When the migration began, Vermont’s population was below 400,000, small enough so that an influx of people could really affect the state’s politics. More than 625,000 people live in Vermont today, and residents born elsewhere are part of the state’s fabric. Vermont’s current governor, Peter Shumlin, is the first native governor in almost 40 years.
The newcomers “changed the state,” Mr. Nelson said.
Vermont today is among the greenest states, and green industries are a major part of the state’s economy.
But the “old” Vermont never really went away. There’s now something of a split between new, highly educated and left-leaning Vermonters and old, less-educated and more fiscally conservative Vermonters.
In presidential elections, there is only a little regional variation in how Vermont votes. Like elsewhere in New England and the Northeast, Republican voters in Vermont tend to be socially moderate, and they have little affection for national Republicans. Mr. Obama won every county in 2008, all but one of them with at least 60 percent of the vote. He also won 247 out of the state’s 251 cities and towns, according to the Almanac of American Politics.
In state-level races, however, Republican candidates can still compete under the right circumstances. Vermont had a Republican governor, Jim Douglas, as recently as 2010. In the contest to succeed Mr. Douglas, Republican Brian Dubie lost by two percentage points to Mr. Shumlin.
The Democratic strongholds in Vermont start with Burlington in the northwest, Brattleboro in the southeast and Bennington in the southwest, Mr. Johnson said. There’s also smaller pockets of Democratic strength in central Vermont towns like Montpelier.
Burlington, the state’s biggest city, has developed a high-tech and green economy. Burlington has also grown increasingly diverse, partly because it’s a Refugee Resettlement city.
Republican-leaning areas include Rutland County, the Barre area, some northern suburbs of Burlington and the Northeast Kingdom.
The Kingdom, as it is known locally, is the most consistently conservative part of the state. It is made up of the three most northeastern counties: Essex, Caledonia and Orleans. The Kingdom is poorer and less populated than most of Vermont. Essex County is the only county Mr. Obama won in 2008 by less than 20 percentage points.
The Bellwether: Windsor County
Like clockwork, Windsor County has been just one percentage point more Democratic-leaning than Vermont in each of the last three presidential elections.
The rural parts of Windsor County are conservative. But Woodstock, the county seat (known as a “shire town” in Vermont), is a tourist destination and has attracted more left-leaning new Vermonters.
“Windsor in many ways exemplifies the contrast between “old” and “new” Vermont,” Mr. Johnson said.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 100 percent favorite in Vermont, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, and it is again projected to be his best state behind Hawaii.
Vermont is very likely to remain overwhelmingly blue in presidential elections for the foreseeable future. The real question is whether Republicans will remain competitive in state-level races. States that split tickets are becoming increasingly rare as party politics is nationalized. In Vermont, however, Republicans have a few advantages in remaining relevant.
First, although Vermont is liberal, particularly on social issues, it also has substantial strains of libertarianism and fiscal conservatism.
Second, there’s no party registration in Vermont, and the state holds open primaries. Accordingly, party identification is a weaker bond in Vermont than in many other states.
Finally, Vermont is small, in area and population. Retail politicking can swing a lot of voters. “Socially moderate, personable Republican governors can still do well,” Mr. Nelson said.
Still, the trend in most other states has been away from ticket splitting, and there is the potential for a “growing and solidifying allegiance to the national Democratic Party” in Vermont, Mr. Johnson said.
The New York Times and Micah Cohen have been taking a state by state look at each state throughout the the weeks leading up to Election Day. Next up is Vermont.
Vermont:
Vermont is a quirky state, politically speaking. It was President Obama’s second-best state in 2008, behind only his home-state of Hawaii. But Vermont is also the mostrural state and the second whitest, normally strong predictors of Republican leanings.
Moreover, Vermont was once among the most reliably Republican states. It favored the G.O.P. presidential candidate in every election from 1856 to 1960, the longest one-party streak of any state, Mr. Nelson said. Vermont elected all Republican governors from 1854 to 1963.
Vermont’s political landscape began to change in the 1960s and 1970s. City dwellers from nearby states like Massachusetts and New York began fleeing struggling metropolises like Boston and New York City. Heading north, these migrants had a choice of where to settle, and some self-sorting took place.
More conservatives tended to choose New Hampshire, attracted to its low taxes and “Live Free or Die” ethos. Vermont, where cows outnumbered people before 1963, tended to attract young, left-leaning and outdoors-loving professionals, both Mr. Nelson and Mr. Johnson said.
The overall effect on both states was to make them more politically competitive. In Vermont, the state’s first Democratic governor in over 100 years, Philip H. Hoff, who served from 1963-69, helped his party to maker further gains, Mr. Nelson said. (Vermont would take a little longer to elect Democrats in presidential races).
In 1970, as the migration into Vermont got going, the state passed a law, Act 250, to limit development. That, in turn, attracted more environmental-minded migrants.
Vermont’s population had been stagnant for decades, but with the influx of “new Vermonters” the state began to grow. When the migration began, Vermont’s population was below 400,000, small enough so that an influx of people could really affect the state’s politics. More than 625,000 people live in Vermont today, and residents born elsewhere are part of the state’s fabric. Vermont’s current governor, Peter Shumlin, is the first native governor in almost 40 years.
The newcomers “changed the state,” Mr. Nelson said.
Vermont today is among the greenest states, and green industries are a major part of the state’s economy.
But the “old” Vermont never really went away. There’s now something of a split between new, highly educated and left-leaning Vermonters and old, less-educated and more fiscally conservative Vermonters.
In presidential elections, there is only a little regional variation in how Vermont votes. Like elsewhere in New England and the Northeast, Republican voters in Vermont tend to be socially moderate, and they have little affection for national Republicans. Mr. Obama won every county in 2008, all but one of them with at least 60 percent of the vote. He also won 247 out of the state’s 251 cities and towns, according to the Almanac of American Politics.
In state-level races, however, Republican candidates can still compete under the right circumstances. Vermont had a Republican governor, Jim Douglas, as recently as 2010. In the contest to succeed Mr. Douglas, Republican Brian Dubie lost by two percentage points to Mr. Shumlin.
The Democratic strongholds in Vermont start with Burlington in the northwest, Brattleboro in the southeast and Bennington in the southwest, Mr. Johnson said. There’s also smaller pockets of Democratic strength in central Vermont towns like Montpelier.
Burlington, the state’s biggest city, has developed a high-tech and green economy. Burlington has also grown increasingly diverse, partly because it’s a Refugee Resettlement city.
Republican-leaning areas include Rutland County, the Barre area, some northern suburbs of Burlington and the Northeast Kingdom.
The Kingdom, as it is known locally, is the most consistently conservative part of the state. It is made up of the three most northeastern counties: Essex, Caledonia and Orleans. The Kingdom is poorer and less populated than most of Vermont. Essex County is the only county Mr. Obama won in 2008 by less than 20 percentage points.
The Bellwether: Windsor County
Like clockwork, Windsor County has been just one percentage point more Democratic-leaning than Vermont in each of the last three presidential elections.
The rural parts of Windsor County are conservative. But Woodstock, the county seat (known as a “shire town” in Vermont), is a tourist destination and has attracted more left-leaning new Vermonters.
“Windsor in many ways exemplifies the contrast between “old” and “new” Vermont,” Mr. Johnson said.
The Bottom Line
Mr. Obama is a 100 percent favorite in Vermont, according to the current FiveThirtyEight forecast, and it is again projected to be his best state behind Hawaii.
Vermont is very likely to remain overwhelmingly blue in presidential elections for the foreseeable future. The real question is whether Republicans will remain competitive in state-level races. States that split tickets are becoming increasingly rare as party politics is nationalized. In Vermont, however, Republicans have a few advantages in remaining relevant.
First, although Vermont is liberal, particularly on social issues, it also has substantial strains of libertarianism and fiscal conservatism.
Second, there’s no party registration in Vermont, and the state holds open primaries. Accordingly, party identification is a weaker bond in Vermont than in many other states.
Finally, Vermont is small, in area and population. Retail politicking can swing a lot of voters. “Socially moderate, personable Republican governors can still do well,” Mr. Nelson said.
Still, the trend in most other states has been away from ticket splitting, and there is the potential for a “growing and solidifying allegiance to the national Democratic Party” in Vermont, Mr. Johnson said.
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