No Need For Old Electoral Maps

(National Review Online)  This column was written by Michael Barone

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It's time to throw out that old map with the red states and blue states -- the map implying that all but a handful of states will definitely vote Republican or Democratic, and that the real contest will be decided in Florida or Ohio or whatever.

For a time, that map served its purpose. Only three states changed parties between the 2000 and the 2004 presidential elections, and the average change in percentage margin in those states was only 1.5 percent. But such hugely static political patterns are the exception rather than the rule in our history.

The last two presidential elections whose results so closely resembled each other were 1952 and 1956, when the two parties nominated the same candidates and only four states' results were different.

In 2000 and 2004, the Republicans nominated the same man and the Democrats nominated men with similar personas and similar places on the political spectrum.

This year, it's different. The Republicans will nominate John McCain, and the Democrats seem 95 percent certain to nominate Barack Obama. There are important differences between these two and their parties' previous nominees. Many votes that went Democratic in 2000 and 2004 are available to McCain. Many votes that went Republican in 2000 and 2004 are available to Obama. And many of the new voters surging into the electorate may be available to both candidates.

Voters have a clear generic preference for the Democratic party, but recent polls show a McCain-Obama race to be close. And don't be surprised if those numbers move around in the course of the campaign.

It's not like we haven't seen voters move around before. At the beginning of the 1990s, it was conventional wisdom that Republicans had a lock on the presidency and Democrats had a lock on Congress, or at least on the House of Representatives. After all, Republicans had won five of the last six presidential elections and Democrats had held control of the House for 36 years.

But in 1992, voters elected a Democratic president, and in 1994 they elected a Republican House (and Republican Senate, as well). In 1988, Florida and New Hampshire voted 61 percent and 62 percent for George H. W. Bush -- solidly red states. But in 1992 and 1996, New Hampshire voted for Bill Clinton. And in 1996, Florida did, as well. In 1992, Montana, Colorado, and Georgia voted for Bill Clinton. By 2000, these were solidly Republican states.

In these years, different groups of voters moved in different directions. Suburbanites in our largest metropolitan areas, repelled by the cultural stands of religious conservatives, trended heavily toward Democrats. Voters in rural areas in the south, Great Plains, and Rocky Mountains, repelled by the cultural liberalism and environmental policies of the Clinton administration, trended heavily toward the Republicans.

In or around 1995, these alignments froze into place and pretty much stayed there for 10 years. Helping to freeze them were particular personal characteristics of the two dominant political figures of these times, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

But now Bush is not on the ballot and Hillary Clinton's flagging campaign has been sending her husband to places like Chillicothe, Ohio. John McCain does not have the Texas swagger and up-front religious commitment that turned many voters away from Bush and his party. Barack Obama does not seem to have the wobbly moral compass that turned many voters away from Clinton and his party.

The demographic factor most highly correlated with voting behavior in 2000 and 2004 was religion, or depth of religious belief. Within each relevant religious group, the more observant tended to vote Republican and the less observant Democratic. That may no longer be the case. Voters may well split along other lines, as voters in industrial states once split along lines of income or union membership, and voters in states with heavy early 20th-century immigration split along sectarian lines (Catholic Democrats versus Protestant Republicans).

If I were running the McCain or Obama campaign, I would be doing in-depth polling and focus groups in 30 to 40 states - and nationally, as well - trying to determine which voting groups are moving or moveable toward my candidate and which are moving or moveable the other way. I would certainly not be writing off states that were lost by my party's 2000 and 2004 nominees by 5 percent or more, and I would not assume that states they carried by that much were in the bag. It's time to throw out the old map and search for clues to what the new map will look like.
By Michael Barone
Reprinted with permission from National Review Online

[magnetrack]

Sorry, guys, the "old politics" is alive and well, and it''s going to take Obama out. This nation won''t tolerate another so-unqualified-it-will-kill-us president. The other big factor for the "believers" is that you''ve been hoodwinked by the GOP. Who do you think you''re supporting when you''re against Hillary? Who taught you to hate the peace and prosperity Clintons in the first place?

[tyjohn47]

I cannot believe I am writing this but I agree with Mr. Barone''s piece in NRO. The usual voting patterns can be tossed out and we might actually have a campaign this summer and fall instead of a tear-down contest between overgrown children and their flunkies behind the scenes. No matter who ends up winning this fall, I believe the United States of America will be a better place after the ''08 election. It''s been a long time since I thought that.

[davidlar2]

Some of us who don''t like Hillary Clinton quite simply prefer living in the United States to living in Sweden and don''t want to live in a feminist nanny state.

[fredgrad2000]

Cont''d...

Try to remember libs; the "rich" as you call them pay 2/3rds of the US taxes already and when you tax them more on investment capital; you get....wait, you''re figuring it out...yep, LESS investment capital!! Who do you think drives this economy; it isn''t John Doe buying a shirt; its Donald Trump investing millions in stock and commercial paper and venture capital funds; which those millions are then MULTIPLIED (called the money multiplier for those of you with no economics knowledge) when that company X buys from Company Y, who hires 100 employees to manage its new contracts, etc.

[fredgrad2000]

You might be an idiot if you are herfan:

What is Hillary''s 35 years of experience? Being first lady doesn''t put you in line to get the "3am red phone call", doesn''t put you in cabinet meetings, doesn''t give you security clearance, doesn''t put you in the Pentagon situation room in a crisis. She has 4 more years in the US debate society with no leadership role than Barack; that''s it. Her "35 years of experience" is a crock of shi*!! I hope she wins on that and then tries to put her 35 years vs McCain''s!!

What nuclear power did Bill Clinton square off against? NONE!!! Don''t lie to try and get your points across, Bill Clinton never fought a conflict aginst anyone larger than Serbia; who last time anyone checked, didn''t have nukes. He sent Janet Reno after Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda when he should have sent the Navy Seals...

And you''re definitely an idiot if you believe Hillary will pay for all her socialized programs with just "rolling back the Bush tax cuts for the rich"...EVERYONE''s taxes will go up or she''ll renege on 90% of her promises; that''s just fact!!

[wogerwabbit]

Posted by IRLiberal at 06:30 PM

You oversimplify. Yes, I''m a white man but I don''t feel threatened by her at all... it has nothing to do with feeling threatened... I just don''t like her. I''ll vote for her if it comes down to it, but I still won''t like her.

[irliberal]

GO HILLARY 08, WOOHOO!!

Those who hate Hillary are:

A) White males who feel inferior before a woman of obvious power.

B) White females who think they should stand by their man, at least as long as it does not interfere with getting their hair done or interrupt their shopping.

C) Republicans, because she would end the Iraq war, balance the budget, and set this country back on the right course it was already on when Bill left office. If all that is possible to do in eight years anyway. You see, a single Hillary term would do much to illustrate to the world what fools the Republicons are and yes, they fear that. They fear it desperately.

D) Religious zealots of all shapes and sizes, who know that Hillary will preserve the line between Church and State, and that the tax free money that flows to pad their coffers and build mega churches and pay for se.x scandal lawsuits will likely stop.

E) Hunters, because the NRA tells them to think that way. Sure, those independent and fiercely free gun owners, true cows that they are.

F) The rich, who know that they will have a LITTLE LESS money than they do now, because they will be taxed at a higher rate. They might run a little short of cash for that second sailboat or that little villa in France and that JUST WILL NOT DO!

G) The military establishment, who no longer will get unlimited money to pursue pointless wars. Hillary would make sure the vets were properly taken care of though, something GW Bush OBVIOUSLY does NOT care about.

[joefr22]

herfan, following that same line of reasoning, "you might be an idiot" if you think marriage is equivalent to experience. (I''m married, and I did not inherit my wife''s many skills.) You also "might be an idiot" if you think that the only genuine example of leadership, attempting to get healthcare in ''93 resulting in total failure to build a consensus, is a good indicator of the ability to obtain future success in this area.

Obama has the skill and judgment to succeed in obtaining our goals while leading wisely, and he has the capability to win in November by building a genuine and broad coalition of support which could reshape the map by building a new Democratic majority. Those are much better qualifications than nepotism.

[imnho]

Things can always change, but the outlooked for the republicans is quite grim. It hard to get the public to re-elect you when you try to gamble without a full deck. They took an unecessary gamble in Iraq and there now up a sewage filled creek without a paddle. There is also a large whole in the bottom of the boat.

[Razzl]

"Nader''''s running ensures a President McCain that''''s for sure"

Losing the 12 people who might vote for Nader this time around isn''t going to make much of a dent in Obama''s 33% poll lead over McCain, which is what it will be by August. McCain is Bush warmed over, and it isn''t going to be difficult for the wider public to see that. Barone is a right-wing ideologue who writes plenty of this propaganda for US News and World Report trying to convince us that up is down and that everybody''s a conservative. He''s toned it down for this piece, but the idea that McCain is going to have access to votes that were formerly out of reach for Republicans is sheer fantasy and without foundation. Obama has worked the magic that Howard Dean called "turning red states blue" and it isn''t a 2-way street. McCain will bore us and irritate us into voting for Obama if we weren''t inclined to before...