In 1996 Bill Clinton won with 49% of the vote vs. 41% for Bob Dole. The New York Times now allows you to compare county-by-county outcomes across two elections between all presidential years between 1992 and 2008. I think 1996 is the most analogous to Barack Obama's victory yesterday, so I want to focus on that map. My comments:
1) Obama got more of the black vote. No surprise.
2) Geographic proximity matters. Much of the Upper Midwest where the black turn out can't explain Obama's advantage over Clinton is not too far from Chicago. One could term it Greater Chicago, but I don't want to be hounded by Packers fans....
3) The pockets of blue along the Atlantic seaboard can't be explained just by black turnout (e.g., Fairfax and Broward counties). Rather, from Florida to the Research Triangle you have shifting demographics as people relocate to the South from the North. In New England the Republican brand has been in sharp decline over the past generation, symbolized by the fact that Christopher Shays just lost his battle to keep the lone remaining seat for that party in that region. Both Vermont and New Hampshire have been changed by migration from Bosnywash just as the Atlantic South has been.
4) It gets interesting to the west of the Mississippi. Compare the map below to one which displays the % of Hispanics, and I think one can dismiss the difference being purely due to the increased number of ethnic minorities. Something similar to #3 might be at work, but, I suspect part of the issue is that since '96 the Republicans have become more and more a de facto party of the South marginal Republicans in the Great Plains, Interior and Coastal West are peeling off, just as marginal Democrats in the South (Dixiecrats) are being converted into straight-ticket Republicans. The Great Flip has not transformed the original western Republican bastions into predominantly Democratic territory as it has in Greater New England east of the MIssissippi, but it has resulted in a striking shift toward the Democrats.
These results won't be too surprising if you read my post, The Great White Sort.
- Log in to post comments
i am having a lot of trouble understanding exactly what this map means....??
Look at those heavily Republican parts of eastern Massachusetts. Are those hold-out Rockefellers? Disgruntled rust-belt white ethnics? must be a story there.
1. 1996 is slightly problematic since it was 3-horse race, with the Perot vote having its own peculiarities. Of course, the last time you had a 2-horse race with the Democrats beating the Republicans by this margin was in 1944, and that is not going to teach us anything.
2. heavily Republican parts of eastern Massachusetts
Reading comprehension? The map shows the swing from 1996 to today. Massachusetts is still one of the bluest states in the union (though in 1996 it was the bluest, so yeah, it is trending Republican). Obama carried those Eastern Massachusetts counties at ~60%.
The story is different; Obama 08 and Clinton 96 won by the same margin, but Obama lost whites to McCain at 43-55 while Clinton lost to Dole only 43-45; Obama made up for it by gains both among non-whites, and in the non-white share of the electorate. Since Massachusetts is a whiter-than-average state, and Whites have swung Republican compared to 1996, so has Massachusetts.
3. I'm looking at the cool exit-poll bars over at the NY Times (yeah, they rock), specifically at the Asian vote. In 1992, Bush beat Clinton 55-31! And in 1996, Dole beat Clinton 48-43! This year Obama beat McCain 62-35. That's a huge realignment. I guess a partial explanation is the smaller percentage of Vietnamese compared to not-especially-anti-communist ethnic groups, but the truth is you guys are Jewifying...