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Where Obama overperformed & underperformed

By razib on November 5, 2008.

The MSM rocks, specifically the New York Times.

i-471a0a1a43dac07d4ab0eb0548a80130-theshift2008.jpgIf you filtered out blacks I'm pretty sure that the swath of red would be far more discernible in the South.* The blue patches match up very well with the Black Belt. It looks like the East South Central Census division, the core of Old Dixie is for now the Other America, along with parts of Appalachia.

I spot checked 2004 exits and compared them to this year. Whites in the deep South seem to have shifted Republican against the national trend. We're back to old school sectionalism, but now blacks can vote. People have said that the white vote barely budged; I don't think that's true, Southern and non-Southern whites shifted in different directions and balanced out. That's not a trivial detail.

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We're back to old school sectionalism, but now blacks can vote

What do you mean we're back? Did we ever leave? The non-Hispanic Mountain West trended Obama, but it was still McCain strongest region. All 15 electoral votes.

Did we ever leave?

yeah, we did. ethnic dems + white southerners. anti-machine northern republicans + conservatives. i think the regional starkness is just a reflection of political polarization; liberal republicans & conservative democrats are rare enough that cross-linkages are attenuated.

Outside the South and the Mountain West, McCain won the strip of Western Prairie States (Dakotas, Nebraska, Kansas - 19 electoral votes) who have voted as one since 1920 (straight Republican except for 1932, 36 & 64). Also trending Obama, though the trend diminishes (and McCain's lead grows) the closer you get to Texas.

oh, and danny, re: the southerness of the republicans, weight by population. that was implicit in my contention. the dems can win by picking off the mountain west, but it's demographically marginal.

Yeah, these trends have been pushing in this direction since the 1960s. The Big Sort has been taking place for some time now.

On one of the NY Times maps you can see that in 1992 and 1996 Clinton-Gore, coming from that region, won most of the counties in the current Republican-trending highland south + Cajun red strip, but it went to Bush and now to McCain.

Besides the point: Demographically marginal, but those 8 non-Southern Republican states get to elect 16 Senators. Blah.

proximity to Chicago?

Indiana: Proximity to Chicago, industrial base didn't recover as much as in other states, McCain against grain and ethanol subsidies (which lost him Iowa, too).