Talk Elections

 I downloaded some 1980s maps on DRA and I have some 1980s almanacs to see how he did in comparison. Off the top of my head, he did worse than Mondale in the following:

PA 12, PA 4, PA 20, PA 22, MN 8, TX 13, TX 17, TX 2, TX 1, OK 3, LA 8, GA 8, TN 4, TN 6, KY 7, WV 4

In my opinion in the southern districts the main reason why Obama probably did worse is because many of those districts are completely unchanged from what they were nearly 30 years ago and is probably how the entire south would vote without well, you know.

Anyone have any other districts where they might suspect he did worse?

I'd also think of TX-04, OK-02 and TX-11.

If it's white, working class and traditionally Democratic (Obama actually did stunningly well in many traditionally Republican working class areas), then there's half a chance that it'll be on the list.

It needs to be rural too.

McCain most likely did better in the 1980's NY 10 and NY 13.

and he definitely would have done much better if you combined the McCain's best parts of both of them into one district.

I can probably create a few districts in the NY metro that would swing heavily for McCain based on the Orthodox growth in 24 years.

It's worth noting that half the counties in California that voted for McGovern voted for McCain.

How did McGovern win Redding?

I would say wow to that!

The far northern Sacramento Valley (and points north of that) used to be very strongly Democratic, although I haven't figured out why. Take a look at Pat Brown's win over Richard Nixon in 1962:

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Brown won by 20 points in Shasta County while losing by eight points in Marin.

One good way of measuring partisan affiliation is by looking at Lieutenant Governor elections (https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/comparemaps.php?year=2010&fips=6&f=1&off=6&elect=0); since the Lieutenant Governor has no responsibilities to speak of, the election comes down essentially to party preference. In the 1994 election, which Gray Davis won, you can still see the last vestiges of Democratic strength in the north:

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Traditionally, California politics has been based in large part on the north-south divide, with the north voting Democratic and the south Republican. Nowadays, Southern California is more willing to vote Democratic (Obama almost won Orange County in 2008, of course), and much of the inland north votes Republican almost always, but the same divisions are still visible.

The California Democratic Party has traditionally been dominated by northerners; now that every statewide office is held by a Democrat, southerners are almost shut out of office. Of the two Senators, Boxer is from Marin and Feinstein from San Francisco, as are both Jerry Brown and Gavin Newsom (Brown was also Mayor of Oakland). Among the other statewide elected officials, Harris is from San Francisco, Lockyer is from Oakland, Jones is from Sacramento, and Torlakson is from Contra Costa County; Bowen and Chiang are the only ones from Los Angeles (or, for that matter, anywhere south of the Bay Area).

AL-04, AL-05, AR-01, AR-04, TN-08, PA-18, WV-01, WV-02, WV-03, OK-02.  Mondale actually got 40% of the vote in AL-04, while Obama got around 25%. 

Xahar, was the timber industry big back then in those parts (Shasta, Trinity, etc.)? My family used to live in Del Norte County and my mom worked in the timber industry, but apparently it pretty much fell apart by the early to mid-1990s. Perhaps that in combination with agricultural interests?