PPP: Gore/Kerry States not locks for Obama

[Verily]

The idea that Ohio is now easier for Obama than Pennsylvania doesn't fit very well with my worldview.  Not to say it isn't true, just that reality really has shifted.

Although a couple of polls have put Obama in better shape in Ohio than in Pennsylvania, it's worth remembering that this also happened far out from the 2008 election. Reality doesn't shift very far very often, and I don't really see any reason why Obama would do worse in PA than OH (polls notwithstanding; I'm inclined to trust political history over polls this far out).

[Ty440]

One election in a freak year with a bunch of racists turning out in record number ( Alabama , Mississippi, Louisiana),   to vote against someone solely because of the color of his skin.

There you go, fixed for you.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

Another thing to remember. The area around Philadelphia is growing a lot faster than the area around Pittsburgh - and it's much bigger to begin with.

In other words: Tough luck, Repubs.

[pbrower2a]

I won't fall for PA until I see it officially in the Romney column. Toomey won in 2006 during depressed turnout for the Dems, but only by 2%. With Obama heading the ticket, I expect them to fall in line and deliver the state, but I will remain open to the idea of that not happening.

2010. Otherwise correct.

I canvassed last year and I was amazed at how many people didn't realize that Congress matters just as much as does the Presidency. I think that Democrats and Democratic-leaning voters have learned a hard civics lesson.  

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

PA and the Northeast in general looks a bit better for Republicans earlier on in the race. Obama will eventually win the state, and the whole black thing may not hurt him as much in Fayette, Greene, etc., as in 2008. The decline of the Moral Majority will also bring about a Democratic comeback in the Rustbelt and maybe even the South.

[CaDan]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

BWWWWWWWWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAAWHWHAHAHAHAHAHHA!

Epic spin.

First, notice how you neglected to mention the State House of Delegates? Where even the Democrat minority leader was thrown out? Where the GOP picked up a record number of seats?

Second, the Democrats heavily gerrymandered the State Senate... the Republicans shouldn't have picked up ANY, and yet, even with some extreme gerrymandering, the GOP still won.

[CaDan]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Such a swing tells you that the election was out of the ordinary. And a regression back to the mean is virtually assured.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Fail... Notice how when Virginia reverts back to what it always has been, its only because "people didn't vote." Nevermind that the 2008 election was a fluke.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

No you don't. You would love nothing more than to eliminate any dissent.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

In your dreams.

[Skill and Chance]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

BWWWWWWWWAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHAHAHHAHHAHAAWHWHAHAHAHAHAHHA!

Epic spin.

First, notice how you neglected to mention the State House of Delegates? Where even the Democrat minority leader was thrown out? Where the GOP picked up a record number of seats?

Second, the Democrats heavily gerrymandered the State Senate... the Republicans shouldn't have picked up ANY, and yet, even with some extreme gerrymandering, the GOP still won.

Because the House of Delegates wasn't gerrymandered at all, right?  Remind me when the maps went to court?  And that "heavily gerrymandered" state senate map was only approved after negotiations with the state GOP.  The GOP HoD got literally whatever they wanted.  The original, actual gerrymander State Senate Dems wanted would have worked just fine for them in 2011.

[redcommander]

I keep thinking that Pennsylvania is like fools gold for Republicans. It's easy for them to win 45%, but getting the extra 5% needed to win has been nearly impossible for them since 1988 because of how liberal Philly has gotten since then. The state might be trending Republican, but it will by no means be one of the easiest pick ups available for the GOP next year. Michigan and Wisconsin have a better chance of flipping that Pennsylvania does at this point.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Such a swing tells you that the election was out of the ordinary. And a regression back to the mean is virtually assured.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Fail... Notice how when Virginia reverts back to what it always has been, its only because "people didn't vote." Nevermind that the 2008 election was a fluke.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

No you don't. You would love nothing more than to eliminate any dissent.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

In your dreams.

There's no evidence that there isn't a new norm... Presidential level voting is often different when compared with local and other state-wide elections. Turnout is generally both higher and comprises a different voter make-up. The fact that Virginia may vote for Obama again, is clearly troubling, but claiming that a reversal to pre-2008 electoral dynamic is all but-assured is honestly kind of delusional.

It's funny how your 3rd and 4th comments completely contradict each other - If I wanted to eliminate dissent ... I'd just ignore you... but I'm engaging you and allowing you to make a greater fool of yourself.

[Negusa Nagast 🚀]

Virginia typically follows close to the national average. Bush over performed there in 2000 and less so in 2004. The growth of NoVa is slowly tilting it toward the dem column. It isn't a safe dem state yet, but its slowly moving in that direction.

New Hampshire and Pennsylvania are the states to be worried about, but even then: in PA, the Republicans won by 2% against a liberal representative in a big Republican year. They under performed the national average. Dems held their ground in Colorado and in the Nevada Senate, and the national Republican attitude toward immigration will keep New Mexico firmly in place.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

The shift in Southwestern Pennsylvania has been developing for a long time.

All of the "OH NOEZ PHILLY SUBURBZ!!!!" people have been crowing about the Southeast forever, but they seem to have missed the fact that Southwestern Pennsylvania is trending away from the Democrats, and it doesn't have anything to do with Obama.

The trend began to develop in 2000 with additional counties flipping in each election since then.

When Fayette and Greene County went for Toomey in 2010 it was an ominous sign for the Democrats. Think about it, anyone will tell you that the margins that Sestak ran up in Philadelphia should have been more than enough to carry him through if the traditional model of a Democrat winning PA Statewide race was going to hold. (Strong Democrat showing in the Southwest and Philly carries the Democrat despite the Republican T.)

If the Southwestern piece of the puzzle falls, Obama is in big big trouble.

Westmoreland County just tossed every single Democrat from the county row offices, the first time that has happened since the Eisenhower years.

People in the Southwest are simply fed up with the Democrats. Obama was able to hold parity in places like Fayette and Greene County (Even though he lost both) in Southwestern Pennsylvania, those days are gone as the ConservaDems in these areas realize that voting for the Republicans isn't going to kill them. Couple that with the massive shift you are seeing in Westmoreland, Washington, Beaver, and Butler; Obama is in big big trouble.

Of those, only Westmoreland is big enough to counteract a big losses in the SE. PA elections are always decided in the East. Not in the SE, but in a strip of counties that spans both SE and NE PA, Bucks, Northampton, Lehigh, Monroe and Luzerne. Toomey won all except the last one, which went for the Admiral. Unless you can swing Allegheny or something, winning PA without the bulk of those Eastern counties is impossible.

[pbrower2a]

Where do these lunatics get the idea that Virginia IS A BLUEZ STATEZ (TM) now?

One election in a freak year with a bunch of racists turning out in record number to vote for someone solely because of the color of his skin, coupled with an extremely weak GOP contender, anger at an incumbent GOP President, and a massive financial melt-down BARELY moved Virginia over into the democrat column, for the first time since 1964... and suddenly "ITZ A BLUEZ STATEZ!"

That doesn't make sense at all.

Especially when you consider how much the GOP destroyed the Democrats in both 2010 and 2011 in the State.

Lots of people thought 1980 a freak year, too. 1982 was sort of a rebound for the Democrats, and then came 1984. Midterm elections tend to either push political change (2006) or revert it (2010). Anyone who sees the 2010 election as the wave of the political future has some explaining to do. In view of the quality of your discourse you are not the person to make such a case.  

I don't know what constitutes a 'normal' election. I can show you lots of things that just don't happen, some of them surprising (one of the more surprising is that nobody wins between 57% and 62% of the electoral votes even if such is close to the mean). I'm not ready to say that 2008 shows what the 'new normal' is in Presidential elections. Ask me in 20 years if I am still around in my mid-seventies and when the 2008 election no longer has significance to most people's lives.

Virginia voted as close to the national margin as any state did, and it has been drifting D. It used to be a reliable state for Republican nominees for President, having not voted for the Democratic nominee since 1964. Sure, it was slightly more R (by less than 1%) than the national average. But President Obama won the state with a strategy designed to appeal in heavily-urban states with big suburban populations. Republicans took Suburbia for granted and lost such states as Florida, Indiana (!!!), North Carolina, Ohio, and Virginia. They must have assumed that white-collar workers vote as their bosses want them to vote as they used to do reliably.    

Racists? Virginia is the first state to vote for a black Governor, and it still has a decided white majority. By all accounts, Douglas Wilder was a competent and effective governor who stayed clear of extremism. Face it -- President Obama can thank Douglas Wilder for showing that black people can be competent top administrators.

Elections can show that old assumptions about voting norms are no longer true. Politicians who don't catch onto the reality of change can be defeated badly.

[Keystone Phil]

Anyone aside from the typical Obama hacks could have told you this for well over two years now.

Well over two years ago, the GOP hacks were saying this and Obama won by about 10 points. PA, which is usually a swing state anyway, will be close if Romney is the nominee. Obama shouldn't have too much trouble against anybody else, but he'll have to spend lots of time and money there anyway because it's never that of a Dem state and 20 EVs are nothing to sneeze at.

Yeah, here's the problem: Obama is President now and his ratings are in the toilet.

[Fmr President & Senator Polnut]

Oh Phil... they're not in the toilet. They're not great, but they're certainly recoverable... assuming your party pulls a kamikaze move

And pbrower... our new friend here, is calling the black voters of Virginia racist for voting for Obama.

[Gustaf]

Just to spice things up, another Obama-majority map without PA:

[Meeker]

I guess I'm in the "I don't see how Obama wins Ohio but loses Pennsylvania" crowd.

[© tweed]

Obama winning without PA is a dead fantasy.  only entertained by us idiots with entirely too much time on our hands, not by the Axelrods of the world.

[pbrower2a]

Oh Phil... they're not in the toilet. They're not great, but they're certainly recoverable... assuming your party pulls a kamikaze move

And pbrower... our new friend here, is calling the black voters of Virginia racist for voting for Obama.

Irony intended?

The Hard Right still has little to offer any large part of the African-American electorate. The black middle class is disproportionally employed in either government bureaucracies; even black professionals and entrepreneurs often rely upon clientele who use Medicaid or various forms of welfare. It's self-interest and not racism. The same can be said of Hispanics. If one is a schoolteacher one knows that one's income, even if one earns it, comes from the public treasury. You don't bite the hand that feeds you.

Economic success does not mean that one becomes a Republican. Just look at the Jewish, Japanese-American, or South Asian vote. Those are three of the top ethnic groups in America in economic achievement. But economic failure does not make one a Democrat anymore. White people in some parts of the Appalachians and Ozarks have much the same demographics as poor blacks, Hispanics, and American Indians, and they voted heavily Republican in 2008 unlike the poor in non-white groups.  Non-whites of all income levels seemed to vote for their economic interests. Poor whites seemed to put race above their economic interests.

I can think of no Presidential election wherein one's vote correlated so slightly to economic achievement as was so in 2008. I wish that I could still get the New York Times' Election Tool that related the results of the 2008 Presidential election to economics, religion, ethnicity, education levels, sources of income, and population density. Population density was one of the strongest items to correlate to an Obama win.  

By the way -- if poor white people vote as poor non-whites (who I assume have much the same economic interests) vote in 2012, then the Republican Party is in deep trouble, and Barack Obama will win in a landslide analogous to '36 for FDR, '64 for LBJ, or '72 for Nixon. I am not going to say that such will happen.  

[Ty440]

Here you go pbrower

http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/explorer.html

[DrScholl]

Pennsylvania behaves the same way in the past three cycles, it looks competitive early on, but falls in the blue column. If a Republican wins Pennsylvania, it's won't be the deciding state, because they will be winning big elsewhere.

[Snowstalker Mk. II]

If Obama approaches his 2008 victory, he'll win back at least Green and Fayette. If it's a good year, others (Beaver, Mercer, Washington, Lawrence) may be in the cards (though Westmoreland is sadly almost certainly off limits).

If PA is close with Romney, he'll improve the most in Bucks and Chester, while also doing significantly better in Montgomery. The election will be decided in these counties:

Bucks
Chester
Lehigh
Northampton
Berks

Monroe, Cambria, and Centre are likely bellwethers of the state overall, though I'd say they're too small to be deciding factors.

[Keystone Phil]

Oh Phil... they're not in the toilet. They're not great, but they're certainly recoverable

Recoverable, sure but he hasn't been on any path to recovery here. Granted, he isn't going to lose the state by nearly as much as the margin between his approval and disapproval ratings but he's hardly a favorite to win the state.

Yeah, we've been a tease for the GOP for the past three cycles but the state didn't have a reason to turn against the Democratic nominee. The blame falls squarely on their nominee's shoulders this time around.

I can respect the opinion that the state will still ultimately go to Obama (personally, I still think it is far too early to tell how it will go but it certainly isn't in Obama's favor at this point) but to compare his status in the state now to his status and the political commentary in 2008 is one of the most eye roll worthy points one could make.

[memphis]

Anyone aside from the typical Obama hacks could have told you this for well over two years now.

Well over two years ago, the GOP hacks were saying this and Obama won by about 10 points. PA, which is usually a swing state anyway, will be close if Romney is the nominee. Obama shouldn't have too much trouble against anybody else, but he'll have to spend lots of time and money there anyway because it's never that of a Dem state and 20 EVs are nothing to sneeze at.

Yeah, here's the problem: Obama is President now and his ratings are in the toilet.

Take a look around. Everybody's ratings are in the toilet. Congress, Boehner, the Tea Party. The public isn't particularly thrilled with anybody. I believe Romney could pull off PA and the full 270. It'd be a close race. The rest of the GOP field is a sideshow and Obama could easily annihilate any of them in PA and nationwide. And the polling bears that out. Romney is your only serious contender. Take him or leave him. So, what's it going to be? Obama or Romney?

[Keystone Phil]

Anyone aside from the typical Obama hacks could have told you this for well over two years now.

Well over two years ago, the GOP hacks were saying this and Obama won by about 10 points. PA, which is usually a swing state anyway, will be close if Romney is the nominee. Obama shouldn't have too much trouble against anybody else, but he'll have to spend lots of time and money there anyway because it's never that of a Dem state and 20 EVs are nothing to sneeze at.

Yeah, here's the problem: Obama is President now and his ratings are in the toilet.

Take a look around. Everybody's ratings are in the toilet. Congress, Boehner, the Tea Party.

That was also the talking point in 2010 about Boehner/the GOP in general/the Tea Party and look how that worked out.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Yes, "the polling bears that out." The polling of rather unknown candidates shows that Obama is ahead. People aren't seriously following the race yet. You know that that polling has to be taken with a grain of salt. You're kidding yourself if you think an Obama landslide is coming next year. Things would have to very drastically improve.