Could Hillary have won Arkansas and West Virginia in 2008?

[DS0816]

If she won the nomination and advanced to the general, I mean. 

She was favored to.

Arkansas carried for a 2004 George W. Bush by 9.76 percentage points.

West Virginia was just over 13 percentage points.

Hillary Clinton would've had higher numbers than nominee and winner Barack Obama, in the general election, with whites, women, and men nationwide. How many more percentage points? I'm thinking at least 50 percent higher. So, take that 7.26, by which President Obama won the popular vote, and increase it to at least 10.89. That's a minimum. And that would've been a national shift of 13.35 percentage points. In theory, that would've been mathematically enough to flip both states.

[DS0816]

Perhaps no state has gone down as fast for the Democrats as Arkansas in the last seven years.

If there is a political science PhD candidate out there struggling to find a thesis topic, I think an anatomy of the shockingly rapid and abrupt collapse of the Democratic Party in Arkansas between 2010 and 2014 would be a very interesting topic.

I think the state comports with its historical performance. In other words, Arkansas is one of the ten worst states historically in having carried for presidential winners. In a way, it wasn't surprising it went in the opposite direction of the country on the 2004/2008 national shift.

[DS0816]

WV was one of the few states where McCain outperformed Bush. Hillary would have come closer, but she wouldn't have won it. Same goes for AR.

That's not accurate.

You can't just take Barack Obama's numbers, nationally and state by state, and figure, "Well, what's good for Barack Obama is good enough for Hillary Clinton; and, of course, no need to think more deeply on this topic."

Instead of Barack Obama, it would have been Hillary Clinton as the 2008 Democratic nominee. So, you have to consider how she would have performed nationally with the demographic groups which include male-vs.-female (Obama won over males nationally with 49 percent; he carried females nationally with 56 percent), the voting-age groups (Would Hillary have seen seniors shift from R+5, from 2004, to R+8, from 2008, had she rather than Obama been her party's nominee?), and race.

[DS0816]

I'm quite confident that she would've won both, along with Missouri, but lost Indiana. KY and NC are question marks in my head; she would've done much better in the first and a little worse in the second, but I don't know if it would've been enough to swing the result.

The more salient question might be whether Clinton can be competitive there in 2016, and I think the answer to that is "no longer".

No, meaning you're right, because the states Arkansas and West Virginia won't go Democratic unless the party is winning by at least 15 percentage points nationwide with a likely landslide of carrying 80 percent of available states. That would include campaign strategy to include both states in shaping the map for that winning candidate. In theory the winning Democrat would probably carry those states at least 12 percentage points less than the national margin. (It might be that they'd be bare wins.)

[DS0816]

I'm quite confident that she would've won both, along with Missouri, but lost Indiana. KY and NC are question marks in my head; she would've done much better in the first and a little worse in the second, but I don't know if it would've been enough to swing the result.

The more salient question might be whether Clinton can be competitive there in 2016, and I think the answer to that is "no longer".

No, meaning you're right, because the states Arkansas and West Virginia won't go Democratic unless the party is winning by at least 15 percentage points nationwide with a likely landslide of carrying 80 percent of available states. That would include campaign strategy to include both states in shaping the map for that winning candidate. In theory the winning Democrat would probably carry those states at least 12 percentage points less than the national margin. (It might be that they'd be bare wins.)

Just look at how different AR and WV would have likely been in 2008 compared to how they'll likely vote in 2016 if Clinton ran in either year.  A lot can change in a decade, and you can't project 2014's politics onto how AR and WV relate to the Democratic Party too far into the future.

Had Hillary Clinton, rather than Barack Obama, been the Democratic presidential nominee of 2008, what I'm saying is that campaign and the shaping of the map would not have been exactly the same. I think you know this. But, it needs to be mentioned.

When I mention the Old Confederacy states (and Arkansas is one of them), they have a terrible history, with where they rank, in having carried for presidential winners.

The average percentage of states carried, between the thus far 57 presidential elections (1789 to 2012), is between 69 and 70 percent. North Carolina and Virginia are on par with each other and the average (which by today's standard is a presidential winner having carried 34/35 states). Florida, bolstered by the fact it has been carried in 20 of the last 22 cycles (dating back to 1928), ranks among the Top 20. Tennessee, also bolstered by having carried for 22 of 24 winners (between 1912 to 2004), is a little lower than Florida.

The rest of the eleven Old Confederacy states rate historically approximately 60 percent or worse (in the 50s percentile range). Alabama has the worst record of all states. It is No. 50! Mississippi is next to last. And Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, South Carolina, and Texas rank with Alabama and Mississippi between Nos. 41 to 50. They are among the ten worst historically.

It wouldn't surprise me, given we've moved into a realigning presidential period for the Democrats (on the House side there is realignment for the Republicans), to see Arkansas go in the opposite direction of the country. (Between the Republicans' winning maps of 1860 to the 1980s, Arkansas backed a lot of hell of a lot of losing Democrats!) And, by some perhaps form of kinship, border south West Virginia is going in that direction as well. It's telling that those two states had more Republican-level support over the last two presidential cycles, 2008 and 2012, won decisively by the Democratic Party (and Barack Obama), than all those Old Confederacy states with the exception of Alabama. (And, between 2008 and 2012, Alabama averaged R+21.88 to Arkansas at R+21.77. West Virginia was at R+19.89, above the nine remaining Old Confederacy states and No. 4-ranked Louisiana and its two-cycle average of R+17.91.)