Talk Elections

I've seen a few topics on the notion that Bush mainly because there were more Democrats who voted for Bush than there were Republicans who voted for Kerry.  I decided to look up the CNN exit polls for 2004 and see exactly what the relative party loyalty in each state was.

The results were actually kind of shocking in how nearly everywhere outside of New England, Democrats did vote for Bush more than Republicans voted for Kerry, and often by ridiculously lopsided amounts, especially in Bush states where a plurality is Democratic.  In fact, there was only one single non-solid Democratic state (Wisconsin) in which Democrats were more loyal than Republicans (albeit well within the margin of error of the poll).

Anyway, here are the state-by-state results:

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White states are those where it was dead even.

I can't think of much else to add other than that I think this is an extremely good indication that what Democrats need to do to win an election is not actually something that sounds very hard: namely, it's to simply get a candidate whom the more conservative Democrats will vote for.  West Virginia is 50% Democratic, and yet Bush won it with 56.06% of the vote.  There's simply no excuse for that.

The major standouts on that map (based on ahemexit polls) are HI and RI, neither of which seems like a bastion of conservative Democratism

Or there are tons of folks in the Bush states that self-identify as Democrats (in the mold of FDR, Truman, JFK etc.) but can't bring themselves to vote for the French contingent of the Democrat Party (Kerry, Dean, etc.).   As these self-identifications continue to change, look for GOP candidates to pick up more and more offices in state legislative and local elections.

Republicans are already winning two-to-one landslides in states like Oklahoma, where Democrats have a significant registration advantage.  However, on the local level, there is no sign of state legislative elections going over due to the "French contingent."  Why do you believe that this will hurt moderate, local Democratic parties, when it hasn't really yet?

This would be interesting, if I trusted CNN exit polls.

This was less due to the Democrats not voting for Kerry and more due to the Republicans really voting (as in, 98-99%) for Bush.


Actually, Republicans just slightly outnumber Democrats in Oklahoma, at least according to the CNN exit poll.

There are indeed, however, a number of Southern (or close to Southern) states in which the Democrats do outnumber the Republicans.  West Virginia is the biggest example.  Louisiana, Arkansas, and Kentucky are others.  All four were twice carried by Clinton, a moderate Southern Democrat, I might add.


I suppose there is that, but it's not as if we've got anything else.

Official registration in Oklahoma is a pretty good Democratic advantage, I think.  People tend to identify as the party they are voting for, I suppose.

Where do you find official registration?

That information might be old, and I have no idea where I saw it, but I know the Democrats controlled Oklahoma registrations by a pretty good margin within the past two years.

This thread might help Gabu.

https://uselectionatlas.org/FORUM/index.php?topic=19017.msg409837#msg409837

Oh, cool, although most states are not covered there.

Ballot Access News has more states.

They make a table for this I believe.