Talk Elections

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Even the rural parts of southern Indiana swung to Obama too.

Lets look at all of the Apps. from Northern GA to NY.

GA:
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TN: ()

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VA: ()

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PA: ()

NY: ()

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So not all of the rural Apps swung toward McCain.

My cat had four legs. Dogs have four legs. My cat must have been a dog.

While it is sort of hard (not impossible) to think of many other reasons to vote for Al Gore, John Kerry, and John McCain, obviously such a measure can only catch racist Democrats. Most other rural areas (excempting the Upper Midwest) already are Republican anyways.

Tompkins is way wrong on that map

Because the reasonable ones got the hell out. Though truly, the shift to the GOP has been coming for some time. Tennessee's state house went GOP for the first time, I believe, since Reconstruction.

Why did NYC except Staten swing so hard Republican? I recognize that Bush was anathema there for cultural reasons, but he did have a 9/11 bounce in 2004, and McCain and (especially) Palin failed to connect in this region. But still...

it didn't.  I just think the map is f***ed.  problem with the algorithm or something.

I have a feeling that Indiana's GOPness was maxed out.

It appears to be a mistake--NY and a few other states a blank map is used to compute the swing in 2008. Notice how Hamilton is both the most GOP county in 2004, and (on this map) the strongest swinging Dem county.

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Much of Appalachia was Southern Whig territory and anti-slavery at the time of the Civil War and has been so ever since. Thus it is no surprise to see Republicans still dominating in those areas.

The interesting phenomenon is those traditional pockets of Democratic strength in mining counties that were unionized at the cost of many lives that broke with tradition and went Republican this election.

I'm not sure if we can characterize Appalachia as racist to any greater degree than elsewhere in America. How could one possibly quantify such behavior and attitudes, and even so it would be much more difficult to ascribe the 2008 Presidential election returns to racist attitude?

The problem is that the returns in those areas are complicated by the general pattern of low swings to Obama (or even swings against) in other traditional industrial areas (just have another look at the PA and OH swing maps. Yeah, the former is distorted by media market stuff, but the patterns are clear all the same) and, of course, by the awful turnouts there. There are several counties in West Virginia that saw a sizeable swing to McCain but where it seems less people voted for McCain than for Bush four years ago.

Any thoughts on the late breaking revelations on Obama's comments on coal and if that might have kept some reluctant Obama supporters home on election day in this region?

Looking at WV... well... Obama won Boone county pretty comfortably (and the swing against him there was low. Oh here's a funny; Nader did better in Boone county this year than in 2000!). If that was a factor I'd expect a very strong swing there. Meanwhile, one of the strongest swings against him was in Mercer, which mostly (or entirely, can't quite remember) off the coalfield... but is in the same media market as part of SW Virginia.

Btw, that urban appeal thing of Obama's applies even in SW Virginia. While he lost the last few Democratic counties there, he came within a vote of regaining the city of Norton, lost in 2004.

Norton isn't exactly urban, population is less than 4000.

Yes, of course. By comparison to surrounding coal country though, it is. It's the market town, as it were.

oh, ok. That new map makes a lot more sense.

Note where the swings were lowest!

Edit: you know... in an odd way they sum everything up. Industrial areas and white-flight.

Very true. Most of the areas that swung towards McCain contain groups that are subsets of culturally southern whites, but have a sizeable Democratic vote (e.g. Appalachia, Cajun Louisiana). The Deep South didn't swing much, because whites already vote overwhelmingly Republican.  Democratic gains in FL, NC, and VA were in areas that were not culturally Southern (e.g. NoVa, Research Triangle NC, southern Fla.) and from higher black turnout.

Of course in any part of THIS country there is going to be some racism, but overall, I just think they didn't like Obama AND they never vote Republican.  That's it.  They are traditionalist Democrats and the party ran a new type of candidate.  Look at the turnout.  Racism would indicate they went to the polls in droves to keep the black guy out of office.  They didn't, turnout in Appalachia was awful.  I think the margins are due to a double effect of THOSE THAT ARE RACIST turning out to vote McCain and the rest (and the vast majority, mind you) simply not liking either candidate. 

My own mother didn't vote this year because she didn't like either candidate.  It happens. 

Oh well,  we won. 

Looks like Obama's real problem was not all of Appalachia, but particularly the coal counties of Eastern Kentucky, Southwestern Virginia, and Southern West Virginia. It makes a lot of sense given Obama's strong appeal to alternative energy. These places don't have a high population so I wouldn't worry about them too much from a political standpoint.

It seemed that Obama had a problem among all Southern Whites, but the areas with minimal counteracting African-American populations and Blue-Dog Democratic establishment are where he did the worst.

yeah, even the non-Appalachian parts of Tennessee swung to McCain. Non-Appalachian Kentucky, curiously, did not however.

Obama was running ads in various parts of non-appalachian Kentucky to reach Indiana and Ohio.

Why did Charleston County swing so hard to the Democrats? This was the first time since 1976 that we voted for a Democrat!

Maybe because its kind of a metropolitan city now and Obama did well in cities everywhere?

Urban whites sung 9 points to Obama: I guess bashing the cities is a bad electoral strategy.

I think they alienated suburban supporters as well with the whole "real" america BS. The swing map of this election from the Clinton elections is instructive. Obama didn't improve too much from gore/kerry among rural voters while he did better in practically every city than Clinton.

Actually, it is a stretch, but each of those candidates did have one thing in common that their opponents did not... military service.

Draft-dodger Clinton won the voters he's talking about against war hero Bush.