PA: Muhlenberg College: Obama beats Romney & Gingrich

[pbrower2a]

Gingrich in the 1990s reminds most Northerners why several states that went for Ford in 1976 never went GOP after 1988.

[pbrower2a]

You must be logged in to read this quote.

Its a joke college poll with a horrible track record, but the lefties here want to pretend that it has some validity.

Fayette voted for Toomey over Sestak. The GOP trend that started in Westmoreland has spread to the entire SW. It's not just an anti-obama like the mental midgets out on DA INTERWEBZ! want to pretend. Its actually an anti-democrat thing that has been growing in the SW.

Obama isn't going to win Fayette. The GOP nominee will improve on McCain's numbers there.

I love it how "trends" only work one way on this board, and they are ALWAYS INEVITABLEZ!!! if they favor Democrats. They never work the other way.

I have news for you, SW Pennsylvania is a place where the trend is in favor of the GOP and has been for some time.

2010 was a freak year. Republicans won a bunch of Congressional seats that have a Cook PVI of D+5 or so (which means that in a 50-50 Presidential election the district tends to go by a 5% margin for the President and on the average Congressional Representatives) , and those are likely to swing back. Add to that, the Republicans have gotten a bunch of turkeys elected who will be consummately vulnerable in 2012. If I am running for Congress as a Democrat against one of those fellows I am going to go for the jugular -- that is, the nexus between support from out-of-district interests and the new Rep's voting record. "How many Wall Street hedge fund managers and Texas oil executives do you know? I'm here to represent you, and not a bunch of millionaires who only see you as people to be fleeced!"  

Unless statewide GOP pols are able to cull the vote significantly, the electorate of 2012 will look more like that of 2008, a Presidential year.

...The 2010 elections represented a political equivalent of Bill James' "Plexiglass Principle" (James introduced it into his study of baseball, which like politics has many random characteristics) in that some weak Democrats who might have held some seats that they barely won in 2006 and 2008 or who perhaps represented districts with a Cook PVI of R+4 got defeated.  Add to that, the Republican Party (and its front groups) found ways in which to hit where such was unexpected.

The problem is that the Republican Party has done nothing to offer anything new -- just the same old platitudes that served as public policy when Dubya was President. It is the same old anti-intellectualism, the same old plutocracy, the same old militaristic policy, the same deceit,  and the same old corporatist stuff. If it was unpopular in 2006 and 2008 and is seen as much the same it will again be unpopular in 2012.

Your Republican Governor is unpopular. The generic ballot for Congress suggests the likely reversal of the Republican majority of the Pennsylvania delegation to the House of Representatives. (The same applies to three other swing states -- Colorado, Florida, and Ohio so far, and that bodes ill for the GOP nationwide). For the next five years Pennsylvanians are going to be wondering how they could elect Pat Toomey, a stooge of Big Business before they dump him in 2016 much like they (ahem!) dumped Rick Santorum.

Consider the election of 2010 the Pyrrhic victory that it is -- your Republican Party came back with the same old failure because it didn't change. It didn't win new voters because it found no new constituencies. It changed none of its old policies except to assert them more secretively before the election and more stridently after the election.

Conservatism will be back in America -- but when it is back it will be asserting the legitimate achievements of President Barack Obama and not the failures of the likes of Gingrich and Dubya.      

[pbrower2a]

Let's see... 2000 was a freak year, 2002 was a freak year, 2004 was a freak year. 2006 was normal, 2008 was normal. 2010 was a freak year. 2011 was a freak year.

See a pattern there?

U mad bro?

Oh, btw: Obama LOST SW Pennsylvania in the "normal year". So how does your rambling nonsense address that point?

President Obama won Allegheny County solidly, which is enough (in view of the smaller electorates of surrounding counties) to allow him to win southwestern Pennsylvania.  He may have lost all but one county in southwestern Pennsylvania, but he won the county that mattered most.

All Presidential elections beginning in 1992 are variations upon the election of 1992. You see a tendency for states in an arc from Louisiana to West Virginia steadily slipping away from the Democrats. Democrats winning Presidential elections used to win those states. Beginning in 2000 they lost those states and even President Obama couldn't make them close.

[pbrower2a]

Oh, not all trends favor Democrats. Missouri is no longer a pure tossup, and I'm skeptical of those who claim Texas is becoming competitive. The Dakotas, in addition, have always been Republican but are becoming more consistently partisan at a congressional level. Southwestern Pennsylvania has certainly trended against us--no way Obama will win Westmoreland except against Bachmann.

In addition, Democrats still do well in the region at a local level--look at the statehouse. Two of the three non-Pittsburgh districts still send Democrats to Congress, and Sestak, despite losing Fayette and Greene (along with the state), did better than Obama (who won by 11 points), and in a uniform swing to a Sestak win he would have won both.

Texas is interesting because there are multiple trends occurring at the same time.  The major counties are shifting towards the Democrats (Harris, Dallas), but east Texas a former Dem strong hold has swung dramatically towards the GOP.  West Texas has probably reached a ceiling for GOP support in the last few cycles with almost nothing to indicate small shift back is likely.  Also Travis County has been shifting to the left.This is also all occurring against the back drop of two very important issues; increased Hispanic voting power (good for Dems) and increasing suburban population in DFW and Houston (good for GOP).  So it is a very complicated picture to look at. 

1996 vs. 2008 Presidential elections show a stark shift in the state.  Clinton won more than two dozen west Texas Counties and did decently in East Texas.  However he only won Travis with 52.6% and lost Dallas and Harris. 

With all this going on it does make it difficult to track the state which is why I think the 2012 results will be very telling, especially if there is any major shift in either direction relative to national totals

President Obama did far better than any recent Democratic nominee in winning suburban votes.  Without the suburban votes he would not have won Florida, Indiana, North Carolina, Ohio, or  Virginia. He did badly, to be sure, in the suburbs of Atlanta, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, and Phoenix.

Suburbia used to be a Republican lock; as an example, Jimmy Carter lost all of the Illinois suburbs of Chicago, all of the Pennsylvania suburbs of Philadelphia, all suburban counties of San Francisco except Alameda County (whose center of population was still ultra-urban Oakland), and the suburban counties of St. Louis. Tellingly, Carter lost almost the whole of the Dallas and Houston areas.

Suburbia used to be the Republicans' political dream because it was then understood to have the conveniences of urban life with the certainty of rural life... and white-collar workers who trusted their bosses enough to vote with them. Barack Obama showed clearly that such was no longer so.  Maybe "white collar" has gone from being associated with such professionals as accountants to such throwaway workers as checkout clerks. It could also be that Barack Obama learned as Republicans have yet to learn how to win large parts of the suburban vote without pandering to right-wing pressure groups. Suburbia has much the same problems as urban America -- environmental degradation, high-cost infrastructure, traffic jams, and high-cost public services.

So what is the portent of the 2012 election -- Collin County, Texas (62-36 for McCain) or Fairfax County, Virginia (60-39 Obama)? Both are comparatively upscale suburban counties. If Suburbia resorts to Carter-era ways and votes like Collin County (suburban Dallas), then President Obama is cooked politically.  But if Suburbia votes like Fairfax County, then the GOP is in deep trouble.