80% red = trending Dem. rapidly
40% red = trending Dem. slowly
gray = staying put
40% blue = trending Rep. slowly
80% blue = trending Rep. rapidly
Wow is that map WAY wrong...
while some of them are right, maybe the map is a belated April fools joke as a whole??
I don't understand why we'll have any more elections, actually, since they will always be based on 2004 and how liberal-trending the west is.
Most of them states you have are right, but some of the shade of colors are wrong. Like VA and NC... VA should be dark red, while NC should be the medium red.
The reason I had NC as dark red and VA as medium, is that I liken VA to NV with a steady trickling towards Democrats (though I think it's about to stop in NV) and NC will have a larger swing to Democrats (whether or not Dems. actually win the state). For example I think if Dems. add three or four points to their 2004 share in VA, it'll be around six to seven in NC. I expect NC whites to be voting about 35-37% Dem. in 2008, so if black turnout is as disproportionately high in NC as in 2004 (big "if" of course), then a Dem. might carry the state. Whites in the peripheral south seem to have moved towards Democrats (nowhere near a majority share, of course, but at least five or six points I reckon). WV was sort of a fluke in 2004 (well, it makes a lot of sense when you hear Thomas Frank talk about it in
What's the Matter With Kansas?), so a six to seven pt. swing in that state would be dark red, like KY (from 40%D to 46-7%D), KS (from 37%D to 44%D) and TX (38%D to 44-5%D). Excepting Colorado (where Hispanic voters vote so heavily Democratic), the interior West should be pretty unfruitful (probably b/c of the same reason GA is trending so heavily Republican despite a growing black and Latino population that--for one reason or another--turns out in disproportionately small numbers. These, overall, are optimistic numbers for Democrats--I'm not denying that. They are sort of the high mark, unless my party once again reverts to centrism and Clintonomics and the like. And actually, most of the swings in the states cancel each other out, with likely a minimally-Democratic trend overall.
