Gelman brings the R

5. The red/blue map was not redrawn; it was more of a national partisan swing.

[Scooby interrogative.] Say what?

You’re way off on the youth vote – the big story is that youth turnout increased as a percentage of the electorate by 1% in the largest turnout election in decades. That means the voter turnout increase must have been immense. The fact that everyone else also voted makes it look smaller.

“[Scooby interrogative.] Say what?”

The idea is that Obama outperformed Kerry by a pretty consistent margin everywhere (except Hawaii). That margin makes the map bluer than it was, because it pushes a bunch of states over 50% D– but he didn’t change the basic geography of where Democratic candidates do relatively better and where they do relatively worse. A unified nationwide swing in the electorate, not a scrambling of existing patterns.

@5 & 6: Thanks. Just making sure. His logic strikes me, though, as, at the very least, assailable.

Taking as red the general blueing factor, it’s still premature to say this doesn’t represent a redrawing of the map. Obama picked up states in every region of the country except the Great Plains. He picked up three Intermountain West states and two Confederate states. (I’m not even counting Florida in the Confed total.) He seems to have done this at least in part because of demographic shifts.

These demographic shifts do apply to the country as a whole (we’re less white and less old), but that’s kind of my point: it looks like Obama’s pickups happened for reasons that have a chance of obtaining in future elections in those same states. We can say after the fact, “Well Colorado and Virginia [say] were ‘weakly’ red or ‘pale red’ states that are now ‘pale blue.’ ” But before the fact, meaning right through 2005, these states were considered to be durable Republican territory. If VA and Colorado are so much as battleground states going forward, let alone safe or lean Blue states, AND places like Alabama and Wyoming and Nebraska remain Repub strongholds, then how is that not redrawing the map?

@6: Obama’s percentage of the popular vote is the highest for a winner since 1988. It’s the best result by a Democrat since 1964. Add to that the down-ticket pickups for the Democrats (House and Senate, I haven’t looked at governorships) and there’s no question we are talking about a landslide of sorts.

Also, to correct, you wrote, “Most of the states that were blue in 2004 stayed blue and most that were red stayed red.” ALL of the states that were blue in 2004 stayed blue. Quite a number of states that were red in 2004 turned blue. Of course, this counts as evidence in favor of Gelman, so I’m not sure why I bring it up. ;)

I’ve never understood why people would think the map would get redrawn in a single election cycle. Has this ever happened barring a national catastrophe? Even then? Are Republicans just supposed to wake up one day and say, “I’ve seen the light”? Obama’s victory presages a trend among non-white voters which folks have been talking about for a while (from Karl Rove to Ruy Teixeira). The question is whether that trend can be build upon.

And I would like to see the numbers on the youth vote, not just the percentage. I find it hard to mentally normalize for turnout. But if Obama massively skewed the youth vote (whatever percentage) Democratic, that’s another trend that the Democrats will surely try to build on.

If you draw a line through the data, rather than just a 1:1 line, it shows blue states
getting even bluer and the really red states getting redder.

In more detail, the old south was STRONGER for McCain than it was for Bush – who
was popular, even though they all hate McCain. Any ideas why that might be? Bueller? Anyone?

Southern white victim mode to commence in …3,2,1

A general national partisan shift redraws the map, as some states are close enough to flip while others aren’t.

Of course under that definition, any result that doesn’t leave every state voting the same way redraws the map, which is a pointless definition in this context.

The partisan shift thing is just our old BBC friend the Swingometer in another guise. Increase the national swing and more of the pins start to fall. On the margin of victory, it’s a bit odd to be comparing 2 and 3 party races, which is what is going with the Clinton victory margins. Perot was hurting the Republicans more than the Democrats. In a two horse race, Obama’s 6 point margin is really solid. Also, Gelman’s point 3 figure brings out why Bush needed to ram through the Medicare Part D before the 2004 election — look at the difference in his support among older voters.

Perot was hurting the Republicans more than the Democrats.

No he wasn’t.

Can we finally put this data-free GOP talkingpoint to bed?

19-

Right. 1980 really did “redraw the map” in a way that would be meaningful even with a popular vote. This year did not. But, who claimed it did?

I don’t understand what you’re arguing, Ben. The point is just that the partisan leanings of different demographic groups look the same in this election as in the past several. This is very different from e.g. 1980, when white Southerners shifted from a disproportionately Democratic group to a disproportionately Republican one.

lp,

I didn’t say that it was the same kind of shift as happened in 1980.

But our system for allocating electoral votes leads campaigns to focus on states whose votes will be close. Cross-the-board partisan shifts change which states those are. For example, IN, NC, and VA were in play this year; NJ, which was in play in 2004, was not. This quite literally changes the map of the election, as campaigns focus resources and even campaign themes on the states that happen to be in play. For example, we heard a lot less about ethanol with Iowa being essentially conceded to Obama this year.

Obviously regional shifts in support for the parties have more dramatic effects on the map than national shifts. But so long as campaigns are particularly interested in marginal states, national partisan shifts do change the map.

(Sorry if this sounds muddled; I’m working on three hours of sleep so I may not be making as much sense as–I hope–I usually do.)

Re 9, I mean as you said all blue states stayed blue.

Re 9 & 13, I was working off 1992+ data; I didn’t meant to imply that VA or NC were Democratic in 1988.

Re 13 & 21

I usually think of landslides as a popular percentage gap of at least 10%, like Reagan in 1980 and 1984. If this election is a landslide than Bush 41’s 1988 win would be one too, and I don’t think most people consider his election that way.

Obama put NC, VA, and CO into play in ways they had not been since the 1990s — Clinton lost by less than 5% in those years and won CO in once — but OH & FL were in play for Kerry and Gore. Obama put IN into play in ways it was not before and took PA out of the play it was in 2004.

What qualifies as a massive increase in young voter turnout?

17% of 123.5 million voters in 2004 is 21.0 million.
18% of 136.6 million voters in 2008 is 24.5 million.
22% of voting-age Americans is 46.9 million under-30 eligible voters, so an increase of 3.5 million is 7.5% of eligible voters under 30 who showed up this year and didn’t in 2004. Since voter turnout is up across the board by about 4%, it’s true the youth vote was by no means an overwhelming force, but 3.5 million new young voters is nothing to sneeze at.

John Emerson: “The first hints of the Republican Southern realignment were in 1948, 1968 and 1972 were turning points, but Carter did well in the South in 1976 and the shift wasn’t established until 1980.”

Not true. Carter did better in the south than in the rest of the country, although he lost the south too, except Georgia.

It’s true that this election wasn’t a major regional-political realigment. 64 was, although 76 and 80 had the old pattern with a democratic south, and a republican California. Since 84 shifts have been relatively minor.

I agree in part. And an important caveat: I certainly don’t think the US is now a social democratic post-racial country. But here’s some significant results that point to wider consequences of demographic and other changes:

Obama won by 11 in ‘swing states’ New Hampshire and Pennsylvania.
McCain won by 11 in Texas. That is, the Democrat is as close in Texas as the Republican in New Hampshire. That’s surprising. And Obama shifted margins from 2004 by more than 15 points in 9 states, including the shocker of Indiana, and explain his big victories in New Mexico (+15) and Nevada (+14). Some perspective: those are the same margins as McCain wins in Tennessee, Mississippi and Kansas.

There are now no Republican reps in New England; there is actually only one Republican county in this region that went for McCain (a rural one of 8000 in Maine; ALL NH counties went Obama). I know this is blue territory, but if the Republicans don’t change their message, they are simply throwing away too many populous parts of the country, including growing urban areas in VA and NC. Other than the South and Arizona, McCain won no states with more than 6 EVs (I think).

Bush II’s win strategy will not be viable in the future. Remember that Bush I and Reagan and Nixon all won California (and New York occasionally). Look also at the ballot stuff: South Dakota rejected an abortion ban, and although there were some horrible anti-gay results, I think the social conservative agenda will lose traction over the next 20 years. Just because this election is pushing already existing trends further along doesn’t mean that there won’t be more wide-ranging changes in the future as those incremental changes add up. In sum: Texas will go Democratic before 2028.

Brett –

In all previous elections for 200 plus years, 100% of whites have voted for white candidates. Do you not find that creepy?

Since this election is right before a Census year and redistricting, I wonder if McCain is benefitting from overvalued rural votes? It’s highly likely that the next round of redistricting will reflect our ongoing shift towards intense urbanization, towards the coastal, Great Lakes and urbanized Mississipi Valley regions which were pretty strong Obama territory. It’s not going to be good for Republicans in Congress, I think….

Brett is really reliable, isn’t he?

OK, the graph proves it was by and large a national swing. So it has to be explained primarily by national factors. The issues – Bush record, the economy, Iraq – are surely a large part of it. How about the campaign? The vaunted Obama “ground game” was present in many states but concentrated at the end in the 20 or so “battleground” states. The advertising was almost wholly concentrated there. Inference: the ground game may have made a difference, with diminishing returns (being phoned/visited by a volunteer the first time may be effective, but not the sixth time); TV advertising is unimportant or rather returns diminish quickly.

I maintain my suggestion that the real importance of the massive Obama volunteer operation may lie in the future. The army will not allow President Obama to go soft on his promises.

“In all previous elections for 200 plus years, 100% of whites have voted for white candidates. Do you not find that creepy?”

“No, I find that false.”

Correct, there have been times when it’s been all the way down to almost 98 1/4%.

40 –
Perhaps it was more like 99.99% The point was partly tongue in cheeck. But a society largely controlled by whites has created structures and systems that resulted in there only being white major party nominees. That *is* significant also. We shouldn’t pretend that only when there are both black and white candidates is race somehow a part of the picture.

44> ”How many US presidential elections have more than 50% of white voters even voted?”

Start about 1828 and up to about 1908 – all were over 50% and not terribly ‘diverse;’ of course it was a different game then. How do you define “voter?” Those that should have or those that did?

Of course it is creepy that 97% of blacks voted for the Democratic/Black candidate. Brett’s right about that. But Brett, did you look at the crowd in front of McCain when he conceded? Have you listened to Rush the last day or two? Or Michael Savage? These people creep blacks out (me too). That’s where the creepiness is; in the party that cow-tows to these vicious bastards. Its not the behaviour of the black voters that’s creepy, but the behaviour of the party that is so determined not to get their votes.

But you know what’s really creepy, Brett? Whenever I see depictions of slavery from back when the U.S. had slavery, it looks like more than 98% of the slaves are black. It’s pretty clear that the black slaves must massed together in some kind of, well, frankly fascist manner, and bullied the white slaves out of volunteering to pose for the artist.

One can still see traces of this sort of ethnic minority monopolization in today’s sports and entertainment industres. Still, it’s clear we’ve come a very long way since the days when blacks dominated — indeed, largely constituted — the means of production in an economy that was mostly agricultural.

The latent threat shouldn’t be ignored, however. Think of all the decades after the Civil War when, having been disenfranchised from their position as the economic engine of the nation, blacks mostly held themselves aloof from the electoral process in the former Confederacy, clearly wanting little to do with any process of governance they couldn’t absolutely control. Even in the North, they banded together in communities more than 98% black, fearsomely tribal, earning shuddering fear among whites about straying over to “the wrong side of the tracks.” The fear was amply justified. Occasionally one of their men would stride over into a white area of town with the aim of touching (or worse!) a white woman. It sometimes took whole gangs of white men to restrain one of these tribal warriors. Even when one of them was strung up on a tree branch by the neck, there was some risk of getting kicked in the teeth.

We should be concerned about any ethnic group so cohesive that it tends to ignore its own economic self-interest, that tends to cluster together in its own poverty-wracked communities when there’s obviously better housing available elsewhere, that tends to shun well-paid work when it involves too much contact with other ethnic groups, preferring instead titles like “community organizer”. What if these people got too organized one day? They might immiserate us all. The U.S. could be reduced to a third-rank power, and finally, might end up exporting only agricultural goods. From there, it’s only one quick step: the blacks could sabotage all farm machinery, and practically overnight, black people would be right back to dominating the workforce at the critical base of the economic pyramid. We white folks would be stuck on top again, totally dependent on them. There wouldn’t be a damned thing we could do about it.

The nice NYT map of changes by county allow you to compare the ’92, ’96 and ’00 against this year in addition to ’04. For the discussion above it is worth looking at the 1992 to 2008 comparison. It really is a pretty interesting and shocking picture.

Also if you look at some of the exit poll data, the story is a bit more complex than the uniform “rising tide”. In fact the ’04 to ’08 county map obscures some underlying realities by putting so much focus on the Eastern Oklahoma to W Virginia “extended Appalachia” swath. (Essentially places where the ’04 to ’08 Repub gains among white voters was not offset by black voters due to a relatively small black population.) In fact it is Alabama, Mississippi and Louisiana that had the largest percentage increases in Republican support among white voters from 2004 to 2008. I think we will see some pretty interesting studies pop out from the data from just within “the South” itself. So I do think there is some redrawing of the map, with some areas doubling down on their “roots” and others (like much of NC) looking more like Maryland and Northern Virginia.

Look, Brett isn’t stupid, even though I seldom agree with him and even though he’s being pedantic in #40 above (the post in #35 should have read something like “all white voters voting for a major party candidate in a presidential election” for the statement to be true). It’s not unreasonable to suggest that there’s something troubling about overwhelming racial unity in general even if there are specific instances where it’s understandable and desirable (black support for civil rights, Jewish opposition to Hitler, etc). Like others, though, I think the blame here goes to the Republican party which either has nothing to offer to blacks or does a horrible job of marketing whatever it is. You could imagine an appeal based on social conservatism – lots of blacks go to church regularly, oppose gay marriage, and so on – yet it either isn’t made or doesn’t work. Not only are there no serious black Republican presidential candidates (sorry, Alan Keyes) there aren’t any black Republicans in Congress or black Republican governors. Why is that?

So, if what BB meant was ‘I think it’s creepy that the R’s can’t capture more than 2% of the Black vote, because it pretty much says that their underlying platform is racist’, then he makes sense? I’ll go with that. But I think he was saying something more along the lines of ‘What are these Black folks playing at, all deciding to vote for the same guy, just because his policies aren’t specifically designed to be repellent to them?’

And I quote: “It’s just plain creepy having an ethnic group acting in lockstep to that extent”.

Since no one else seems willing to, may I just point out that Michael Turner’s post was extremely amusing.

“…I think the blame here goes to the Republican party which either has nothing to offer to blacks or does a horrible job of marketing whatever it is. You could imagine an appeal based on social conservatism – lots of blacks go to church regularly, oppose gay marriage, and so on – yet it either isn’t made or doesn’t work.”

Or it’s made, it works, but then something goes horribly wrong in the process of pandering to other GOP constituencies. Good recent example: Mike Huckabee (who was actually regarded pretty fondly and respectfully by black voters in Arkansas) went after the black lifestyle-conservative vote, made serious inroads, but then tried to straddle the Confederate flagwaving issue, and only ended up tangling himself in it. Bye-bye black vote.

Or it starts out with all the best intentions, but goes south, not least because of the GOP’s touching faith in the Magic of Markets and their difficulty in believing that any government official could actually know anything useful about the problems their agencies have been given to solve. Best example: when Jack Kemp took the helm at HUD, talking up “empowerment,” with the whole Congressional Black Caucus half in love with the him, only to blow it miserably on execution.

“Empower” the poor, he said, by helping the residents of HUD-subsidized projects become managers and homeowners. Kemp’s idea sounded good. After all, it had worked in England, where Margaret Thatcher gained blue-collar support for selling off public housing to the tenants at reduced prices. But the plan didn’t make much sense on this side of the Atlantic. Many middle-class families lived in England’s public housing, which was in sound physical condition. In the U.S., the restriction of subsidized housing to the very poor now means that its tenants cannot pay for routine operating expenses, much less the cost of major repairs required in many older and run-down buildings. Despite warnings from HUD staff, Kemp plunged ahead with this Homeownership Opportunities for People Everywhere (HOPE) program but soon discovered that few tenants wanted to buy their buildings under those conditions. Only a few thousand units have been sold.

Basically, the GOP is never going to take seriously the problems of black America until black America is part of its constituency, and black America will never be a part of the GOP constituency until it feels it’s taken seriously by the GOP. Lyndon Johnson broke this Catch 22 for the Dems. He pushed through civil rights legislation in full knowledge that he was crippling his party in the South for a generation (and so it proved.) He did it anyway.

FDR made moves, Truman made moves, Eisenhower made moves, Kennedy made moves. LBJ made sacrifices. What accomplishment ever made any lasting impression that wasn’t the product of some sacrifice? LBJ — what crooked piece of timber that guy was. And he ended up badly scorched at both ends. But he was still better than any rotten beam the GOP ever handed to black Americans. (Lincoln was a Republican when the GOP was not so grand and not so old.)

“(the post in #35 should have read something like “all white voters voting for a major party candidate in a presidential election” for the statement to be true)”

Honestly? I was being a bit pendantic, but there’s a real point here, which is that you can’t really take it as a sign of racism if 100% of whites vote for the white candidate in a race where there are only white candidates. (Can’t take the absence of black candidates as a sign of Republican racism, either, when Democrats weren’t running black Presidential canidates until just now, either.) We just had a race in which there was a major party choice between a black and a white, and whites split their vote pretty much down the middle, and blacks gave such a high percentage of their votes to the black candidate that you might suspect the residue for the white was a result of errors filling out the ballots.

This is supposed to demonstrate white racisim?

Not just creepy, but problematic, too: It leaves Republicans with essentially no reason to even TRY appealing to blacks, because they can try all they like, and it isn’t going to work, because blacks don’t take voting Republican seriously enough to even notice the effort. Or notice that Republicans are actually much more in tune with them on social issues. It means black votes aren’t in play, which gets them ignored by both parties, pretty much.

Bottom line, it just isn’t healthy OR rational for an ethic group to be voting THAT MUCH in lock step. Heck, I don’t see how it’s even possible, short of some mix of fraud and coercion; Granted, the GOP isn’t the black’s best friend, but they’re not building death camps out in the desert, either.

They’re just not bad enough that no more than 3% of blacks should want to vote for them.

The problem for the Republicans with Blacks is that enough of the Rep base is so vivdily racist that the Reps can’t take the risk of ditching them just on the off chance of winning a even a large percentage of the votes of a relatively small minority. I agree that most Republicans are fine, but enough are vile enough that, absent some major change, the Republicans would be sunk if they tried to compete for Black votes.

I should have been more clear in 66. I don’t mean that individual Republicans are this bad, but collecitivly — core parts of the party’s base and policy are this bad. And a Republican who is otherwise well aligned locally with views of a black demographic who might support him or her, can only get this support by repudiating the nasty bits in their own party — a step they haven’t taken.

a byproduct of them is [that] blacks get hurt worse than whites.
Poor blacks. Get hurt worse than poor whites. Which makes the class inequality seem like it has some ignorant racial basis.
When it’s actually a cunningly generated and maintained virtually invisible bigotry of privilege, to which even the majority of the poor subscribe.
Which bigotry of privilege, since power in this culture is manifest in finance, appears to be about money, which it is, though only superficially.
It’s really about the most raw Darwinian power available.
Which has nothing to do with fairness or justice or equality or anything noble and humane, but is no more fundamentally racist than a crocodile is racist.

JP Stormcrow: the Eastern Oklahoma to W Virginia “extended Appalachia” swath. (Essentially places where the ‘04 to ‘08 Repub gains among white voters was not offset by black voters due to a relatively small black population.)

It’s not Appalachia. The Northern Appalachians (New England) were always blue and became even bluer. The Blue Ridge mountains shifted blue, as did Piedmont and the northern Ridge & Valley and Appalachian Plateau. Middle/Western Tennessee is not Appalachian, neither are the Florida panhandle, Arkansas, East Texas or Oklahoma. The only overlap between Appalachians and redshift can be found in Eastern Kentucky. The swath that turned red in the NY Times map is the rural, “American” ancestry South, aka Joe-the-Plumber Country or the Cracker Crescent.

“imagine that option A is only 2% better than option B, but it’s pretty consistently 2% better, and every once in a while, A is astronomically better. Why would you ever choose option B? “

Ok, imagine that, normally, largish groups of people have some diversity of opinion, such that they disagree as to whether option A or B is better. That generally IS the case unless option B really IS building those death camps.

Imagine that the largish population group demonstrably is in better agreement on some issues with the party they’re rejecting. Normally largish groups of people disagree about how to order their preferences.

No, I’m going to stick by my position, that there’s something creepy and dysfunctional going on here.

Of course, you realize your interpretation of this begs the question of why 96% of whites, (Or any other ethnic group.) aren’t voting for one party…

Brett, blacks voted 95% democrat, up from 88%. Increase 7%.
Hispanics voted 66% democrat, up from 55%. Increase 11%.
Asians voted 61%, up from 56%. Increase 5%.
Catholics 54% from 45%. Increase 9%.
Etc.

A 7% increase isn’t that much, compared to some others.

And going to 95% just means they’re ahead of the curve. With current GOP strategies, pretty much everybody else is heading to 95% too. The GOP is rightfully heading toward third party status.

Brett, you’ve turned around in mid-comment. The correct question, on your own presentation, is “Do you aspire to live in a country where only 5 per cent of the population supports the Republican Party?” That seems a reasonable aspiration to me, and one which would be consistent with the way the Repubs are viewed most places in the world.

Brett, I don’t particularly want to live in a one-party state, but the GOP will have to get fewer votes than some other party before we get over the idea that the GOP is the only real alternative to Democrats.

Since at this point nobody in their right mind votes Republican unless their patronage depends on it, we need a second party. But the people who really can’t stand Democrats will have to see that the GOP cannot win before they will vote for another party.

I would like to see a strong Libertarian party competing with Democrats, but we can’t get it while the GOP gets more votes than the Libertarians. That is, no third party can get more than 4% of the votes while the GOP has more than 6%. So we might approach a de facto one-party state while the GOP self-destructs.

The best thing would be for the GOP to just dissolve itself right now, and let its members join or form whatever new parties they prefer. But that’s very unlikely. I’m afraid it will limp along in an undead state for years before it finally disappears for good.

I doubt the GOP will survive as a third party, as they will have no reason to exist once they can no longer hand out federal money. But they can spoil elections until they’re down to a third party.