Jim Burgess and I have been rehashing our predictions for Brux's election contest. Answering me,

Jim writes,

Well, not to put too fine a point on it, but depending on how MO goes, I called every state but IN. (Alas for me, Paul called every state but LA, so I lose the contest by 2 points, no matter how MO turns out.)

For all my talk about thinking FL was an easier call than OH, I should point out in actual fact OH did go to Obama by a higher margin than FL did. Nevertheless, I still believe that FL is going blue more surely than OH is. NV belongs with NM and CO (and to a lesser extent MT). They've been moving blueward due to increasing cultural contact with urban coastal America combined with a gradual infiltration of CA-WA type demographics. NV and NM had already turned blue by 2006; CO is still working on it.

Your question of how the Republicans can win again without FL shows lack of imagination. Yes, this year was a big win for the Democrats, but we're still a two-party nation. Losing a presidential election 52%-46% doesn't mean the end of the Republican party any more than similar losses by either party has spelled their doom in the past. Sure, the Republican party has some real problems right now, and it may well take them more than four years to sort it out, but the pendulum will swing again and they'll be back.

Florida is a big state, so of course it's important, but it's not essential for victory any more than CA, TX, NY or PA is. The short answer to the question — how can the Republicans ever win the White House without Florida — is they replace it with Ohio and Pennsylvania. The more thorough answer is that if they fix themselves nationally the electoral math will take care of itself.

As my buddy Gelmo (who in the wake of the election has become a mini-celebrity on the political blogs) says, this election did not change the red-blue map. Rather, the electorate shifted several points toward the Democrats, and several swing states naturally followed from that. Those states didn't become "blue states" any more than MD and NY became red states in 1984. They just went blue this time because the Democrat did very well.

I think Gelmo overstates it, though. I'm not a statistician or pollster, but to my amateur eye there really is some movement going on. I would say that NV, NM, and VA really have turned blue. On the other hand, IN, NC, and MO are still red, in spite of tipping to Obama this year. In approximate order from red to blue, OH, NH, CO, PA, FL, IA and MI are still swing states that could go either way. That gives plenty of room for the next Republican to reach 270 even without FL and VA.

I would also add that there is some movement beneath the surface in the blue states. My read of the demographics in MN and WI is that they are trending redward. It's very easy to imagine MN as a swing state in 2012 if a strong Republican candidate emerges. Another state quietly becoming less blue is Connecticut. We tend to think of all New England as the bluest of blue, but this year Obama's share of the two-party vote in CT is only 53.44%. No, that's not close, but in the context of an Obama win nationally, it's pretty skimpy. It's a smaller percentage than Obama took in IA, NH or PA. [Update: It has been pointed out to me that I was looking at bad numbers for CT, so that entire line of thought is erroneous. I should know better than to trust Wikipedia on something like that without verifying elsewhere. My bad.]

10:35:51 PM  [permalink]  comment []