| A good way to think of these maps is that the normal maps on the left show the results in rural America and the cartograms show the results in urban America. Briefly, the cartograms on the right show the size of each county based on how many people live there, not the land area. Note that while the population changed over time, I pretended it didn't when I made these cartograms, just to keep things a little simpler. Below, the results of the 2004 and 1988 elections, using the same color scale, where the darkest colors indicate more than 90% of the county voting for one party's candidate (Washington, DC and Ochiltree County, TX in 2008, for instance).
 
Click to enlarge.
 
Click to enlarge.
This is not your father's GOP
Although it is definitely an Old Party. Below, maps showing the change in vote between the 2008 election and the 2004 and 1988 election. The same color scale is used in all four maps.
 
Click to enlarge.
While McCain outperformed Bush04 in a moderately sized chunk of the country, when population is taken into account by looking at the cartograms, this area is squished into a small pink stain. Everywhere else, we see nice shades of green.
 
Click to enlarge.
The comparison with 1988 shows much more dramatic changes, with increases for the Republicans in the rural Mountain West and the South, and huge democratic shifts in the urban areas.
So what can we see? Here, I'll put out several ideas that seem to me to be consistent with the data. We can argue about it in the comments.
1. Campaigning matters.
Almost all of the pink counties in the maps comparing 2008 and 2004 are in states Obama didn't campaign in. It is possible that the reason Obama didn't campaign in these states is because he had data showing that his campaigning wouldn't work in these areas. But, his campaigning did work in some similar areas. For example, Northern Appalachia and Appalachian Virginia and North Carolina, and perhaps parts of Northern Kentucky where residents saw ads targeted for Ohio and Indiana, as well as almost all of Missouri, are mostly green. The rest of Appalachia and the Upland South are mostly pink. Where Obama campaigned in Appalachia and the Upland South, he outperformed Kerry.
Additionally, three of the greenest states are Montana, North Dakota, and Indiana, where the Obama campaign had a much greater presence than the McCain campaign.
Obama was able to motivate his base and change minds, it appears. For example, in Indiana, Monroe County (home to Indiana University) had 23,000 votes for Bush in 2004 and 27,000 votes for Kerry. In 2008, Mccain had 21,000 - a slight decrease - and Obama had 41,000 votes. In urban (Indianapolis) Marion County, the numbers are 156,000 Bush and 162,000 Kerrry in 2004, and 131,000 McCain, 237,000 Obama. Even out in rural Rush County where about the same number of people voted in 2004 and 2008, McCain managed to pull in only 4300 votes where Bush had 5400 in 2004; Obama had 3200 in 2008 and Kerry 2000 in 2004. Obama apparently didn't just get out the students and city folk in Indiana, he convinced many rural Hoosiers to switch from voting D to R on the presidential level.
Lack of campaigning might be evident in the vote totals of some of the pink counties. For example, in Breathitt County, Kentucky, McCain only got 130 more votes than Bush (2671 to 2542), but Obama received more than a thousand fewer votes than Kerry (2205 to 3327), resulting in a dramatic difference in percent (43% Bush, 53% McCain). Could this have been a result of Democrats that weren't comfortable with Obama and just stayed home? Would campaigning have convinced them, as it appears to have convinced some of their neighbors in Virginia?
2. Demographics and development.
Some of the changes in the maps over the last 20 years came about from a confluence of demographics and development. California, obviously, has seen an increase in the Latino vote (8% in 1992, 18% in 2008) at the same time as Republicans have been hyperventilating about immigration issues, helping to color many of the state's counties bright green. Major cities, bastions of evil elitists, minorities, and universities, are also modern-day ports of entry for immigrants from around the world. The cartograms show urban centers trending strongly towards the Democratic candidate - even in Utah and Idaho.
Development, too, has brought on changes as counties grow. One example is Clayton County, Georgia. Here's the vote totals:
1988 R 28,000 D 15,000
2004 R 23,000 D 56,000
2008 R 17,000 D 83,000
Obama's base came out to vote for him even in many states that weren't competitive. Spots of darker green abound throughout the country where there are cities, universities, and minorities.
3. Goodbye, Northeastern Republicans
In 1988, George Bush the Elder won almost the entire Northeast, with the exception of Massachusetts, New York City, and a few scattered counties. In 2008, as the last Republican in the House from New England was defeated, the Northeast is solid blue with some scattered pink counties in upstate New York and New Jersey. New Hampshire and Vermont in particular show dramatic changes. But why, oh why, couldn't we get rid of those Maine senators?
4. Goodbye, Reagan Democrats
Stan Greenburg has an editorial eulogizing the end of a political era. We can see this, I believe, by the nice green spread over the white, working class parts of the Midwest in the maps above comparing 2008 to 1988. Indeed, Indiana no longer looks like such an anomoly when we take a longer historical perpective: Obama's 2008 win simply is bringing it in line with its neighbors. Here's a closeup:
Click to enlarge.
5. Goodbye, Sagebrush Rebellion
Maybe not yet, but it's on the way out. Over that past twenty to thirty years, there's been a large shift towards Republicans in the much of rural Mountain West at the same time as more populated parts of the West went Democratic. Oregon and Washington are thought of as strongly blue states now, but they have very red, but sparsely populated, eastern portions. The split in trends since 1988 can be seen below:
Click to enlarge.
In the past four years, however, the rural Mountain West trended towards Democrats just as strongly as the urban Mountain West and Pacific Coast, and indeed much of the rest of the country. It's still Republican territory for the most part - but hello, Representative Minnick of Idaho!
6. Goodbye, Southern Strategy, Hello, New South
Finally, one of the most famous political strategies appears to be in its dying days. While parts of the South and Southern Plains continued to shift towards Republicans over the past four years, continuing a trend over the past few decades, the New South - educated, multiracial, and urban - is rising along the Atlantic from Virginia to Georgia. And the rest of the South might have done a little better had Obama campaigned there, as mentioned above. Without the New South, the rest of the South just doesn't have enough electoral votes to pander to.
Note: Cartograms based on Gastner and Newton's method as implemented by Frank Hardisty and the 1990 census. Apologies to Alaska and Hawaii, but Alaska hasn't come close to finishing its vote count yet and both have severe home state effects this year. Cross posted on Daily Kos. |
