Evolving Partisan Strength, Part Two

by Chris Bowers, Sun Nov 21, 2004 at 04:25:08 PM EST

The partisan index does not measure which party carried what state. Read this for an explination.--Chris

The North

As I wrote in part one of this series, Democratic difficulties in the south in Presidential elections are a relatively new phenomenon, even though the trend has been visible for half a century and it is not going away anytime soon. The exact opposite is true of the north, which even recently was not a particularly strong Democratic area. In fact, less than thirty years ago it was actually a Republican area:

1976

1980

1992

2000

2004

These maps tell a story that entirely cancels out what has happened in the South. In 1976, these eighteen states plus DC actually had a collective pro-Republican partisan index. However, in 2004, they now favor Democrats by almost exactly the same amount that the south favors Republicans: 

Northern Partisan Index in Electoral Votes
     Solid D   Lean D	Lean R	  Solid R
1976   31		 84	  91	    49	      
1980   71		106	  54	    17
1992   86		 62	  58	    12
2000  112		 53	  43	    12
2004  113		 89	  00	    11
While this transformation is not as dramatic as what has happened in the south, it is still pretty dramatic. Once again, I pin the cause of this on ideology. The lack of northern conservatives make the region fertile ground for Democrats now that the two coalitions have become primarily ideological:
      Liberal IM    Moderate VM       
CT	+2	     +9
DE	-10	     +25
DC	+33	     +79
IL	-4	     +17
IN	-28	     +2
IA	-17	     +19
ME	-1	     +12
MD	-4	     +22
MA	+13	     +19
MI	-12	     +14
MN	-7	     +15
NH	-9	     +15
NJ	+2	     +6
NY	+2	     +20
OH	-15	     +18
PA	-8	     +14
RI	+6	     +28
VT	+7	     +23
WI	-12	     +12
Sixteen of these nineteen states have a smaller margin between liberals and conservatives than the national average (34-21), with only Indiana, Iowa and Ohio bucking the trend. With fewer conservatives, Republicans simply have fewer votes up in the north than they do down south.

How can Republican Presidential nominees do better in the north? Not necessarily by nominating a northerner. The only short-term way that Republicans will improve their standing in the north is if they do not nominate a conservative. Of course, some of the most liberal Republicans, such as New York Governor George Pataki, tend to be from the north. However, I fail to see how someone like Pataki would have any chance of ever being nominated in the current Republican Party.

There was a time when northern liberals voted for northern conservatives and southern conservatives voted for southern liberals. However, that time has passed. Now, southern conservatives vote for the conservative candidate, wherever that candidate is from. The same can be said for northern liberals and moderates. Presidential politics in this country has become primarily ideological rather than primarily regional and ethnic, and I doubt that will change anytime soon.

I will post the next two parts of this series tomorrow.

Tags: Demographics (all tags)

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9 Comments

Shadow_head_small
Excellent
Chris, I cant stress strongly enough how important your analysis continues to be.

I think the only thing missing from your analysis is the WHY. or the WHAT, as in WHAT caused the shifting into ideology and why in the directions they did ?

Understanding that is the key to reversing it, because as you know, nothing stays the same.

I als think of course that  there isnt just 2 camps, liberal and conservative, but there are also residual republicans and democrats, and our mission is to turn those republicans away from conservatism and towards being Democrats.

We need to create an atmosphere where moderate republicans will only vote for a moderate republican, much as reagan democrats or dixiecrats only vote for republicans nowadays.

There is clearly more than GOTV to winning moving forward, I would be very interested in your opinions on these questions.

by Pounder 2004-11-21 06:15PM | 0 recs
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Re: Excellent
The rusting of the Rust Belt is one of the reasons for the slow turn from R to D of the Great Lakes at least.  As the factories close and the jobs go overseas, former "Reagan Democrats" are realizing that they want the government to help them out, bring back the jobs, and keep the safety net out.  

The Northeast is simply following its ideology given the way people are voting these days.  As Chris points out, they appear to be voting for ideology rather than region.  For almost 200 years, the Northeast had been a reliably Republican part of the country just as the southeast had been a reliably Democratic part of the country.  As the parties realigned themselves in the 20th century, the Democrats became the liberal party and the Republicans become the conservatives.  The Northeast has almost always been the most liberal section of the country and thus it has only been natural that it is slowly aligning itself with the liberal party, the Democrats.  Interestingly Vermont and Maine were the only two states to vote against FDR <u>all four times</u>.  Not too long ago, the upper northeast was not too friendly to Democrats.  It seems to take people a long time to give up on a party.  Fittingly, at the beginning of the 21st century, it seems that the 20th Century, post-WWII realignment of the two parties is complete with the entire NE going for Kerry and the entire south going for Bush.

by asearchforreason 2004-11-21 07:33PM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Pawlenty's fake moderation
MN Governor Pawlenty shows the Rethugs how to do it in the north.  On every major issue, he's a hard right conservative - anti-union, pro-privatization, no new taxes, shred public services, capital punishment, anti-gay marriage amendment, abortion, etc.

But every few weeks he takes some meaningless low-cost initiative on education or health care that does nothing to solve the problems, but makes it looks like he cares.  

Together with his nice guy persona, he has the reputation of being moderate, while keeping the base happy.  

by aenglish 2004-11-22 04:05AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
not quite
These maps tell a story that entirely cancels out what has happened in the South.

Only one problem - The population in the Northeast is stagnant, while the south is growing, which means the North is losing EV's, while the South is gaining them.

by brooklyngreenie 2004-11-21 06:50PM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Re: not quite
Doesnt mean the South's demographics won't change as well.
by Slyargent 2004-11-21 07:12PM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Re: not quite
Yes this is one problem.  The rust belt (OH, MI, PA, IN) is losing electoral clout the most quickly but it's also a swing region that doesn't seem to hurt either party particularly badly.  Our counterweight to the R's gains in the southeast should be strong gains in the Southwest (NV, AZ, CO were #1,2,3) where the population grew faster than anywhere else in the country in the 90s and seem to be continuing this trend through 2010.  Overall the population in the West is expected to grow at twice the national growth rate.  California is expected to continue to grow faster than the rest of the country for the next 20 years and thus will gain some electors.  If we can grab onto NV and CO, and possibly AZ in the future, it should help us regain population losses in the Northeast.  Also, it is important to note that FL will remain a critical state for a long time to come.  We need to keep it in play, if it joins its Republican neighbors, we will be in an electoral crisis.  Florida is expected to continue to grow very quickly (which means a lot when it already has a large population) in the future and should surpass New York as the 3rd most populous state by 2025.  It would be a dark day indeed if the Republicans can have a lock on both FL and TX, which together have more votes than California ever will.
by asearchforreason 2004-11-21 07:56PM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
Re: not quite
True.  But according to Census Bureau projections, the West is expected to grow a lot faster than any other region, and those are blue states.

Also, the Southwest is expected to grow a little faster than the South, and some of those states are winnable: New Mexico, Nevada and maybe Arizona.  A lot of that growth is in the Hispanic population, which tends to vote more for Democrats.

Nationally, it looks like the states Kerry won are expected to grow more a little more than Bush's in the next 20 years.  Of course, we still need to win more of them, but at least we're not losing ground on the population front.

by Horq 2004-11-21 08:39PM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
uhhhh....
chris, we lost iowa in 2004....
by fedupdem 2004-11-22 01:05AM | 0 recs
Shadow_head_small
WHOOPS!
sorry, sorry. got caught up looking at the pretty pictures before i did the disclaimer.
by fedupdem 2004-11-22 01:06AM | 0 recs

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