I don't expect to be blogging that much about campaign tactics or psychoanalyzing the presidential candidates this year, as there are plenty of other people to do that. (Of course, like Donald Trump, I will accept the will of the people if they demand that I serve.) But I hope to continue writing about political geography, as in my "What Each State Does Best in Presidential Politics" post. (I may have to revise that South Carolina entry.)
One thing that fascinates me is the geographic bases for each party have shifted so much over the past century. If you compare two close elections almost 100 years apart — 1916 and 2004 — you find pretty much a 180-degree turn, with 40 of the 48 states (no Alaska or Hawaii in 1916) switching parties.
The charts below show how the (currently) 10 largest states have shifted allegiances since 1900. For each state, I showed how much it varied from the national percentage for the Democratic Party in each election. I also charted the growth in the number of voters in each state, since new voters are often responsible for party switches (as opposed to voters moving from one party to another).
This is a work in progress, so any suggestions on chart design and data are welcome. At some point, I hope to break down individual states to show how major counties have shifted over the past 112 years.
BTW, you can find the voting statistics behind the charts at the fantastic Atlas of U.S. Elections.
California really liked FDR, then trended Republican during the first part of its growth spurt after World War II. Since the Great Depression, the nadir of Democratic support vs. the national average was in 1980, thanks to support for favorite son Republican Reagan and distaste for Southern Baptist Carter. But California has been more Democratic than the US as a whole beginning in 1984, even if Reagan still easily carried the state that year. In 2008, Obama got 60.9% here; the 8.1 percentage point gap over the national average was the highest in at least a century.
Texas was famously Democratic when its electorate was far smaller than what it is now. It was a tad more Democratic than the US in 1976 (51.1% vs. 50.1%), when a Southerner was the nominee and the number of votes cast (4.1 million) finally reached a bit more than half of the number that would be cast in 2008 (8.1 million). But in 1984, it embarked on its current drift to the GOP (a mirror image of what California did in the same year). In 2008, Texas was 9.2 points less Democratic than the US as a whole — down a bit from the 10.4-point gap in 2000, when a Texan was the GOP nominee.
Florida is by far the biggest "purple" state in 2012, and it's hewed pretty close to the national average since listing to the Republicans in the 1980s. The rapid expansion of the electorate here means that winning an election is more about turning out new voters than about getting people to switch sides since the previous contest. The raw Democratic vote hasn't dropped here since 1980, and the raw Republican vote hasn't fallen since 1992.
New York has been more Democratic than the national average for almost 50 years, beginning with the Kennedy-Nixon contest of 1960, which is the longest ongoing partisan bent among the 10 largest states. The gap really started to widen with Clinton's re-election in 1996; New York has been at least 10 points more Democratic than the average for the past four elections. This is also one of the most stable (i.e., slowest-growing) electorates among large states: It reached half of its current vote total way back in 1928.
Another slow-growing state, Pennsylvania merits its reputation as a closely divided political battleground. Since 1932, it has never been more than 6 points away from the national Democratic average. But in presidential elections (though not other statewide elections), the Democrats have had a small but persistent advantage. Since 1948, Pennsylvania has been a least a tad more Democratic than the US overall in every election but one (1996). In contrast to states like New York and Illinois, however, this gap has not widened recently. Democratic gains in the eastern part of the state, in the Philadephia area, have been balanced by Republican gains in the more culturally conservative west.
Once a top swing state, Illinois is now part of the Democratic tripod, holding down the Upper Midwest in the same way California anchors the West Coast and New York anchors the Northeast. As recently as 1976, it was a bit more Republican than the national average, as the state showed its affinity for moderate Republicans like Ford and a coolness (at least in the suburbs) toward rural Southerners (i.e., Carter). With Illinois resident Obama on the ticket, the state was 9.0 points more Democratic than the US as a whole in 2008, the biggest partisan gap (on either side) since at least 1900.
The most consistently close of any of the 10 biggest states, Ohio hasn't deviated even 3 points from the national Democratic average since 1960, when it went for Nixon over Kennedy. But it's something of a counterpart to Pennsylvania in that it has recently displayed a persistent, if tiny, Republican bent. The Democrats have overperformed here only once since 1972, when Kerry got 48.7% vs. his national average of 48.3%.
A Republican stronghold for most of the 20th century, Michigan became part of the Democratic base in the 1960s before wobbling around the national mean in the 1970s and 1980s, as labor unions began to lose their political clout. Beginning in 1992, it's been slightly more Democratic than average, and the 4.5 point gap in 2008 was the party's largest advantage since 1968. Still, the Democrats haven't pulling away here to the extent they have in, say, Illinois, and the GOP obviously hopes that the still-rotten economy in Michigan prompts a backlash against the Obama adminstration this fall.
Similar to Texas, the state of Georgia was dependably Democratic back when its electorate was a tiny fraction of what it is now. Even when favorite son Jimmy Carter sparked a 25 percent jump in the number of people voting in Georgia in 1976, the number of votes cast (1.5 million) was far below the 2008 number (3.9 million). Another big expansion of the electorate, in 1992, brought left Georgia close to the national Democratic average (albeit an unusually low average due to Ross Perot's candidacy). But since then it's been 3 to 6 points less Democratic than the US as a whole, even as its population continues to grow rapidly.
Most of the North Carolina electorate started voting in presidential elections no more than 20 years ago. In 1988, the state cast 2.1 million votes; when Obama narrowly carried the state in 2008, there were 4.3 million votes to be counted. The 20.3% jump in turnout from 2004 to 2008 was the highest among the 10 biggest states. During that time, North Carolina went from 4.7 points less Democratic than the US as whole to 3.2 points less Democratic. But it's hard to call anything a trend here when the state is still growing so rapidly.
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