I think this probably has a lot to do with it. Watch what happens to Florida while Rick Scott turns independents turn moderates off the Republican Party (or where Jeb Bush turned lots of them on to it).
No, it isn’t rare. The shift of the south was due to whites shifting from democrat to republican. A hundred years of being heavily democratic followed by 50 years of being heavily republican is pretty consistent. Whatever shifts that do happen seem to be either due to demographics (People who were young during the FDR administration, Carter administration or Bush administration have different political POVs in general) or massive party shifts (like southern whites leaving the democratic party to become republican, or women leaving the GOP) which take years or decades and are due to a shift in party policy.
States change over a century, but during short term periods (15 years or so) states remain pretty consistent. The 2000, 2004, 2008 and 2012 electoral maps will be pretty consistent. The democrat will win the west coast, upper midwest and northeast with the GOP candidate winning everything else. In the course of that period a few states will shift, but there is no chance the GOP wins California or Washington vs the democrat winning Oklahoma.
Many States vote differently from year to year, these aren’t always indicative of any fundamental changes in the states, which appears to be your premise. According to your logic was West Virginia a blue state or a red state from 1956-1980? A span when it voted for Eisenhower and Nixon along with Carter, Kennedy, Humphreys, and Johnson?
Hence the term “swing state”. Calling a state red or blue is convenient shorthand for the political reality that electoral votes win presidential elections. Therefore, it doesn’t matter if California has more Republican voters than here, there and the other place, if the EVs reliably go to the Democratic candidate, that’s all that matters. Barring major shifts, it’s just going to suck to be a Republican in CA or a Democrat in Texas. Swing states are what matters in politics.
Of course, that only really counts for the presidential elections. There’s plenty of states that regularly split the ballots and, despite reliably voting red for president, will vote for a Democratic senator or governor and vice versa.
States that have voted for a republican for president in every election since 1972:
Wyoming
Idaho
Alaska
Utah
North Dakota
South Dakota
Nebraska (except for one electoral vote in 2008)
Kansas
Oklahoma
States that have voted for a republican for president in every election since 1972 except once:
Arizona
Montana
Texas
Mississippi
Alabama
South Carolina
Virginia
Indiana
Electoral district that voted for a democrat for president in every election since 1972:
District of Columbia
States that have voted for a democrat for president in every election since 1972 except once:
Minnesota
So by this count we have 18 states and DC which are reliable for one party over the past 36 years. 18/50 (or 19/51) is not exactly what I would call “rare” or a popular misconception.
You can overlook trends that way, though. The “except once” for Virginia, the topic of the damn thread, was the most recent time. The reasons for that have already been discussed. It therefore makes more sense to extrapolate from that one last time than from all the quadrennia before.
My point wasn’t to talk about trends. It was to address the notion that it is rare for a state to be reliably for one candidate or the other. It’s obviously not the norm, but it’s hardly rare.
Change in two places, No Va, and the cities of the Tidewater - Richmond and the Hampton Roads area.
Not exactly moving from DC to VA. Moving to No Va from the rest of the country, because No Va is the favored DC area base of all the corporations which do business with the Federal government, as well as the favored domicile of most of the white Americans who work for the government. The Pentagon is already in No Va, and so are the companies who make billions in the defense industry.
The growth attracted both huge numbers of white folks in the managerial and professional upper middle classes, who tend to be at least socially liberal. The growth also attracted huge numbers of immigrants from all over the world who make up the majority of workers in the service industry. They tend democratic as well, for a variety of reasons. Dems are more diversity friendly in general, and working poor immigrants favor Dem social programs.
Part of the reason for the growth, ironically, is that No Va was and still is more conservative than blue through and through, Catholic, Jewish, and black Maryland. Lower taxes, less regulation, with a longstanding reputation for being less friendly to black Americans than the MD suburbs. VA is a right to work state, whereas MD is more heavily unionized and the Dems have had a lock on govt. for decades.
Working class, colonial stock Americans, of either Scotch Irish /English or African ancestry are still there, but not nearly as common as 40 years ago.
The Tidewater, because of its large black population dating back to colonial era slave plantations, has a large block of Democratic voters who turned out in a big way for Obama. White Virginia votes largely Republican in the Tidewater, both because the Pubbies were the last refuge of segregationists, and because of the large numbers of active and retired military in the Hampton Roads area. But white population isn’t growing as fast as the black population is in the Tidewater, so the overall contribution to the state vote is up for grabs.
As someone who lives in Northern Virginia, I wouldn’t call Virginia a blue state yet, but things have definitely changed. As others said, there’s been a large influx of people from all over the country and even the world, and Northern Virginia has been getting somewhat more liberal and more populous in the last decade or so.
However, I also think that 2008 was an anomaly. As much exposure as the rest of the country gets to national politics, we get even more. There’s also a lot of military families in this area. Anti-Bush sentiment was very high, McCain wasn’t doing anything to inspire the Republican base, and Obama was doing a lot of legwork.
That’s not to say I think Virginia is going to be an easy Republican win this election. We’ve really felt a lot less of the recession relative to the rest of the country, so people that might vote against Obama for economic reasons are less likely to do that. Like McCain, Romney isn’t doing a lot to inspire the base, but maybe he won’t shoot himself in the foot this time. At the same time though, there isn’t the strong Anti-Bush sentiment working against Romney, and I’m definitely not seeing the amount of effort from Obama that I saw last time either. If Romney were a stronger candidate, Virginia would easily be red again this election. As it stands, I think it’ll be close.
Good point. VA is a purple state. A swing state. Very competitive.
And with reference to the OP, liberals did not move from DC to VA. DC’s population has grown a great deal, largely to due an influx of young, liberal hipster types now that the city (like many others) has recovered from the riots of 68. The suburbs of DC simply have become more urbanized and therefore more Democratic.
Also remember the black vote. Black turnout isn’t always big, but when you run an historic black candidate - like Doug Wilder, the first black governor who Virginia elected in the 80s, or Obama - they come out big, and solidly Dem. Blacks are 19.8% of Virginia’s population, so that’s a significant bloc to tap.
That is technically true, but a better way of stating it is that between 1932-1996, West Virginia only voted for three Republicans: Eisenhower in 56, Nixon in 72, and Reagan in 84. But in those years damn near EVERY state voted for the Republican candidate as those were GOP landslide years. In an election where it mattered, West Virginia was solidly blue. It became a swing state in 2000, was a semi-swing state leading red in 2004, and solidly red in 2008 and 2012. That seems to be a pretty definitive shift, but it’s not necessarily.
Gore, Kerry, and Obama have made no secret of their dislike for coal which is huge in WV. If the Dems would nominate someone that ducked the environmental issue, WV would be solidly blue again.
Results:
LAKE CO DEMOCRAT REPUBLICAN OTHER TOTAL
2004 114,743 71,903 1,376 188,022
2008 138,603 67,417 n/a 206,020
That’s a difference of 17,998 voters, well within GOTV efforts. Add in the fact that Obama came to Indiana six times compared to McCain’s twice, as well as the fact that Mitch Daniels stayed nearly entirely off of the presidential campaign trail, and you’ve got your explanation. It was a superior ground game in Marion County and the Evansville region that did it.
I stumped around Indianapolis for Obama in 2008. Illinois was in the bag so all the legions of Chicago area volunteers would head into Indiana on the weekends and go door to door talking to people. Through sheer numbers of volunteers and the slim margin of victory, I’m personally sure that the GOTV effort won the state.
I live in Indiana and volunteered for Obama in 2008 too. I lived in a smaller town at the time, and a pretty red one, but I remember that the Obama signs would outnumber the McCain ones 5-1 despite it normally being a very red area. I wonder how much of what happened in Indiana was just people being fed up with how far right the right was going (Bush’s failures, the treatment of Palin like a serious politician, denouncing Obama as an Arab Kenyan marxist instead of actual policy discussions, etc).
Evenso, as I said earlier, Indiana was won by Bush by 16 points in 2000, 20 points in 2004, Obama won it basically 50/50 in 2008 and 2012 it shows itself going Romney by about 6 points. So that is a pretty big swing to the left in Indiana.
I don’t think people realize how energized the electorate was in general. For instance, in 2004 there were 317,211 democratic primary voters. In 2008, there were 1,278,296. Yeah - there was a lot of GOP crossover in 2008 for the primaries, but not 300% of the normal primary turnout.
There is really only 1 reason.
Inflated support for Obama in 2008. This resulted from the marketing and romanticizing of a man and not his policies or ideas. It will shift back to red this year as enthusiasm fund raising and voter registration way down for Obama. It really is as simple as that
LOL.
Aug. 8
- If the election for President were being held today, and the candidates were Barack Obama the Democrat and Mitt Romney the Republican, for whom would you vote? (If undecided) As of today, do you lean more toward Obama or Romney? (Table includes leaners)
Obama 49%
Romney 45%
Someone else 1%
Don’t know 5%
In 2008 there was an actual competitive primary by the time Virginia voted though, unlike 2004, when the race was pretty much decided.