What "Perfect Storm" Circumstances Could Make Individual Southern States Go Blue?

Politics & Elections
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General wisdom is that the GOP can count on winning the South in a Presidential Election. The inevitability of the South’s Electoral Votes, however, only goes to insure defeat when such circumstances arise that the “inevitable” is dispelled.

There was some talk in the Mississippi/Alabama Thread about the GOP being able to depend upon the South regardless of who their nominee will be. Others argued that while Southern conservatives may not vote for Obama, they very well may sit at home on Election Day- the suggestion being that the GOP must nominate a candidate who is liked in the South or risk losing some safe States due to low voter turnout.

Looking at the Southern States on a State by State basis, what “Perfect Storm” would be required for reliably Red States to go Blue?
Personally, based on absolutely no hard data- and directly opposed by the most recent evidence, I feel like Louisiana and Georgia should be Swing States. I just feel like they should be.

Clinton took Louisiana in both '92 and '96. He took Georgia in '92.

New Orleans is required for Louisiana to go Blue. In 2008, the population of New Orleans was still only about 2/3 the size it was before Hurricane Katrina. The population number on New Orleans’ Wiki page is still significantly lower than the pre-Katrina population, but the number listed is from 2010. Anyone know how much growth there’s been in the past two years?

Georgia, well I guess Georgia is reliably Red but it feels like it should be a Swing State. I think I’m just saying this because everyone I’ve ever met from Georgia has been both really cool and quite liberal- though, it must not be insignificant that none of them are living in Georgia when I meet them.

I think Virgina is pretty much a Swing State from now on. Obama’s victory was helped by demographic changes from the growing D.C. suburbs, am I right about this?

I still don’t quite understand how he won North Carolina, but then I do think about how, like Georgia, everyone I’ve met from North Carolina has been really cool and quite liberal- but, again, they’re not living in North Carolina when I meet them.

I don’t really count Florida as the South. Northern Florida is the South, but the rest of Florida is very much it’s own thing and Florida as a whole is quite demonstrably a Swing State.

Other Southern States won by Clinton in BOTH '92 and '96:
Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia

That makes 5 that Clinton won in both elections. I would roll my eyes whenever friends would cry out about Bush “stealing” Florida. Gore would have been President without Florida if he had won any one of those 5 States- like, I don’t know, his home State maybe?

What Southern States do you think could go Blue given the right combination of circumstances? What circumstances do you see as absolutely required to create that Perfect Storm?

I do not mean to limit the discussion to the 2012 election.
You may think a Southern State is winnable by the right Democrat but not by Obama- I’m looking for that to be part of the discussion.

My (limited) thoughts on possible ingredients required- although I discuss them generally, not applying them to specific States:

Low GOP voter turnout due to lack of enthusiasm for the GOP candidate-
I see a lot of disagreement on the SDMB about this issue. The GOP did grow its support in the South be reaching out to people who were staying home on Election Day previously, but some seem to argue that these people are not going to go back to sitting out the election. It seems that many believe that all Republicans are going to go to the polls to vote against the Democrat no matter how much they dislike their own candidate.

The Black Vote-
There are a lot of Black people in the South. Still, they don’t seem to have much of an effect on elections. Are they not participating? If every eligible voter in the Black community registered to vote, and if every one of them voted for the Democrat, which Southern States would turn Blue?

A Democratic Candidate from the South-
Clinton had a very strong organization and many long time connections in Arkansas, and neighboring Tennessee and Louisiana. This kind of support can have a significant effect come the General Election.

My thoughts going into this OP were triggered by a handful of comments in the Mississippi/Alabama Thread that I linked above. Some of these quotes may expand the discussion:

Next Three Quotes to be read together:

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I think Texas is the first shoe to drop, and it’ll happen relatively soon. The Latino vote, if it goes according to plan, is not to be messed with.

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If Texas becomes a swing state, the Republicans in their current form will not be able to compete nationally; they’d become a regional party.

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Louisiana is the linch pin.

Then it’s -

Texas.

Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming.

Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania.

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I don’t know what you mean by linch pin. If you mean the bellwether states for the upcoming Presidential election, IMO it’s gonna be Ohio and Florida again.

– Obama’s not gonna pick up any states that he didn’t pick up last time. If he did, it will be a completely lopsided victory so we don’t need to worry about the other states.
– If Obama picks up Ohio and Florida, all the other swing states combined won’t matter because they’re too small.
– If Obama doesn’t pick up either Ohio OR Florida, then he will lose because most of the other swingable states are leaning even redder IMO so he won’t pick up any swing states.

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2012 will be about Texas.

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Virginia is arguably a blue state at this point, and NC is certainly gettable (RCP has Obama in a slight lead there v Romney, though almost all the polling seems to be from partisan pollsters).

Demographic trends might drive Texas into voting Dem someday, but that’s a ways out, if it happens at all. Romney currently leads Obama there by 7 points.

Florida is famous for being a purple state (somewhat bizarrely, given what a lock the GOP has on the state level gov’t).

Federal level voting in the deep south is mainly along racial lines, with whites voting for the GOP and AAs for the Dems. White voters far outnumber blacks, so Lousiana, Missisippi, Alabama, etc will stay GOP for as long as that holds true. And its almost as true for the younger age cohorts as it is for the older age cohorts, so I doubt it will reverse any time soon.

Virginia went for Obama by a wider margin the OH or FL in 2008 and polling tends to show Obama doing better there this cycle as well. So I could see him winning VA and loosing NC, FL and OH. Even if he then loses IN (the other really close state in '08) he still wins, at least if I’m doing the math right.

Romney really needs to totally sweep last cycles swing states to win.

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I’d flip your next tiers over.

Texas

Indiana

Oregon, Idaho, Montana, Wyoming

Ohio and Pennsylvania are “swing” states, with varying emphasis on the swing.

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The idea of Texas becoming a Swing State anytime soon is very surprising to me. Sure, there’s a lot of big urban areas in Texas and the formula in most Swing States is that the urban areas balance out the sticks . . . but, in Texas there’s a lot of sticks. Also, I’ve always gotten the impression that even the urban areas are pretty Red in Texas- except Austin and, to a lesser extent, Houston.

Does anyone with a finger closer to the pulse of the Texas political heartbeat want to fight my ignorance here? Anyone want to make a strong argument that Texas could be a Swing State by 2016?

I interpreted littlespeedysuperbike’s comment in the other Thread as merely suggesting that a Democrat could force a Republican to actually have to spend money in Texas. I didn’t think the suggestion was that a Democrat could actually win.

Kozmik, you think Texas is ready to be a Swing State in this election? What have you got to persuade me?

I’m trying to find some current good population numbers and demographics for New Orleans. I’m actually particularly interested in this. Clinton couldn’t have won Louisiana without New Orleans but Katrina weakened the city by displacing such a huge amount of the population.

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Surprised to see mention of Oregon. Yes, the vote is always close in Oregon but it hasn’t gone to a Republican since 1984. They even went for Dukakis when California went for Bush.
Still, general Swing State discussions will always throw out the same examples. I’m specifically interested in thoughts of just how strong of a hold the GOP has on the South- precisely because it is so often thrown into conversation as if it is an absolute truth.

Simplicio, you really think Virginia can nearly be counted as a Blue State? I can readily accept it as a Swing State, but I’m cautious to think of it as Blue just yet.

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Idaho and Wyoming are the second and third most Mormon states in the country. Between them, they have 7 electoral votes. Obama’s time and campaign money is better spent elsewhere.

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If you look at this (“red-blue” map of the U.S. broken down by county, and shaded red to purple to blue according to local vote proportions), and then morph it into this (cartogram of the preceding, proportional areas of counties distorted so that area is proportional to their populations), you’ll see that even Texas has some big blue and purple regions/populations – and, that, as elsewhere in America, the metropolitan areas are more blue/liberal than the countryside. So, it’s not unthinkable – if not this year, maybe in two to four more years, depending on demographic changes, generational changes, and growth in the metro areas. And all those illegal Mexicans Obama is going to naturalize and register, heh-heh-heh.

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Some of those states people “feel” should go blue, like Georgia, Virginia and Texas, have huge military populations, which vote conservative. Obama may have won Dallas, Houston and San Antonio, but he didn’t even win Travis County, which includes Austin.

Frankly, I think the subset of Republican voters who think Mormonism is a cult pretty much overlaps with the subset who believes Obama is a Muslim, so I think they’ll hold their noses and vote for the one who’s sort of like a Christian instead of letting Sharia law triumph over the Constitution.

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The Republican party is going to evolve-we’ve already seen signs of it this election. The future of American politics is IMO going to be that of an economically liberal (read classically liberal/neoliberal), internationalist party based on a coalition of the upper middle class, professionals, “new” Evangelicals, Hispanics, and Millennials against a populist one of “ethnics”, blacks, working class, “old” Catholics and Evangelicals, and petit bourgeoisie. It’d be interesting which party becomes which…

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Oooh, excellent point that I hadn’t thought of.
Wow, I thought Austin was the Bluest Texas there was. The population figures currently on Wiki give Austin 79% of the entire population of Travis County (County pop 1M, city of Austin pop 790K).

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But how does that expand the Republican base and make it so they win more national offices? With regards to the Catholics and Evangelicals, every action causes a reaction. They’re seeing more and more of their influence wane as time goes on, and they’re trying harder and harder to grasp what they’ve got left.

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There is some evidence that professionals are trending Democratic, due to the Republican Party’s aversion to science and embrace of crackpot economics. Also, for the $200-400,000 set, a lot of the benefits they accrued due to GWBush’s tax cuts were clawed back by the Alternative Minimum Tax: some of the 1% have figured out that the GOP is more focused on the donor class or the top 0.1%.

Admittedly some of this is murky, but here’s one cite:
PROFESSIONALS: Professionals, who are, roughly speaking, college-educated producers of services and ideas, used to be the most staunchly Republican of all occupational groups. In the 1960 presidential election, they backed Richard Nixon by 61 percent to 38 percent. But in the 1980s these voters – now chiefly working for large corporations and bureaucracies rather than on their own, and heavily influenced by the environmental, civil-rights, and feminist movements – began to vote Democratic. In the four elections from 1988 to 2000, they backed Democrats by an average of 52 percent to 40 percent. I’d like to see that updated through 2008.

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“Petit bourgeoisie”? Why do you avoid the term “middle class” when you talk about the Democratic base? And why are Black Democrats “ethnics” and Hispanic Republicans aren’t?

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Too bad you are wrong. Obama won Travis County handily.

It actually isn’t an excellent point since it is, yet again, WRONG. Your initial instinct was correct.

Travis county gave Obama the largest percentage of votes for any metro area in Texas - 64% of the vote. In Harris Co. Obama got 50.5%, Dallas Co. 57.5% and Bexar Co. 52.4%.

Jefferson, Cameron, El Paso and Hidalgo Counties happen to be reasonably decent sized urban areas and Obama won those counties as well without much difficulty.

The only major metro area McCain won was Tarrant Co. (Fort Worth).

I doubt Obama will carry Texas, but it isn’t as red a state as most people think.

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To be thorough I should also mention there were several counties with sizable populations that went to McCain in Texas in 2008, namely Denton, Collin, Montgomery, Fort Bend and Galveston. Most of these are suburbs of either Dallas or Houston.

Bell County is where Fort Hood is located and though it did go to McCain it was closer than you would think.