Perhaps he meant Oklahoma?
I don’t mean to derail this, but I grew up in NOVA and thought it was getting more and more liberal, thus influencing the rest of the state as most of the population is concentrated in the north (the metro area around Richmond tends to go Democratic as well).
It seemed to start after the defeat of George Allen (or maybe that’s when I started becoming more aware of politics). Now both senators are Democrats (although if John Warner hadn’t decided not to run again he probably could have kept his seat) and NOVA elected another Democrat to the house (replacing…Tom Rust I think?). The only reason Frank Wolf is still there is because he a) has legitimately done a good job/a lot for the region regardless of his political party and b) There doesn’t seem to be anyone good to run against him. I worked on the Judy Feder campaign in high school and although she was nice personally, she seemed kind of batshit otherwise. I know the current governor is a Republican, but that could be just a fluke.
This is purely anecdotal, but the only Republicans I ever knew were a physics teacher who headed the Young Republicans and the sole student member. They defied all stereotypes by being black and gay respectively.
If Mitt Romney took a shit on the graves of Adolph Rupp, Bill Monroe, Colonel Sanders, and Secretariat, and released clear and unambiguous video of same, it might cause him to win the state of Kentucky by less than ten points. But I doubt it.
Clinton won the state because we love conservative Democrats and because 1992 and 1996 were a much less polarized time when such a thing could still exist. (We still have them at the state level.) Clinton was also a Southern boy and, quite frankly, white. The Kentucky Democratic machine had its shit far more together back then, too. These days they couldn’t find their ass with an electronic ass-finder, and if they could they wouldn’t lift a finger to help Obama.
The only “perfect storm” I could see is if the coal companies decided that they’d be better off under Obama than Romney for some reason. I know several coal miners that were told explicitly by their management that if they didn’t go vote against Obama they could lose their jobs, and not in an abstract “he’ll be bad for coal” way. Their clout could also get the state’s Democrats to pull their heads out of their asses and get behind their President, which could make a difference. It would still be very much uphill.
I’ll be pissed if Obama spends more time here than a token visit or two. There’s no point.
Texas has been mentioned before. However it is still a state the GOP wins with double digits. But there are several demographic trends that are moving texas to the left.
Lots of people who aren’t native are moving there, and taking their moderate or liberal political opinions with them. Plus minorities are growing rapidly there (I think they are about 40% of the vote in Texas now), and as long as the GOP is openly and dog whistle hostile to them they probably won’t go for the GOP.
However, I doubt it. If texas goes blue it’ll be 2020 at the earliest.
I have no idea about Indiana. In 2004 there were 2.5 million votes for president, 1.5 for Bush and 1 for Kerry. In 2008 there were 2.6 million votes, 1.3 for Obama and 1.3 for McCain (Obama barely won).
I think 2012 will see a reversion to the 2004 voting trends of a 60/40 split.
I have no idea where those extra Obama votes came from. I’m guessing about 200k Bush voters switched and voted for Obama, plus another 100k or so new registrations. I guess. But I don’t think it’ll work this time. Even when Indiana had 5+ democratic members of the federal house, they were mostly blue dogs. Indiana was probably a fluke in 2008. Even at its bluest, Indiana is still a reddish purple state.
My opinion is that while NoVa is pretty reliably blue, the rest of the state is very red. Look at the anti-SSM votes (plural). Look how easily we elected a Republican Governor and turned both bodies of the state legislature red. There are also parts of NoVa that are very conservative - Dave Albo and Crazy Ken Cuccinelli were elected from NoVa.
IMO Obama turned Va blue in 2008 because the economic disaster was blamed on the incumbent Republicans, by putting in place the best campaign organization in Va history, and by the exciting historical precedent his election would set. This time the first factor is against him (the incumbent) and the third is old hat. Will Obama’s ground game, combined with the poor quality of the Republican nominee, be enough to keep Va blue? Even when bad news comes Obama’s way? Even when Obama is pummeled with all the negative ads the Koch brothers can buy? I hope so, but I doubt it.
IANA Virginian, but I would like to point out that Obama won VA substantially in '08 – by six points. So he has quite a bit of wiggle room to do not as well and still win the state. Generally, when a president is running for re-election, individual states don’t wildly swing compared to four years prior.
…and a new poll has Obama ahead of Romney by 8 points in VA. Obviously polls at this date are not indicative of results, but I think Obama is doing fine there. Romney would be more likely to pick up Ohio and Florida (and Indiana and North Carolina) than Virginia.
I had to Google Cucinelli, I left VA in 2007 so I missed him being elected. That guy does sound like a real wacko.
What gatorslap**** posted makes the situation seem more promising though.
Maybe on a local level Republicans are still getting elected either through community ties or because the Democratic candidates running are lousy?
Regardless of whatever’s going on, I’m somewhat confident that VA will eventually become a blue state- there is still a growing Latino/immigrants from other misc places (I went to school with a small but significant amount of Middle Eastern and North African kids) population, right? I think as more and more educated/techie type people come in things will turn around.
There’s some, but I think that the current wisdom is that it’s the expansion of the DC metro area into Northern VA that’s driving Virginia’s blue-ward trend.
There are no statewide elected offices in Texas that are currently held by Democrats. Perry shot himself in the foot. He may not be able to be reelected and people are beginning to talk about a change in the power structure within the state. If it happens, this will be more of a dispersal of the power that Perry has concentrated over the years, not a partisan shift. Besides, the state legislature isn’t really set up to play partisan politics.
Outside of state politics, I find it very doubtful that the state will vote Democratic in the 2012 Presidential election. The state is historically conservative, and things are way too polarized these days to imagine people crossing over en masse.
Regarding the Hispanic vote, it seems to be overlooked that Hispanics tend to be moderately conservative. It’s a little ‘c’ conservative though–it is less of a political stance than it is a focus on work and family, the basics that the entire political spectrum seems to take for granted. I haven’t discussed it with anyone (and I very much am guessing here), but I suspect that if they don’t vote, it may be because the choice is either to support the side that is far to their left or to support the side that is closer to their right but that has shown antipathy toward people who share their heritage.