Pablano: Kentucky and the "lapsed Democrat" vote

"One thing that may be a factor is what I call the "lapsed Democrat" vote. Kentucky has about 1.6 million registered Democrats, but had just 713K votes for John Kerry in 2004 (45 percent of the registered Democrat base). By contrast, Oregon has about 800K registered Democrats, but had 943K votes for John Kerry in 2004 (118 percent of the registered Democrat base).

Although Kentucky nominally has a closed primary, what may have happened here is that you have a lot of voters who are registered as Democrats but routinely vote Republican for national office -- sort of a relic of the old Solid South. And about 15-20 percent of supporters of each candidate said they'd vote for John McCain over their own candidate.

It's a weird dynamic, but I guess we can at least draw the conclusion that if those lapsed Democrats are going to start voting Democratic again for national office, it won't be for a Democrat like Barack Obama."

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/



I think those of us doing EV modeling can safely put WV, KY, TN, AR, and OK in the GOP column again this year. Not so coincidently they are the five largest Clinton win margins. The old Roosevelt coalition might be hanging on like a strange ghost reflected in the registration data but these folks are not really identifying with the modern Democratic Party. Good bye and God bless.

Call them DINOs, Dixiecrats, Reagan Democrats, whatever. They've voted Republican in the General for the past 30 some odd years. IOW, catering to them is a fool's errand. Or, you could call it a "Clinton Strategy". Either way, it's a loser for the Democratic Party.

Let the lion's share of working class WHITE voter feel that they're fighting with "their BLACK brothers" over the scraps that the ruling class is handing out. When people are HURTING, they will apply prejudice if it helps them to feel better.

President Obama can help raise the standard of living in the past "Jim Crow" South and we can all work and hold out hope that THEY TOO will set aside their prejudices and vote DEMOCRATIC in future primaries. :shrug:

~

~

1996 = the year Bob Dole ran.

What more is there to say?

The proposition that our party doesn't need, or want, New Deal Dems is so flawed as to border on absurdity.

I did not get the memo on this.

Many of them are. Or at least that is what drew them to the party to begin with.

and Clinton won several states with well under 50% of the vote for that reason.

http://www.fairvote.org/plurality/perot.htm

We will need to reexamine what the Barr candidacy and perhaps what Ron Paul may do this year. There may be some interesting dynamics in this years race, too.

And Perot was in that race, taking about 8 million votes away from the Republican.

Face it, the Clintons aren't that magical.

With my sincere thanks to President Bush and his wingnut friends in Congress.

Need red blue back to 72
I have a curious anomaly I have uncovered, but cant confrim it until I confim these states and I cant find the info.
Even better if it was all east of the Mississippi for that time frame.

Thanks if anyone can help

Otherwise pretty much red except for WV which went for Dukakis in '88 and was one of only 6 states (+DC) to vote Carter in '80. WV was one of my "heartbreak" states in the 2000 election. It would have swung the election to Gore.

Here's a handy interactive map with the historical EV data going back to 1789

http://grayraven.com/ec/

Here's a funny anomaly regarding NH and VT: they were reliably GOP in EVERY election after the 1964 Johnson blowout (68, 72, 76, 80, 84, 88) until Clinton won them again in 1992.
Now I count them as part of the DEM base. Things do change as demographics and cultural identities evolve from region to region.

I don't know fruitful that would be ...

The Republicans have been on the wrong side of E C landslides in 92 and 96...

this does make a lot of sense. Years of divisive rhetoric from the rovian machine (and partly responsible is Bill Clinton's Telecom Act of '96, which lead to the biased reports we have seen since then.) have created a swing in the less informed or only informed by Faux reporters to the GOP and their "family values" of war mongering.

coalition and ending the 50-state campaign strategy which "pander to"
the (mostly white) working class and against the plutocracy.

Are the few actual "elitist" Obama supporters with their visions of free trade,
mobile labor force, and endless cultural warfare trying to pull rank on
us regular Obama supporters who expected him to embrace populism
and a 50 state strategy?