Red State / Blue State? Country swings *slightly* Indigo

Gallup on Nationwide Partisanship

"... So, what's the upshot of Gallup's findings? Unsurprisingly, they find that the country has moved left. Below is a reproduction of their partisanship results from 2002, 2006, and 2008."

The country clearly took a bit of a left turn this year rallying behind Barack Obama. There were far more "Blue" States this year than happened in 2004, or even in 2000. But did the country really move that far to the left?

Here's a map broken down by County of the 2004 Presidential Election (Republican George W. Bush beat Democrat John Kerry 286 / 252 for a solid Electoral victory) - country looked very "Red" State by State


Here's a map broken down by County of the 2008 Presidential Election (Democrat Barack Obama beat Republican John McCain 365 / 173 for a landslide Electoral victory) - country looked a lot more "Blue", particularly in a cartogram by population.


Now, broken down by County, the country is definitely a wash of purple, with some clumps of Blue, and clumps of Red... but how much has really changed from 2004 to 2008? Sure the Red of the Mid-west is more muted in 2008, and the Blue of the West Coast, North East, and Central North is a bit more prominent - but there's little change from one map to another really... at least by county to county. Cartograms that weighted the size by the population would definitely show more Blue this time around, but the reality is the Popular vote was pretty divided in 2000, 2004, and 2008, and the Electoral maps don't really show that.

Did the country take a sharp left turn then? Clearly the answer is no. We're still basically the same country we were a few years ago, there were just more of us tired of the incompetence of the last administration and not frightened out of our sense of reason by terrorist attacks this time around.

The Democratic Leadership would do well to remember that if they care to hold on to power in 2010. The country wanted competent and workable leadership, not a drunk orgy of spending on pet projects that will have little real and lasting positive impact on the country. Infrastructure spending is good, we probably need that. Spending on extraneous things for the sake of government spending is bad.

As stated in the article above - the demographic change in partisanship swung pretty heavily from Republican to Democrat in just a few years even while the Republicans were thinking they had a good shot at establishing a lasting majority. The country can swing back too if they Democrats really foul things up - something they should try to avoid, or we might be looking at very different election maps in 2010 and 2012.