Update 12/22/10: The 2010 Census results are out and our interactive map has been updated to reflect the redistribution of electoral votes. We’ve also written an updated post on 2012 Electoral Votes by State.
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The electoral map will change for the 2012 election, based on the results of the 2010 census. Article I, Section II of the U.S. Constitution specifies that a census will take place every ten years to (among other things) apportion representation in Congress. Since each state has one Electoral Vote for each senator and representative, these numbers shift over time since not all parts of the country are growing at the same pace.
We’ve taken a look at some Census population projections for 2010 and plugged them into the current formula for apportionment. These population projections were made before Hurricane Katrina, so we’ve made a slight modification for that, but otherwise we’ve left them alone.
The real 2010 numbers will undoubtedly differ, and Congress could change the rules for apportionment, but we thought we’d present this early look at what states would gain or lose Electoral Votes starting with 2012 based on those estimates:
- +3: Texas
- +2: Florida
- +1: Arizona, California, Georgia, Nevada, Utah
- -1: Illinois, Iowa, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Missouri, Pennsylvania
- -2: New York, Ohio
No real surprises here – population continues to shift away from northern, industrial states to the sunbelt. Their likely will be more and/or different changes than the above.
{ 45 comments… read them below or add one }
Republican Strongholds
+3 Texas
+1 Arizona, Georgia, Utah
-1 Louisiana
Democrat Strongholds
+1 California
-1 Illinois, Massachusetts, New York
Swing States
+ 2 Florida
+1 Nevada
-1 Iowa, Missouri, Pennsylvania
-2 Ohio
Republicans gain 5 votes, Democrats lose 2 votes.
On swing votes, Republicans lose 1 vote and Democrats lose 2 votes, so Republics gain 4 safe + likely votes while Democrats lose 4 safe + likely votes.
The Democrats best chance is to ingratiate themselves with the growing Hispanic demographic which has yet to form a bloc. This could win them AZ, NM, and possibly TX in future contests. However, Republicans have a much stronger hold of their core states than Democrats so the demographics favor the GOP.
Eh… I wouldn’t say Arizona is a Republican stronghold. In 2008, with its favorite son running for president, it’s not likely to go Democratic, but it really belongs more with the swing states.
Texas is, it’s worth pointing out, the swing state of the future. One reason is how Republicans are alienating themselves among Hispanics. This is more than just a tactical mistake; they’re effectively turning their back toward history.
Larry, stop begging. The wave is OUT of the liberal rat-holes and you know it. Obama will benefit for now and the Democrats. Arizona is FAR more of a Republican stronghold than, say, New York or Mass., states LOSING electoral votes. Why are Republicans “alienating” themselves with hispanics? Because they have the “nerve” to want to enforce immigration laws? That hurts legal hispanics as well as everyone. Most candidates IN FAVOR of strong immigration enforcement win. Lou Barletta in Pennsylvania is in a state that will probably go with Obama but he is beating up on a long term democrat incumbent with far more money because of Barletta’s populist anti-illegal alien stance. Also, it sounds like every hispanic thinks alike according to your logic…. don’t think so. I guess you want illegals in everywhere to swamp the nation and kill it? What is you solution? Nothing. And the swing OUT of the Northeast is good. The living sucks there and the northeasterners leaving such places often have a bitter taste in their mouths over leftist, high tax policies. I am one of those. Hispanics are not black… they are not enslaved to one party. And many hispanics ARE WHITE. Cutting illegal immigration wins elections. Enough said.
Texas has a huge voting block of Hispanics who have lived here for longer than whites. Their thinking on illegal immigration is like any other American. It’s pretty racist to assume that the Hispanic vote is some monolithic entity left-wing extremists can manipulate.
Ron
The wave out from the north has nothing to do with “liberal rat-holes”, it has mostly to do with weather! And as the northerners move out, they turn states like Virginia and NC blue.
Like to be able to look at the history of voting power shift
decade by decade
Steve, what world you in? It has much to do with high tax, liberal states. And many are SICK OF IT and take off. Really, as a liberal, would one REALLY want to take off for Texas or Alabama or North Carolina? Don’t think so. Sure there are other factors I know- jobs, warmth, etc. But MANY people come down TIRED of being in the liberal RAT HOLES. That is a fact. You think it is all just the “weather?” Virginia is not exactly “blue” and NC is NOT blue so I don’t know what you are talking about. You know damn well the trend is OUT of the liberal states… like it or not. New York once had 45 electoral votes. IT is now projected to be 29 electoral votes after the current census in 2010. Many people( not all) get out of certain states because they are SICK of the way things are and want to be around people more like them.. not all but many. The future demographics are against liberals… cry all you want.
Ron, Steve’s right on the money. People get old and they retire. When that happens they look for warmer weather but mostly they’re looking for cheap housing to accommodate their lower financial resources. AND – you can bet they’re going to bring their political beliefs with them.
leaving the liberal rat holes? wow keep spewing that crap. I didnt realize Ohio, Missouri, Louisiana, Iowa, and Pennsylvania were liberal ratholes. And your also saying I guess that California isnt liberal? According to you people are leaving liberal areas and ohh look, California is liberal yet its gaining a vote.
Btw Arizona isnt a Republican stronghold at all, even with their own senator running for Prez. the polls show Obama only a couple points behing McCain. The only Rep. Strongholds gainign elecs are Texas and Utah, the only Dems getting elecs is Cali. overall though states chaneg their vote, VA being a prime example, its population increased and its going blue.
The assumptions that Texas will continue to be red may be full of holes. Texas is now like California , a minority majority state. In 2006 the Democrats swept all but one county wide office in Dallas County. Dallas has been Republican since before I was born in the time of Truman. Predictions are that Harris county (Houston and suburbs) will follow this year. Bexar County (San Antonio)already has three of four county commissioners and the county judge are Democrats. Fair odds all five will be Democrats after Tuesday. Travis County already the Dems out number the Republicans 15-1. When I moved to San Antonio in 1986 we had a Republican county judge and 3 Republican commissioners. We are now a Hispanic/black majority. With the Austin -San Antonio I-35 corridor turning Democratic and the Valley being the other big winner in population it will be very difficult to gerrymander anything but a 4 seat gain for Democrats and survive a Supreme Court challenge. DeLay’s redrawn districts were rejected by the US Supreme Court twice. Texas is still covered by the Voting Rights Act so the Republicans will be hard pressed to do anything that doesn’t have 8 Hispanic districts, 2 black districts, and two mixed black Hispanic districts. Texas is only 47% Anglo and shrinking fast. We have more Hispanic students in our public schools than Anglo. Other than putting San Angelo in with NE San Antonio I don’t see anyway to save Lamar Smith my congressman.
Once Northern Virginia leaves Virginia and becomes it’s own state or is absorbed into D.C. the conservatives will be in great shape. Those people don’t share the values of the Virginia I know, I saw that when my son was in the National Navel Hospital (Bethesda)and Walter Reed. I’m glad I live down here along the Carolina border.
T.S., just a reminder that Obama would have won Virginia without Nova
T.S. if you didn’t know, North Carolina also went to obama in the last election. Maybe you should be comparing yourself to the “people” that live in west virginia and kentucky rather than the fine folk that live in carolina.
To everyone on this board: The reason why many of these states are gaining electoral votes is because their cities are expanding. Look at nevada and arizona for example. Their populations are expanding because people are moving out of california and into the metropolises of these states. therefore, they are actually getting more liberal than conservatives. conservatives are the leaders of the agrarian society, which is fine. But most of the populous is now living in cities, in which democratic values pander to. I predict in 8 years that Texas, Nevada, Arizona, and Florida will be in secure democratic hands. Unless the republicans start pandering city values, there is no way they will win in these upcoming urban states.
Where is your data? I’ve seen reports that California was losing a vote in the electoral college. There has been a massive flight out of CA.
And in response to Nick:
IA, OH & MO are swing states.
However LA & PA were indeed liberal ratholes. Hurricane Katrina changed the equation in LA. But PA is & has long been in the Democrat column. Ditto NY, IL & MA.
There’s an undeniable trend of population growth in the Deep South & Mountain West. These are Republican strongholds.
There’s population stagnation in New England, Great Lakes & West Coast. These are Democratic strongholds.
The potential Hispanic Democratic boom is overrated. First, not all Hispanics are Democrats. They’re a much more malleable voting bloc than black people.
Second, Republicans are winning the immigration debate. A consensus is developing that we should enforce immigration laws. Many are still uncomfortable with the idea of immigration raids. But very few would object to a system which would hold employers responsible for hiring illegal immigrants.
The Republican Party needs to distance itself from racists who embrace the cause of immigration reform. But immigration is still a valid concern.
270toWin: Calculations are based on Census Bureau population projections for 2010. However, these are from mid-decade, well before both the housing bubble and then housing crash changed the population growth patterns of California. Our original post is from over a year ago.
Republicans Need To Be Worried.
1. Virginia and North Carolina, once solid Republican States, are now becoming more and more liberal with the new age of voters. A poll in NC showed that of first time voters Democrats lead 58%-42%. Although Obama barely won in NC (50%-49%) we could see even greater support for Obama in NC in 2012.
2. If Obama even has a DECENT presidency he could win the 2012 election as greatly as Reagan beat Mondale in 1984. (525-13)
Everyone is overlooking something:
Congress is currently controlled by the Democrats, so it is likely that they will do everything they can to keep the results from shifing the power from them.
I would expect them to make Washington DC a state, giving them an additional 3 electorial votes.
Next, the number of House Representatives could be changed to a number that would favor the Northern states more, by making the population dividing line shifted in a way that will favor them by a few more.
For example, if the threshold for getting another representative is 600,000, then that could be shifted backwards to say 500,000 or upwards to 700,000 if that favors them keeping a couple representative slots.
Of course, they could just get rid of the electoral college altogether if they believe that would benefit them.
In the extreme case, there is a possibility that martial law will be declared before the 2012 election. Or any opposition party could be declared illegal.
So, anything can happen. It’s all just speculation.
Big Ed, DC already has 3 electoral votes…
I get so tired of liberals trying to label Texas a future swing state. The way things are going, it’s going to swing alright – swing far back to the right as it was in 04, and 00. Obama is going to make this not just a Republican stronghold, he is going to make it an EXTREME Republican stronghold. He is NOT liked here at all.
Quit comparing Obama to Reagan. He is nowhere close. Just remember history sometimes repeats itself. GHW Bush won in a landslide in 1988 and lost his reelection bid.
We can only pray that Obooboo does the same before there is nothing left of this country.
There are a lot…and I mean a lot of 5th or 6th generation upper middle class Hispanic Americans who vote Republican. The assumption that all Hispanics are poor Democrats is a myth. We still have the upperhand. The vast majority of that minority you speak of can’t vote.
If anything, the population shift to Southern and Western states bodes well for the Democrats.
At its peak in the early part of the 20th Century, the North collectively held 262 electoral votes, a large share of these controlled by such titans as Pennsylvania, which had 38; New York, which had 47; and Illinois, which had 29.
The liberal tradition in the North has always run deep, regardless of party; New England was the stronghold of the failed Federalists (early believers in a powerful central government) in the late 18th and early 19th Centuries, and when the anti-slavery Republican Party first emerged on the national stage in 1856 it swept the North.
Up until the 1960′s, the GOP was the more progressive of America’s two parties, and in the period from the Civil War to the Civil Rights movement the Northeast and Midwest, with several exceptions, stayed lock-step in the Republican fold.
Nixon’s Southern Strategy, in which white racism was manipulated to yield Southern dissatisfaction with the Johnson Administration, was when GOP energies were first directed toward a growing South.
The first indicator of a future Northern descent had come in 1930, when Pennsylvania fell from 38 to 36 electoral votes. It was not until 1950, however, when New York was downgraded from 47 to 45 votes, that the North began to slowly ebb from its stratospheric peak.
In that year, Illinois went from 29 to 28 votes, and Ohio went from 26 to 25, while Pennsylvania dropped for the third census in a row, moving from 35 to 32.
Nixon, peering into the future that 1960′s demographic changes presaged, tied his party firmly to the region of the country sure to experience the fastest population growth. The South’s incredible electoral rise has proceeded as Nixon likely hoped, but in other ways the 37th President’s foresight was fatally limited.
It was a fundamental error of judgement for the Republican Party to believe that the bastions of conservatism, chief among them the Deep South, could absorb wave after wave of Northern immigration and remain geopolitically unaltered. The GOP of four decades ago assumed perhaps that Northern arrivals would become enculturated to the South, but instead the opposite happened.
In Miami, Atlanta, Charlotte, Northern Virginia, and other places, liberal communities established themselves and bolstered, year by year, the electoral power of the South.
For half a century, migrants swelled the overall Southern population while constituting a smaller share of the citizenry than the native Southerners whose ideology remained the bedrock of conversatism.
In the 1980′s, however, the rate of Northern immigration increased dramatically and continued for the next two decades at an unprecedented pace. As the North depopulated and the South soared, Republicans were temporarily left in the 1990′s and early 2000′s at a demographic advantage, able to exploit a situation wherein liberals had moved across the Mason-Dixon Line in sufficient numbers to empower the South without transforming it.
The appearance of Republican hegemony was impressive.
In both 2000 and 2004, George W. Bush won every Southern state save the District of Columbia, Maryland, and Delaware, also prising a handful of industrial states from a Democratic North that could never have less afforded to lose a single vote.
In the late 2000′s, however, the balance shifted.
As Northerners continued to pour south, the immigrant population, which included not only transplants but also those transplants’ Southern-born children, reached a tipping point. In many jurisdictions, genuine Southerners were narrowly outnumbered for the first time by Northern immigrants and their descendants, who in 2008 could at last taste the fruit of fifty years’ change by accessing the towering electoral vote totals they’d built up.
In 2008, Barack Obama took Florida’s 27 electoral votes. Virginia, revolutionized by the glittering center of wealth, liberalism, and urban power that its northeastern counties comprised, fell into the Democratic ring. In North Carolina, five decades of slow-moving demographic trends just barely delivered 15 electoral votes to the blue column.
Meanwhile, the North flew the liberal flag as it always had, with the only difference being that it was even more staunchly Democratic in 2008 than in previous years.
Simply put, the Republicans’ problem is this: while liberals have been moving south since the 1950′s, conservatives aren’t moving north.
As the Southern population continues to rise, the Democrats’ advantage will only grow with it.
Florida, which will have 29 electoral votes following the 2010 Census, is highly unlikely to vote Republican in 2012.
The Democrats will almost certainly build off of their narrow edge in North Carolina (which will gain one more Northern-fueled electoral vote in 2010, bringing its total to 16), while in Virginia the Democrats have likely found for themselves a new stronghold. The Old Dominion holds off-year gubernatorial elections, and the biggest question in 2009 seems not to be who will win the general contest, but who will win the Democratic primary. The current front-runner, appropriate enough in a state whose prosperity has been brought by outsiders moving in, is former DNC chairman and Upstate New York native Terry McAuliffe.
Heavy immigration continues into Sunbelt states that have yet to reach the tipping point, and with every new resident those areas are brought one step closer to crossing the migrant/native threshold.
One example of this in Georgia, which barely held for John McCain last Fall. The Empire State of the South has either reached or is about to reach its transition from native to migrant primacy, and in 2012 its 16 electoral votes will be more ripe for Barack Obama than they were in 2008.
Arizona, which will have 12 electoral votes following the 2010 Census, was already a swing state in 2008 despite being the home of Senator John McCain. In 2012, it is wide open.
Texas, meanwhile, could possibly supplant Florida as the ultimate swing state. The conservative tradition in the Lone Star State is strongly ingrained, but the liberal surge south is being felt there. Houston, with its world-class medical facilities; Dallas, with its business elite; countless other major cities now home to educated professionals; and an enormous minority population are shaping a new political order.
By 2016 at the latest, Texas and its 38 electoral votes will be a viable target for Democrats.
The North, while stripped of power and precipitously nose-diving in terms of national importance, remains a loyal Democratic fortress. Indiana, Ohio, and Iowa may be coaxed out of the liberal coalition from time to time, but when taken with the overwhelming support the Democrats enjoy in the rest of the North and their burgeoning power in the South, it won’t be enough to matter.
In 2010, New York will fall to 29 electoral votes (tying with Florida), while Pennsylvania will reach 20, Ohio 18, Massachusetts 11, Illinois 20, and Michigan 16. This is incontestably a region the midst of a steep decline, one whose bottom remains out of sight, but its political ethos, through its children who have diffused across the South and West, is on the cusp of holding national sway as never before.
The outlook for the Republican Party, at least for the near future, is very bleak. The South is rising, but it’s rising as a different entity than its conservative champions once imagined.
Before long, the new symbol of the Democratic Party will be the palm tree.
The majority of voters will be Hispanic in Texas in a few years. And they are going more Democrat.
And younger generation of Anglos and Hispanics are more Democrat than their elders are in Texas (as well as in America). The only age group in America that Republicans are winning is over age 65.
The Democrats made gains in the past two elections in 2006 and 2008. There will be a Democrat majority in the U.S. Congress for many years.
Look to Arizona,Missouri,Georgia,Texas,Montana, as swing state in 2012
Uh, California has lost approximately 1.8 million people in the last two years, so… it shouldn’t be gaining any electoral votes.
Michigan should also lose 2 to 3 electoral votes.
With Texas’ unbelievable growth – I would guess 4 to 5 additional electoral votes will come its way.
First of all, keep dreaming my fellow Democrats.
Yes Obama did win Virginia but he outspent McCain 4 to 1 in that state. What people do not get is that voter turnout is what matters, who is to say that those same voters show up in 2012? 2008 was special because we were going towards deseating the Republicans and electing the first Black president but what about 2012.
The Voter turnout will not be as great, millions of Republicans stayed home in 2008 but this will not be the case in 2012. Look for Republicans to snatch Virginia, North Carolina, Nevada and Ohio out of the hands of the Democrats, this may not happen in 2012 (incumbent rarely loses) but this is imminent in 2016. Notice that NY has a Republican and Democrat tied Senate, in 2010, the Republicans will be gaining seats like crazy.
What people forget are swing voters, also, when you move, your ideology changes. I moved from NY (and was a loyal democrat) to Texas and now I see how it is like being fed up of a blue state and actually moving to a red state which has friendlier people and everything. Republicans voters are not nearly as annoying as college level democrats who believe they know the world upside down downside up.
Face facts people, Republicans will win more Elections and the only demographics that matter are
1. Voter turnout
2. Independent voters
There are more registered Democrats than Republicans but this was the case all the way back in the 80s. The Demographics will favor the Republicans and the Republicans will win more elections in landslides, if it does not happen in 2012, it will happen DEFINITELY in 2016.
Lots of things can happen to swing elections either way, so we can’t really prognosticate as to what swing voters are likely to do. However, there are a number of demographic trends that should give the GOP pause:
1. Younger voters overwhelmingly favor the Democrats, and historically people tend to solidify party preference in voting at an early age. The GOP is currently in danger of losing a whole generation of voters.
2. Hispanics have lately trended more Democratic in part, it would seem, based on the fact that opponents of illegal immigrants have often come across as racists/xenophobes. It’s not the objection to illegal immigration per se, it’s that folks like the Minutemen and Tom Tancredo tend to symbolize the movement, and they are on record as saying things that can easily be construed as anti-Hispanic more broadly (the recent kerfuffle over Satamayor is another example). In other words, the line between the legitimate worry over the impact of illegal aliens on wages and infrastructure is often blurred to include tirades against cultural “takeover” and other purely xenophobic complaints.
3. The Mountain West has been a GOP stronghold only to the extent that the GOP used to represent libertarians, social moderates and fiscal conservatives. These are people who in general do not want government in their lives, but are also very supportive of environmental protection, sustainability, and egalitarian values. Therefore the current incarnation of the GOP—dominated by religious scolds and corporate apologists—are anathema to these values. Expect CO, MT, NV, NM and possibly AZ to continue to turn blue if the GOP cannot find room in its big tent for these folks again.
4. Both the South and the Mountain West are also increasingly home to burgeoning technological and research corridors, often adjacent to research universities. Therefore the biggest job growth occurs among relatively young, highly educated, mobile people; for the moment this demographic is much more heavily aligned with the Democratic party. Certainly this helps explain states like North Carolina and Colorado turning blue, and probably influences the blue-ing of significant portions of Georgia and Arizona.
I’ll tell you this i’m a hispanic and i am NOT A DEMOCRAT that whole stereotype if you are hispanic your a dmocrat is a lie and over here in texas we are pretty fed up with obama even the people who had there obama t-shirts at the begining of the year are ashmed the only reason why they voted for him was because he was black . People never really paid attention to his policies as much as they should have.
Oh by the way Texas is Rpublican stronghold McCain won here by double digits it would have been more if McCain would not be so Liberal and would actually enforce immigration laws in his stateeven more. There are estimates saying that about 12 million conservatives did not vote why ? because McCain was so darn Liberal.
What’s with this becoming a highly partisan website?
It seems to me that instead of postulating whether population migration is occurring due to weather or people being sick of living in “Democrat Ratholes,” it might be more thoughtful to think about where people are moving from. (Though I must say: who moves because of the political climate in their state? I wouldn’t imagine that’s the biggest criteria on people’s minds when uprooting their lives.)
Looking at the origin of people moving across the country, a large amount of the new residents in the Phoenix area are from the Midwest– Iowa, Minnesota, Wisconsin, the Chicago area. Two of these areas (IA, WI) are known to be toss-up states so to guess whether the migrants are Democrat/Republican seems foolish. Two lean Democratic. In North Carolina, most of the transplants I know come from the North– New Jersey, in particular.
I wouldn’t say I’m certain, but it would seem to me that if anything, interstate migrants are either evenly split among the two parties or lean Democratic.
We wrestle with the partisan comments… would prefer not to have them, but it is hard to keep them out unless we just don’t allow comments at all. We generally will publish the ones that have an obvious partisan bias as long as they add to the discussion.
I chuckle as I read some of the 2009 comments about how the Democrats will take over Texas and the South. How the political world changes in a bit over a year. Nothing like having a liberal president in the oval office to move the country back to the right
BrightendBoy,
First, I will give you some credit for your analysis above. One place where democrats have a sure advantage now and in years to come are minority majority states in the American southwest. Minority majority populations tend be a perfect storm against conservatives as they are fiscally liberal and socially conservative. If you disagree with this see the results of prop. 8 & 19 in California. While that might allow a G. W. Bush to win 40% of latinos, or 16% of Ohio blacks as in 2004, it is a sure recipe to alienate and dishearten the conservative base of the republican party leading to democrat dominance. I see Obama winning healthily in Nevada, New Mexico and Colorado in 2012 and having a good shot at turning Arizona blue as well. Eventually Texas will be in play and then swing dedidedly democrat in the next 30-40 years.
However, you fail to make any second or third order calculations. The same problem Nixon had with his southern strategy.
As wealthy white liberals flee the north for the south the populations left behind in Michigan, Ohio and Pennsylvania are still vastly white majority. But it is a poor white majority that for the most part is only high school educated. Guess what? Liberalism scares that demographic meaning Republicans are back in play in states like Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin and will eventualy have a chance in New York, New Jersey and Illinois.
You also fail to realize that the second generation of liberal democrats springing up in the southeast is not a reliable voting block. Not in that they would switch parties but in that they will not always show up. Among young people democrats now outnumber republicans in Virginia, N. Carolina and Georgia and their turnout will probably help Obama win 2 or even all 3 of those states in 2012. However stock liberals like Kerry and Dukakis failed to turn out the young vote, as did centrist democrats like Clinton and Gore.
Finally the ultimate demographic trend favors conservatives which already make up 40% of the population and have the highest birth rates across all demographics. Meaning conservative blacks and latinos have higher birth rates than their moderate and liberal counterparts. Next in birth rates are moderates who right now make up 40% of the population. And that is right, coming in last in birth rates at barely one child per couple are liberals. Please explain how that benefits the democrat party in the long term?
So right now we live in a country where a true conservative (i.e. not McCain) has a base of 40%. If they win 25-35% of moderates as Bush did they win the election. If they win half the moderates as Reagan did they win 49 state landslides. The only way a democrat could ever win a landslide like that is by being not liberal. A percieved conservative democrat like Lyndon Johnson could still win between 64-68% of the popular vote. But I noticed conservative democrats like Mark Warner are now booed off the stage of the democrat national convention so have fun trying to win a democrat primary Mark Warner or Evan Bayh.
In addition, when the conservative movement has a new leader that comes from the movement to take hold of the republican party as Reagan did, the religous right will be put back in the timeout corner where they belong. This will allow for inroads among various and differing minority groups, including the gay community. For evidence witness earlier this week of election 2010, when fiscal conservatives who ignored or payed only lip service to social issues made gains among gays and moderate minorities.
So while a charming, charismatic liberal like Obama will always be able to win the presidency it will take the nomination of more conservative democrats to hold it. The last great decade of liberalism was the sixties and it put republicans in charge for five of the next six presidential elections, don’t be surprised if that pattern repeats itself after an Obama second term.
One question…Red states tend to be against big government buty how come they get so much more back per dollar they send to the Federal Government then do Blue states???
I’m confused. On the blog you say California gained a vote but on the map it still sits at 55. Is that a glitch or a typo?
The post was written in early 2008. At that time, it appeared California would gain an electoral vote based on population trends. As one of the harder-hit states in the recession, it didn’t turn out that way. If you notice at the top of the article, we had inserted an update that pointed readers to the current electoral vote information. That post is at http://www.270towin.com/blog/2012-election-2/2012-electoral-votes-by-state.
First off, almost all of you above you all are way, way off on your demographic trends its almost laughable. People like to point to the demographic trends that favor Dems, but they totally miss the ones that are trending GOP.
First off, Arizona, Georgia and Texas are all solid Republican states. Period. In fact, they have become MORE Republican over the past few decades. As a result of the 2010 midterm elections, all three states have TOTAL GOP control. In all three states, Republicans control every statewide office, both chambers in the state legislatures, both U.S. Senate seats and a majority of House seats.
In fact, contrary to what some imaginary tales some on this site have told, the South is now more Republicans than it’s ever been. As a result of the 2010 elections, Republicans now hold more governorships, statewide offices, state legislatures, U.S. Senate and U.S. House seats in the South than at any time since Reconstruction. Obama’s numbers have hit almost rock bottom in most of these states.
Arizona has voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1952. Texas has voted for the Republican candidate in every presidential election since 1980 when Reagan carried it handily. Georgia has voted for the Republican candidate in every election since Reagan. You guys have ZERO chance at winning any of them in 2012, especially now that Obama’s numbers are so low.
Also, New Mexico is the quintessential swing state–it has voted for the winner in every single presidential election since statehood, except twice. No other state besides Ohio has a better track record. So I wouldn’t say it’s even a remote blue state. Whoever wins nationwide will win New Mexico. Bush won it in 04, Obama won it in 08. It’ll go to the nationwide winner in 2012.
Want an explanation as to why some traditionally GOP strongholds like Indiana, Virginia, and North Carolina went barely for Obama in 2008? It’s because EVERYTHING trended more Democratic in 2008 because the unpopularity of Pres Bush and Republicans in general was the worst in decades! What else would you expect? In any normal election year, the entire south is solid GOP. Even Bill Clinton couldn’t carry Florida against George Bush Sr. in 1992. Also, the mountain west states, in any normal election setting, is SOLID GOP turf. Of course it doesn’t surprise me that Obama was able to pull off very close wins in some of these states…it’s because the environment could not have been more toxic for Republicans! When things become really bad for Obama (as they have been), expect to see the GOP win New Hampshire and Maine, Pennsylvania and Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota.
The real swing states are in the Midwest, which Dems should be really, really afriad of, as of now. Some states which used to be undisputably Democratic, trended solidly red in 2010. Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, even in Illinois, the GOP CRUSHED the Dems in 2010. These states trended strongly Republican. Republicans now control the governor’s office in every Midwest states except Illinois, Missouri and Minnesota. Republicans control every state legislative chamber in the Midwest, except the Illinois Senate and House and the Iowa Senate. Republicans won Senate elections in Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, Wisconsin, Missouri, Iowa, South Dakota and North Dakota. They picked up dozens of House seats in the Midwest.
In fact, Republican performance in the 2010 midterms is the best midterm performance by either party since the 1930s! So I would be VERY careful to make judgments as to permanent realignment. Educate yourselves on electoral politics.
Highly energetic article, I loved that bit.
Will there be a part 2?
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