Posted on 05/13/2012 11:31:06 AM PDT by Clintonfatigued
As Democrats have solidified an upstairs-downstairs constituency of affluent, socially moderate white suburbanites and minorities (many economically strained), they have established a durable hold on states shaped by rising education levels and diversity. As Republicans have become a more monolithically conservative party, especially on social issues, they have tightened their control over heavily religious Southern and heartland states but watched more cosmopolitan states move at varying rates toward the Democrats in presidential races. “All of this is squeezing [and] compressing the map for Republicans,” says Steve Schmidt, the campaign manager for GOP nominee John McCain in 2008. In fact, since 1992, Republicans have won a smaller share of the available Electoral College votes outside the South than in any five-election sequence since the party’s founding in 1856.
Central to this role reversal is the rise of what I’ve called the “blue wall”: the 18 states that have voted Democratic in at least the past five consecutive presidential elections. Democrats have not won that many states so often since Franklin Roosevelt and Harry Truman carried 22 in each election from 1932 to 1948.
The blue wall encompasses the 11 states from Maryland to Maine (except New Hampshire); the three West Coast states; and Michigan, Minnesota, Illinois, Wisconsin, and Hawaii (plus the District of Columbia). Republicans carried 12 of these states at least four times from 1968 to 1988. But common factors have shifted almost all of them toward the Democrats since then: a growing minority population and a tilt away from the GOP among socially moderate college-educated white voters. Over the past five elections in these 18 states, the GOP presidential nominee has finished within 5 percentage points of the Democrat just 10 times out of a possible 90 results.
(Excerpt) Read more at nationaljournal.com ...
There is the possibility that Obama could lose the popular vote but win the electoral vote. The regions including the northern Atlantic Coast, the Pacific Coast, and individual states like Illinois are populated by four core Obama groups, being government workers, governemnt aid recipients, ethnic minorities, and unmarried women. Needless to say, there is some overlapping between these groups. But this coalition, along with the youth vote, gives Obama sure electoral votes in populous states like New York, Illinois, and California.
SOWT - Society of Wishful Thinkers
or
SODKIA - Society of Delusional Know It Alls
You Choose
What a tool Schmidt is. Which states are losing people, congressional seats and electoral college votes and which states are gaining people, congressional seats and electoral college votes? Apparently Schmidt has no clue as to the answer to that question.
He may be a tool, but you have to consider why red states are gaining population.
In the Republicans favor is the fact that conservative whites have more children than liberal whites. But other factors favor the Democrats over the long run.
Consider immigration; it is one reason why Texas and Nevada are gaining population. Right now white Texans vote so overwhelmingly Republican that the increase in the Democratic latino population has actually increased the number of electoral votes Texas will deliver to the GOP. But in another 10 years or so the state may be a battleground state. Immigration has already helped turn Nevada purple. If a state has a large and/or growing immigrant population, that’s the same as saying it has a large and/or growing pool of likely Democratic voters.
Consider the movement of people between states. Consider how white liberals leave California and make the nearby red states less conservative. Consider all of the Yankees moving to Virginia and North Carolina, helping to make those states purple.
So we really need to consider why certain states are gaining population.
Your list is too short. Michigan, and Pennsylvania are in the Dim lock column as well and for the same reason: systemic cheating.
In 2004, the tilt in the electoral college was about 0.3 percent in favor of the Democrats, in that if the nationwide vote had uniformly shifted toward Kerry by 2.1 percent of the vote, he would have carried Ohio and been elected President although he would have lost the nationwide popular vote by 0.3 percent.
In 2008, by similar reasoning, the tilt in the electoral college was 0.5 percent of the vote, since Bush was elected, carrying Florida by mere hundreds of votes, even though he lost the nationwide electoral vote by 0.5 percent.
Will there be a meaningful tilt in the electoral college this year? This is very difficult to say since, in 2008, the outcome was very much affected by the massive out-spending of McCain by Obama, so that Obama ran better in the swing states than Democrats normally do relative to the national total.
But, if we assume financial resources will be similar this year, we can suppose that the pattern of the years prior to 2008 will be restored. In such a case, the tilt in the electoral college will be small, of no consequence unless the election is very close, and unpredictable.
With regard to the “blue wall.” Republicans did very well in the midterm elections in many of states of the northern mideast (Big 10 states), including WI, MI, OH and PA, even MN if we consider that it was only a split in the non-Democrat vote that enabled them to win the Gubernatorial race. There is reason to think the blue wall is purple in some places.
Large cities breed democrats, rural areas breed republicans. It is a common known fact that large cities do not produce enough progeny to replace themselves. They import new citizens to not only meet replacement levels, but also to grow. They get these new citizens from rural areas and from foreign born immigrants.
Rural areas produce far more progeny than they can absorb. Rural areas usually do not have the economy to absorb all of their progeny. When they do get the economy to do so, they become big cities and start breeding democrats.
This is the paradox in american demographics.
The only minority I see in this country are conservatives. All the others seem to banter for the same gay love crap.
The only way to break the blue wall is to get some colors in, like Herman Cain... oh, wait, we got dullard Romney and RINO borings on constant defensive to do that.. yeaaaa... not
The immigration problem may be waning, if only temporarily. Thanks to the Great Recession, illegal immigrants are leaving the United States in record numbers.
Large cities also have the requirements for vote fraud in numbers large enough to make a difference.
Even if illegal immigration came to a complete (and permanent) end, from a demographic standpoint we’d still have the bigger problem of unending mass legal immigration. Though I have no doubt that some illegals are voting illegally, that pales in comparison to the million plus legal immigrants we admit each year who go on to become voting citizens, and who give birth to future generations of Democrats.
If Republicans had any sense, and if they could find the fortitude to fight back against baseless and reflexive charges of racism and xenophobia, they’d fight to end chain migration, abolish the absurd Diversity Visa program, and severely restrict refugee and asylum visas. Republicans should aim for legal immigration levels no higher than 300,000 per year. Doing so would result in a loss of already low support from Hispanics and Asians, but if done effectively it might increase their share of the white vote (and even the black vote once Obama is not on the ticket). Then maybe they’d have a fighting chance over the long run. It would be tough, as even if all immigration came to an end, the momentum from decades of pro-Democrat mass immigration would continue to alter the demography in ways not kind to conservatism, but they might have a chance.
The alternative is to completely embrace unending mass immigration, to go along with amnesty and increases in legal immigration or anything else required so that one isn’t called names by the Left. Of course since the Democrats already have those positions staked out, then the GOP would have to go left on a whole host of other issues to try and win with an ever-more diverse electorate (like affirmative action, though really the GOP is already useless in fighting that). In effect, the alternative is that there would be no place for conservatism.
I’d rather we take the first path where at least there is a chance.
“If Republicans had any sense....”
They would sell conservatism to recent legal immigrants and their offspring.
In my area, Vietnamese-Americans are solidly conservative. They have high IQs, and their children become doctors, programmers, scientists and pharmacists.
Wasting time discussing black voters, otoh is beyond dumb.
Hispanics can be convinced, because GWB got a lot of their votes.
Etc.
ronnie you are delusional. What’s His Name is now up 8 and that number is climbing. Rasmussen uses a three average so to move from 7 points to 8 points last night Rasmussen HAD to have found Obama down 11 points. Do the math.
Cubans are solid conservatives. Hardworking, family oriented, and patriotic.
We talked about this a couple weeks ago. Only if the popular vote is very very close is that really a realistic possibility.
Then you have the trust fund babies, basically the spoiled 60s generation that grew up with the hippie movement and inherited their parents money. Having never had to work for a living, they become liberal Democrats as well as it's no skin off their backs if taxes are raised - they already "have theirs."
Finally, you have to throw union workers into the mix as well as they basically working in a socialist system. Everybody gets paid the same wage regardless of ability. Excellence is not only unrewarded but it is punished because it is seen as "killing the job" for others. So union workers basically do as little as possible and collect their $17.73 an hour (or whatever the negotiated prevailing wage for their particular job happens to be), ensuring that they take their full sick time and as many disability leaves as possible.
It is said that when the moochers hit 50% of the population, the United States of America is finished as they will control the vote from that point on and only socialists will be elected. Our only chance is for the freebie system to break down before the 50% is reached. It's going to be a close call!
Which states are losing people, congressional seats and electoral college votes and which states are gaining people, congressional seats and electoral college votes?
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After the 2010 Census, the Blue States lost 11 Electoral Votes and the Red States gained 11 EVs. That is a net gain of 22 EVs for our side. Take 11 from one and add them to the other, that is a net gain of 22 EVs. That’s good news for our team.
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