Posted on 12/11/2003 5:50:01 PM PST by GraniteStateConservative
No winner of a presidential election has carried fewer than five regions in at least three decades. But it's especially clear in the razor's edge closeness of the 2000 presidential election: George W. Bush and Al Gore each won five regions, but it was Bush's hair's-breadth victory in Southern Lowlands that carried the day.
Although the purpose of our framework is not prediction, the explanatory power of CommonWealth's analysis is evident: If either Bush or the eventual Democratic nominee in 2004 can carry a sixth region, as Bill Clinton did in both 1992 and 1996, he is virtually assured to win in November. As political campaigns pull out their maps and sharpen their pencils, setting a course for November 2, 2004, they should consult our cartography - if only to determine where their opportunities lie, and where they're wasting their time.
Three of our regions have voted Republican in every election since 1964. SAGEBRUSH, which includes most of the Rocky Mountain states and a piece of northern New England; SOUTHERN COMFORT, which follows the Gulf Coast and reaches up to the Ozarks; and the FARM BELT, which stretches from Ohio to Nebraska but leapfrogs the Mississippi River. Two others lean Republican, but have boosted Democrats from time to time. APPALACHIA, which follows the mountain range from Pennsylvania to Mississippi, supported Jimmy Carter in 1976 but abandoned him in 1980 and backed the GOP ever since. SOUTHERN LOWLANDS, which stretches from Washington, DC, to New Orleans, stayed with Carter in 1980 and supported Clinton twice in the 1990s but rejected northerners Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, not to mention Gore in 2000.
Three regions have flip-flopped in a dramatic way, voting for Carter in 1976, switching to Reagan in 1980 and 1984, then going Democratic in the past four elections: UPPER COASTS, which includes most of New England and the Pacific Northwest; GREAT LAKES, which takes in such cities as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo; and BIG RIVER, which follows the Mississippi from Duluth to Memphis. NORTHEAST CORRIDOR, which runs from Bridgeport to Bethesda, followed the same course except that it snubbed Dukakis and waited until 1992 to switch back to the Democrats - and stayed there. Finally, EL NORTE, which stretches from Los Angeles to Brownsville, Texas, and also includes the Miami area, backed Republican candidates from 1968 through 1988 but more recently supported Clinton and Gore.
Presidential campaigns know that winning demographic groups means nothing if they don't translate into electoral votes. The 10-region model reveals precise ways to rack up the Electoral College tally.
Because many states are split between regions, there are two ways to put a state's electoral votes into a candidate's column. One is to maximize the vote in a region more favorable to the candidate, either by increasing voter turnout there or by increasing the candidate's share of the vote - perhaps through a "bandwagon" effect by which independents accede to the prevailing sentiment in their neighborhood. The other is an expansionist strategy, which spreads the boundaries of one's favorable regions to capture territory from the opposition's geographic base. Indeed, such land grabs are the only way to keep the opposition from winning a fifth region and perhaps sending the election into overtime, as happened in 2000 when Gore narrowly won the Big River region and picked up the electoral votes of Iowa, Minnesota, and Wisconsin.
Of course, Bush's ability to win a fifth region was crucial to his victory in 2000. He easily won the four regions that hadn't supported a Democrat since at least 1976 (Appalachia, the Farm Belt, Sagebrush, and Southern Comfort), and he narrowly captured Southern Lowlands, which had eluded his father in 1992 and Robert Dole in 1996. Losing the Southern Lowlands cost the senior Bush the electoral votes of Georgia and Louisiana and then cost Dole the electoral votes of Florida and Louisiana. As it turned out, George W. Bush needed every one of those electoral votes to prevail in the last election.
If Bush holds together the five-region coalition that (barely) worked for him in 2000, he could win the Electoral College by a slightly more comfortable margin the next time around. That's because he won four of the five regions that had above-average population growth during the previous decade, and those regions gained electoral votes after the 2000 Census. When electoral votes were reallocated on the basis of population shifts, states that are at least partly in the Sagebrush region gained seven votes, while states that are at least partly in the Great Lakes region lost seven votes. If every state votes the same way it did in the last election, Bush would win seven more electoral votes - a total of 278 votes, up from 271 in 2000.
From our 10-region perspective, Bush has a strategic decision to make in 2004. He could retain his office by squeezing more votes out of the five regions he won in 2000 - perhaps by increasing turnout among religious conservatives and other core Republican groups. That would preserve his advantage in the Electoral College, but it might result in another popular-vote loss. The alternative is to expand his appeal to moderates and independents enough to win six or more regions.
Either way, Bush will have to start by nailing down his base. In 2000, Bush won almost all of the electoral votes available in two regions: SOUTHERN COMFORT (his strongest region, which includes his home in Crawford, Texas), and SOUTHERN LOWLANDS (the most marginal of the five regions Bush won). Together they will count for a maximum of 176 electoral votes in 2004, or almost two-thirds of the 270 votes needed to win the election. Sixteen of those votes seem beyond Bush's grasp (they belong to Delaware, the District of Columbia, and Maryland), but another 27 depend on a win in Florida, where the GOP's lead in 2000 was tenuous, to put it mildly. Both Southern Comfort and Southern Lowlands extend into Florida, and Bush's brother Jeb ran strongly enough in both regions to be re-elected governor by a wide margin in 2002. Can George duplicate Jeb's feat?
In the Southern Comfort region, his best prospects are in St. Petersburg's Pinellas County. The Gulf Coast county narrowly went for Gore in 2000, but Jeb easily carried it in 2002, and the county also went against the rest of the state in turning down a referendum to reduce class sizes in public schools. And in the less affluent Southern Lowlands section of the state, the place for him to go is Daytona Beach's Volusia County. Gore won it by 15,000 votes in 2000, but Jeb took it by 13,000 votes two years later. If George rolls up an even bigger margin, he might effectively expand the solidly Republican Southern Comfort region to the Atlantic Ocean.
APPALACHIA, Bush's second strongest region in 2000, would give him another 44 electoral votes (in addition to the 160 earned in Southern Comfort and Southern Lowlands) if the states fell the same way they did in the last election. But a push in the region could capture another 21 votes from the one Appalachia state denied to Bush in 2000: Pennsylvania. Bush lost the Keystone State by five points at the same time that conservative Republican Sen. Rick
Santorum was winning re-election by six points. If Bush can match Santorum's percentages in the rural interior of the state, and hope that voter turnout is not extraordinarily high in the urban centers of the east and west, Pennsylvania's electoral votes will be his. But given that the Appalachia portion of the state has relatively low population growth, a better long-range strategy for the GOP in Pennsylvania may be to seize territory to the west, in the Great Lakes region (Erie County), or the east, in Northeast Corridor (Bethlehem's Northampton County).
The SAGEBRUSH region was the GOP's strongest in 1980, when Ronald Reagan was elected. Since then, this libertarian-leaning area has been just a bit less reliable, especially when Ross Perot was on the ballot, but Bush will win another 49 electoral votes if its states fall the same way they did in 2000. A stronger effort here could help the Republicans gain up to 27 electoral votes from states Bush lost in 2000. New Mexico is the most promising pick-up, considering that Gore's 366-vote margin in the last election was tainted by numerous ballot-counting problems. If Bush can scare up enough voters to increase his 5,038-margin in Roswell's Chaves County to the 6,637-margin given to his father in 1988, the state's five electoral votes could be his. The problem is that the El Norte section of the state is growing faster: Bush got 2,500 more votes in Albuquerque's Bernalillo County than his father did in 1988, but Gore got 21,000 more votes than Dukakis did. What happens in this little state will speak volumes about the GOP's prospects in competing for the Latino vote.
In three other states, the Sagebrush region is struggling for supremacy with more culturally liberal Upper Coasts. Oregon, the scene of several bitter referendum questions on abortion and gay rights, is the most on the fence. The outcome there in 2004 may depend on the battle between two suburban Portland counties: Sagebrush's Clackamas County, pointing toward the eastern, more rural part of the state, which Bush carried by a mere 1,000 votes; and Upper Coasts' Washington County, which extends toward the Pacific and which Gore carried by 4,500 votes. If Bush runs up his vote total in Clackamas or pulls Washington into Sagebrush, he could break the Democrats' 20-year winning streak here.
Washington state is a bit more securely Democratic, thanks to increasingly liberal Seattle, but strong population growth in the Sagebrush section of the state offers hope to the GOP. There's also the possibility that Upper Coasts' Clark County (which includes Vancouver and sits on the Oregon border) will reach a tipping point and get annexed by Sagebrush: Dukakis won it by a margin of 40,000 to 37,000 in 1988, but Bush won it by 67,000 to 62,000 in the last election.
Finally, Maine hasn't shown much enthusiasm for culturally conservative Republicans, but issues such as gun control could work against the Democrats in rural areas, and the state's penchant for third parties like the Greens could give Bush an opening to grab at least one of the state's four electoral votes. (Maine and Nebraska are the only two states that award electoral votes to the winner in each congressional district.) Given that the Sagebrush part of Maine has much slower population growth, the GOP may have to claim territory from Upper Coasts in order to carry the state. The shipbuilding city of Bath, and surrounding Sagadahoc County, could indicate whether Boston-centric liberalism extends far enough up the coast to keep this state with the Democrats.
The FARM BELT has lost some political clout since it was Gerald Ford's strongest region in 1976, but Bush can count on another 22 electoral votes from Indiana, Kansas, and Nebraska, and he may be able to squeeze 24 more votes out of the region. Iowa came within 4,200 votes of giving Bush its seven electoral votes in 2000, somewhat surprising for a state that
gave Dukakis a 125,000-vote margin in 1988. The 34 counties in the Farm Belt, all in the western third of the state, are solid for the GOP, but in most major races the Democrats compensate in the cities of Big River, from Des Moines east to Davenport and Dubuque. Ames's Story County, squarely in the middle of the state, may be a bellwether for the next election; the Democratic margin here shrank from 6,300 to 1,200 votes between 1988 and 2000. If Bush can pull Story into the Farm Belt, it may be a sign that Republicans have an edge for many statewide elections to come.
The only other state where a Farm Belt strategy could pay dividends is in Ford's home state of Michigan. In the last election, 38 of the state's 83 counties switched from the Democrats to the Republicans, leaving Gore with just a handful outside the Detroit area. If next year's Democratic nominee is seen as hostile to rural interests, he could lose serious ground in this territory, possibly costing him the state's 17 electoral votes. But this is no sure thing for the GOP. Suburban Detroit, part of the Great Lakes region (see below), has been steadily trending toward the Democrats since the first President Bush broke his "no new taxes" pledge.
Bush's best chance to capture a sixth region in 2004 is BIG RIVER, which was the most closely divided of all the regions in the last election. But close elections are a fact of life in this part of the country, and it won't be easy to shift many here. In addition to Iowa (mentioned above), Minnesota is sure to be on Bush's hit list next November. The state, which also includes a sliver of the Farm Belt, hasn't voted for a Republican since 1972, but the Democrats' hold has been weak, as none of their nominees has received more than 55 percent during the same period. Bush pulled off something of a coup here in 2000, winning all three of the biggest suburban counties in the Minneapolis areas (Anoka, Dakota, and Washington), none of which had gone Republican since Reagan ran for re-election. In all three cases, Bush's victory margin was smaller than the vote total that went to Green Party candidate Ralph Nader, meaning that he'll have to work hard to keep those counties on his side. But there was a good omen for him in 2002: All three counties went solidly for Republican US Senate candidate Norm Coleman over dragged-out-of-retirement Democrat Walter Mondale.
Wisconsin is also an irresistible target for Bush, given Gore's 5,000-vote win in the last election, but Democrats have a long history of pulling out tight victories here. Better prospects for 2004 are two Big River counties: La Crosse, right on the Mississippi, which went for Gore by 4,000 votes; and Wausau's Marathon County, in the central part of the state, which went for Bush by 2,000 votes. If the margins are flipped next November, it's a good sign for Bush.
Moving all of the states mentioned above into his column would give Bush 371 electoral votes, just shy of the 379 won by Clinton in 1996.
Republicans need to fight VOTE FRAUD to win. Amazing that every close state went to GORE.
Hopefully the margins are so big that it becomes a mute point.
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