We are going
to start a series profiling the closest battleground states beginning tomorrow
with Florida. But before you dig too deeply into those states with us, we
should give this warning. Since the modern era in 2000, Presidential election
results have been fairly predictable once you knew the swing in the national
vote. Democrats went from winning the popular vote by .5% in 2000 to losing it
by 2.4 points four years later. That 2.9 swing in the Republicans favor netted
them two of the three states they came closest to carrying in 2000 -- number 1 (New
Mexico) and number 3 (Iowa). They missed out on the number 2 state (Wisconsin) because
the Nader vote had been particularly high there and his collapse allowed
Democrats to just barely hold it. The Democrats did pick up the state they came
second closest to carrying in 2000 (New Hampshire), which also was largely
explained by the decline in the Nader vote. Bush won the Granite State by a
little over 7,000 votes in 2000. Kerry won by a little under 9,000 in 2004.
Nader dropped from about 22,000 in 2000 to just about 4,500 in 2004, which
explains the entire margin.
When
Democrats won the national popular vote by 7.2 points in 2008, they picked up
the six states they lost by the tightest margins in 2004, and they also gained
states number 8 (Virginia), 11 (North Carolina) and surprisingly state 18
(Indiana). State seven (Missouri) in
2004 was the closest of all states in 2008. State 9 was Arkansas and State 10
was the Republican nominee’s home state of Arizona. When in 2012 the Democratic
Party won by 3.9%, it gave away the two closest states it won in 2008, states
11 and 18.
Gore did
have four states where he kept the margin smaller (Arkansas, Louisiana,
Tennessee and West Virginia) than Romney’s spread in Indiana in 2012. But the Democrats’
collapse in those four states already was evident in Kerry’s numbers there.
Missouri, as evidenced by McCain’s 2008 win, has moved Republican. Meanwhile,
Colorado and Virginia have jumped up to being much more important for
Democrats. These are interesting trends that grow from dramatic shifts in
sub-regions within states, such as the suburbs of Northern Virginia. The key
point, however, is that states tend to move in line with how they voted in
previous elections. There are some exceptions and sometimes a trend toward one
party or another emerges even in defeat. Both Colorado and Nevada showed
Democratic improvement from 2000 to 2004 even though the Dems lost them.
Republicans won Virginia in 2004, now a more Democratic state, but only scored
a .12 increase there over 2000 compared to a national jump of almost 3 points.
Watching the
states is interesting and fun and in an absolute squeaker (like 2000) the
popular vote and electoral college can be
in conflict. But the reality is
that the states are pretty sticky. If the national trend is two points or even
one point, the states will likely sort themselves out in basically the same
order they have previously.
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