The American Spectator : The Spectacle Blog : The Map of Doom

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The liberal-leaning bloggers at Swing State Project are doing us all a service by crunching the numbers for the presidential race from every congressional district. Remember that great factoid from 2004—George W. Bush carried 255 of the 435 congressional districts? Remember how that meant Democrats had an impossible uphill climb back to the majority?

Well… the good news for Republicans is that their chances of gaining power again are about as good as the Democrats after the 2004 drubbing. With only 32 states counted so far (not including California, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Texas and New York), Obama has won at least 34 districts that went for Bush in 2004. Some standouts:

- The Eighth District of Wisconsin, which covers Green Bay, and which Republicans fought like dogs to win back this year (unsucessfully), went 54-45 for Obama. It had voted 55-44 for Bush.

- The Third District of Kentucky, which covers Louisville, had been a marginal district: Al Gore only carried it 50-48 and Kerry carried it 51-49. Obama won it 56-43 even as he was losing the state in a rout. John Yarmuth, the liberal newspaper publisher elected in a 2006 upset, is safe as milk now.

- The Eighth District of Illinois, represented by Republican Phil Crane for decades until Democrat Melissa Bean won it in 2004, went 57-42 for Obama over McCain. Bush carried it over Kerry 56-44.

Keep in mind, many these are districts that were gerrymandered by Republican governors or legislatures in 2001 to elect a maximum number of Republicans. For all of that work, it looks like Obama carried 17 of 19 districts in Illinois, 13 of 15 districts in Michigan, seven of eight districts in Wisconsin, and six of 11 districts in Virginia. Marginal seats in Kentucky, Nevada, New Mexico, and Colorado went for Obama by landslides. Factor this in when you get overly optimistic about something like Joseph Cao’s win in Louisiana.

Robert Stacy McCain | 12.17.08 @ 5:12PM

You're trendmongering, Dave -- selecting specific points in time to discern a trend that you then assume can be extrapolated into the future. The problem is that events influence trends more than trends influence events, and you cannot predict events.

David Weigel | 12.17.08 @ 5:28PM

Stacy, just as Michael Barone and John Fund were fools to think "Bush carried 255 seats = Republicans can win 255 seats," Democrats would be fools to think they're going to hold all their gains or win all these newly blue districts. In Illinois, for example, I expect Democrats to have a tougher time in the 2010 elections than they've had since 2000.

However, there are trends here. Northern Virginia and the Tidewater were slipping steadily into the Democratic column. Even Kerry posted gains there. The GOP blew it off. Now they're down 13 electoral votes and three congressmen.

South and central Florida were solidly Republican only 20 years ago, and Republicans assumed (for some silly reason) that Jewish voters and Cubans would reject Obama and save them. Voila - Obama fights for those areas and he wins. His losses in the redneck riviera are offset by huge gains in central Florida and among Hispanics. All of a sudden, Orlando is blue. I mean, Obama pounded McCain 59-40 in Orange County, FL. Four years ago, Kerry squeaked past Bush there 49.8 to 49.6. Twenty years ago, Bush Sr beat Dukakis there 68-31. That's a trend.

Brian Moore| 12.17.08 @ 5:57PM

I apologize for the inside baseball that follows, but a big - if not primary - reason Joseph Cao won Louisiana's 2nd district was the death of Jefferson Parish Sheriff Harry Lee a year earlier. Lee could flat-out deliver votes, and he single-handedly put Bill Jefferson over the top in '06 after Jefferson's rival, Karen Carter, criticized the sheriff in Spike Lee's Katrina documentary. Without Harry Lee, Jefferson wouldn't have been around to lose to Cao in '08.

Nothing against Cao, but as many people have pointed out, he lucked into his seat. Gustav helped him greatly, of course. I'm just surprised more people haven't commented on the absence of Harry Lee's machine as an operative factor in Cao's victory.

John| 12.17.08 @ 9:17PM

At the risk of sounding nativist, its all those damnYankees that moved here in droves and brought their city slicker, dependent ways with them.

Okay... now for a serious note to complement, since my family (father career Army - mother from upstate New York). The problem seems to be a radically reshaped map that contains a new weird sort of "city" without a center.

It is pretty well established that as population density increases, the electorate rapidly shifts to the left. I am not all to sure of all of the pathologies, or social factors, but I saw the move happen in the years that I have lived in NoVA. (1974-present)

Arlington and Alexandria were always reliably liberal. (Democrat, mind you since Virginia was almost exclusively a Democrat state -except for presidential elections) for the 100+ years following the Civil War. Republicans could meet in a phone booth.

Their was an urban liberal enclave that started in Richmond, encompassed Petersburg, and then bloomed again in the Tidewater area of Norfolk, Hampton, Newport News.

The bulk of the remainder of Virginia was very reliably conservative (if Democrat... but conservative Democrat).

Here is where the Urban/Suburban thing gets different. The Suburbs were reliably Conservative for years, when they were far flung, and people could own most of the house and land on which they sat. The Liberal enclaves were in the inner cities, and those cities were of a traditional format.... high density, block order, some sort of town center, business district, townhouses and apartments... but most housing was rented by the occupant, not owned.

Something odd began happening in the 1990's. The suburbs began to URBANIZE. The population density shot through the roof. Subdivisions became more like wards of a huge city. Fairfax County Virginia, for all practical purposes is a huge county sized city. (Having been to Houston and San Antonio, I think the model is valid).

So, the traditional city dweller now became the suburbanite... and the suburbs began to take on all of the issues and dependencies that liberal/leftist government feed on.

From here in Prince William... the blue fungus grows from the south to the north... and it is unstoppable.

Tazwell looks nice...

r/John