I don't mind being wrong (well, very slightly wrong... I had it at 349 with NC as a maybe...)
AP has called North Carolina for Barack Obama. He's now at 364 electoral votes to McCain's 162, and he becomes the first Democrat to win the state since Jimmy Carter in 1976. (Indiana and Virginia went Democrat for the first time since 1964.) That means that Obama grabbed a total (Missouri is still counting votes) of eight states that GWB won in 2004: Florida, North Carolina, Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, Nevada and New Mexico, spreading the map in a way no Democrat has in more than a generation.
The Dems also pick up a sixth Senate seat, as Gordon Smith concedes to Jeff Merkley in Oregon. He seemed like a good guy, but that's the kind of year we're having. The party has also picked up 22 House seats (my predictions had been 9 or 10 in the Senate and 28 in the House) with four races (in Alaska, California, Maryland and Ohio) still too close to call.
Meanwhile, the Huffpo and Matthew Yglesias point to a New York Times map that shows that only 22 percent of counties voted more Republican this year than in 2004, and almost all of those counties are located in Appalachia -- it's the only place where McCain improved upon Bush.
 Barack Obama got 40% or more of the vote in every state West of the Mississippi, including Montana in the Great Northwest, which he damned near won, the Dakotas, Kansas and Nebraska, with the exception being the "iron GOP triangle) of Wyoming, Idaho and Utah, where he was in the 30s (though it was a healthy-ish 36% in Idaho.) He even got 43% in Texas (where the Hispanic population is making the state bluer every day, on the Western and Southern sides.) The GOP firewall is now pretty much confined to Appalachia, which is losing population, and losing influence, fast. They will have to find a way to appeal to suburban and urban whites, Hispanics, Asians and Black folk sometimes soon, or they're doomed. Long-term doomed.
Labels: 2008 election, House of Representatives, President Barack Obama, U.S. Senate |
