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David Lazer
(Methodology, Networked Governance)

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    « manipulation of intrade | Main | How Obama won: Conversion or mobilization? »

    5 November 2008

    Fun with numbers: did Obama redraw the political map?

    This is, at best, tangentially related to the mission of this blog. The thing is that I am not only a political scientist but I am also a political junkie. And you can always just not read this if you are not interested.

    In any case, one interesting question is how much the map shifted from 04 to 08. That is, did we see Obama do a few points better than Kerry in all states, or did he improve more in some places than others? Below is a plot of Obama's vote share against Kerry's (where states that had significant increases in turnout are enlarged points).

    Obama-Kerry(2).gif
    As a point of comparison, see a plot of Obama's vote share against Carter's (where Carter had just a slightly lower share of the popular vote overall):

    Obama-Carter.gif

    How did the map change from 2004 to 2008? There are a handful of states where Obama did not do better: West Virginia, Oklahoma, Arkansas, and Tennessee. And there are a few states that stand out a bit in terms of larger jumps: Hawaii is a big outlier, but also Montana, Utah, Nebraska, Idaho, Indiana, Nevada, New Mexico, and Vermont. In short, he did worse in some of the border states, and better in the more conservative midwest and western states. It is interesting that none of these states have especially large African American populations.

    When we make the comparison to 1976, the basic realignment of Presidential politics is still quite clear (although the fact that Carter was a Southerner muddles things up a bit). That is, we see the Northeast and West Coast and many Southwest states way above the line, and the South and border states below the line. Virginia is the notable exception there, where Obama actually outperformed Carter.

    Thanks go to Matt Vandenberg, who pulled together these figures.

    I will have one more posting later today on the election coming up, addressing the question of whether Obama's victory reflected mobilization of particular demographic groups, or persuasion of groups across the board. And then I can return to being a productive member of society.

    Posted by David Lazer at November 5, 2008 10:39 AM