April 22, 2008
Res Ipsa Loquitor
Welcome Mr. Barone and his readers! That complete set of Almanacs of American Politics (dating to 1972) I invested in finally paid off! If you want some more context for what these maps mean, check out my earlier post here.
http://race42008.com/2008/04/22/res-ipsa-loquitor/trackback/
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Dear God Sean. You called it. Seriously, that’s amazingly impressive.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Ah, Sean. This is why I followed you here from myelectionanalysis. You are almost psychic.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:19 pm
Very nice.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Sheesh.
What a great team we have on board here.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:22 pm
Sean,
I’m curious, do the same demographic patterns apply to the rest of the country as well or is it just this particular region?
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Un…Freakin’…Believable…
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:30 pm
LJ,
Too hard to tell. When you get to the rest of the country you have a wide swath with caucuses — which are a different matter altogether — and/or demographics that don’t have much in common with this area of the country (ie Hispanics). You do have states like AR, OK, and MO, which are basically part of the Appalachian diaspora, that unsurprisingly are the state Hillary did the best in.
I believe from the exit polls, Obama’s problem with working class whites is across-the-board. It’s just that Appalachia has more working class whites than any area of the country, which is why Obama has to be viewing KY (which is basically PA without Philly) and WV (which is basically PA without Philly or Pittsburgh) with a bit of trepidation.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm
That outlined area is going to go about 70-30 McCain when Obama is the nominee.
Michael Barone will be waxing about a rural/urban divide.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Sean, you need to get in to stock market evaluations and commit to being my life-long adviser in those affairs.
*I’llneverhavetoworkagain* What? *sleepmyprecious*
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Kudos to Sean
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Sean,
“I believe from the exit polls, Obama’s problem with working class whites is across-the-board. ”
Yes, and that will destroy him in the Fall. The Democrat N-E-V-E-R wins without strong support from working class whites.
Never.
Either Obama solves his working class whites problem, or he loses a 40-45 state landslide. It’s as simple as that. My guess is he loses big.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:47 pm
Please forgive my ignorance. What is it we’re looking at here, and why is Sean such a great prognosticator?
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:50 pm
ogrepete,
Stop whatever you’re doing and read this. You will understand why this map is mind blowing.
http://race42008.com/2008/04/01/no-really-hillary-has-a-decent-shot/
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Sean,
Good points. And the last polls I’ve seen in KY and WV have Hillary up +30. Amazing. This regional demographic split is unlike anything I’ve ever seen in politics before.
Looking at the map, it’ll be interesting to see the blue/green makeup of Indiana on the 6th.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:54 pm
Obama lost weekly Catholics by 48%…..48%. He lost this group by 27% in Ohio.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:57 pm
I don’t see how the Democratic party can, in good conscience, nominate a candidate who could lose regular Catholics, to a non-Catholic, in a Democratic primary, by nearly 50%. That’s absolutely unbelievable. It’s unfathomable.
April 22nd, 2008 at 11:59 pm
I’m nowhere near as good as Sean, but does anybody recall my post where I predicted a 9.6 win for Hillary?
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:05 am
Thanks, LJ.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:07 am
Wow, the latest update has her by 9.4. I should play the lottery.
April 23rd, 2008 at 12:09 am
Know what I find remarkable? That 800,000 people actually voted in the Republican primary despite the fact that it’s meaningless (for presidential nomination purposes anyway).
April 23rd, 2008 at 1:00 am
RCP allocates the delegates 78-63. 17 have yet to be assigned. Obama got hit HARD today.
April 23rd, 2008 at 6:49 am
Remarkable work, Sean.
Even more remarkable is the fact that Obama CAN NOT win Pennsylvania in the fall. We must hope like hell that the Dems don’t figure this out.
April 23rd, 2008 at 7:28 am
I was intrigued by Ron Paul getting 16%. Will he get a couple extra convention delegates as a result or is it winner take all?
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:03 am
More Kudos for Sean O. Thanks for continuing to post here.
HILLARY!
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
why makes such a pretty picture and put no labels on it??
wtf am I looking at?
April 23rd, 2008 at 9:30 am
Sean is a genius. He’s changing his name to Miss CleOxendine and he’s coming out with a 900 number for advice in love and work.
Looking to the future:
My comment on WV and KY is that I am very interested to see how Hillary (being so far behind) campaigns in states that she’s going to win handily. She needs every delegate so she’s going to try to win these states by 75-25 instead of 64-36.
What will Obama do to try to prevent his vote from being 25% to get it to 38% so he won’t bleed delegates in these states?
And what will that look like that he campaigned in a state and only got 37%? Will they question his judgment for paying attention to a state he won’t win?
Maybe the media will barely pay attention to Hillary in these two states like they did to Obama in Mississippi. Their nonchalance that night surprised me a little bit given how the media has milked all of this. Their perspective was the MS primary was a foregone conclusion so who cares what Obama won by, their big moment for ratings is the calling of the race and the moments before and after for analysis.
Or will the media correctly bring to light the expected nominee getting his a$$ kicked 2-1 and near 3-1 and the low proportional delegates he’ll get and how much she should make up? This brings up the issue of the Dems taking so long to get an accurate count of delegates in every state.
Will the media also shine light on what all of this really means which is whites over 30 are not voting for Obama anymore?
And let’s not forget the recent Supreme Court decision on gun rights that keeps surfacing as an issue and likely will again in these two states.
I got news for everyone: both campaigns… make that ALL THREE campaigns have the Appalachia article and are going to compare it to the results above and the states that have yet to vote.
Are the Superdelegates looking at this map? Let’s hope not.
April 23rd, 2008 at 5:52 pm
You nailed it, Sean.
Like Nadia Comaneci hitting the floor after her final vault in 1976!
(The only green inside the black line is where the children from the green counties outside the black line are temporarily stationed!)
April 24th, 2008 at 10:34 am
[...] Map of Appalachia (Race42008.com) — Obama is green and Clinton is [...]
April 24th, 2008 at 11:07 am
You left out South Carolina in your Appalachian analysis. This is a bit more difficult because Edwards was still in the race and a native of South Carolina. In addition to this, the Republican race was still competitive at the time.
South Carolina has seven Appalachian Counties: Oconee, Pickens, Anderson, Greenville, Spartanburg, Cherokee, Union.
Barack Obama got the most votes in every South Carolina county but two: Oconee, which is where Edwards was born and Horry, which Clinton carried. However, a closer look at the Appalachian counties shows that the pattern holds in South Carolina. Here’s Obama’s percentage of the vote in each of the Appalachian Counties in SC.
Oconee 26% (dead last)
Pickens 35% (Clemson University)
Anderson 36%
Greenville 51% (largest county in the state)
Spartanburg 44%
Cherokee 42%
Union 49%
Hillary wins by a large margin in Kentucky and West Virginia. She wins Indiana by a smaller, but still significant margin. Obama wins NC, but by less than 10 points.
April 24th, 2008 at 11:38 am
Wonder why Hillary has not made any significant inroads into the African American Vote and whether this bodes ill for her if she ends up being the nominee? Sean is a genius, but I still see Mccain in the White House picking up from good old Dubya. Hooray the Repubs!!!!
April 24th, 2008 at 12:12 pm
Angus,
This is the Dems’ ultimate conundrum. Obama’s base (Yuppies, AAs) may stay home, but it won’t vote R. It is too loyal and partisan. Hillary’s base though is more than willing to switch sides. Which is twice as bad. If you’re leading 3-1 and one of your voters stays home, you win 2-1. But if your voter switches sides, it is 2-2. That’s why Obama’s nomination is such a threat.
Jim,
If you go to my original article (linked at the top) you can see my SC map.
April 25th, 2008 at 2:32 am
[...] race42008.com » Blog Archive » Res Ipsa Loquitor (tags: pennsylvania politicalmaps 2008) [...]
April 25th, 2008 at 10:41 am
These maps are awesome. The way you’ve outlined the Appalachian region makes its impact on the primary vote clear like no other map I’d seen before.
The specificity of the Appalachian region in the context of these primaries was dealt with before by The Electoral Map - click that link in response #28 - as well as by some others, but the maps here are the best.
However, I also have a question, and that’s about the scenario you sketched about Hillary still having a shot at winning the overall popular vote. Your estimation of how Pennsylvania would break down geographically was spot on, of course. But your scenario also had Hillary winning the state by 16 points.
In reality, of course, she won by 9 points - 9.2% I think it is.. So that’s just a little over half the margin you’d sketched.
What does this mean for the rest of the scenario you described? Would you now revise the estimations of Hillary’s possible lead in the upcoming states downward? Does that make the popular vote a chimera for Hillary after all, at least when you dont count FL + MI?