Obama win splits ‘Solid South’

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By Jonathan Specht

The election last week of Illinois Senator Barack Obama, who will be the first black President of the United States, was a historical milestone. It was also a historic election in terms of the resulting electoral map. Senator Obama won nine states that voted for George W. Bush in 2004, including two, Indiana and Virginia, that had not voted for a Democrat for president since 1964.

A look at a county-by-county map of how Obama performed compared to 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry shows that this year’s Democratic candidate made significant inroads among rural voters. In the entire Mountain West region outside of Arizona, for example, Obama received a higher percentage of the vote in every county but two. Obama even came close to winning Montana, which only gave 39% of its vote to Kerry in 2004. Obama also managed to win the state of Indiana, which went to Bush by 21 points in 2004, and made significant gains in most rural counties of the state.

The electoral map was also notable in that the South split its allegiance for the first time in twelve years. For as long as there have been partisan politics and an Electoral College, the South has tended to vote as a bloc. Until the mid Twentieth Century, the South tended to vote solidly Democratic. Since that time, however, the South has shifted towards voting solidly Republican.

In 2000 and 2004, for example, every Southern state voted for Republican George W. Bush, even Gore’s home state of Tennessee. There have been exceptions. Bill Clinton and Jimmy Carter, who were Southern governors, managed to pick off states in the South in the 1976, 1992, and 1996 elections.

This year’s split in the South was striking. Three states that were members of the Confederacy, Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida, voted for a Northern, African-American Democrat for president. Three other Southern states, however, were the only ones (aside from McCain’s home state of Arizona) in which Obama did worse than John Kerry.

Of these, Tennessee went slightly more Republican, while Arkansas and Louisiana went significantly more Republican. Louisiana voted strongly for John McCain, giving him nearly 60% of the vote to Obama’s 39.8%.

Obama, in fact, won only ten of Louisiana’s 64 parishes. (Among these, however, were the populous Caddo, East Baton Rouge, and Orleans Parishes, which include the cities of Shreveport, Baton Rouge, and New Orleans.) The Louisiana electorate was sharply polarized by parish. For example, Obama received nearly 80% of the vote in Orleans Parish, while McCain received 81% of the vote in Cameron Parish, along the Gulf Coast, and 85% of the vote in La Salle Parish, north of Alexandria.

The shift can be attributed, at least in part, to changing demographics. Virginia, North Carolina, and Florida are among the fastest growing states in the US, and the out-of-state and overseas immigrants moving to those states tend to vote Democratic. (Louisiana, by contrast, was recently ranked the third slowest growing state.) The shift was noted on the campaign trail by McCain aide Nancy Pfotenhauer, who said that the areas of Virginia to which Democrats are moving are not “real Virginia.” Obama’s win in North Carolina, however, was unexpected by Republicans. Senator Lindsay Graham, a Republican of South Carolina, said “I’ll beat Michael Phelps in swimming before Obama wins North Carolina.”

Originally Published: Issue 712 - November 12, 2008

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