On Jan 30, 2009, at 6:18 PM, James Straub wrote:
> Yeah, that poll/graphic/headline makes no sense. It's got Oklahoma,
> the most conservative place on the face of the earth, as 'leaning
> dem'.
Did the people commenting on this read the text? I know this is the Internet and all, but...
> In 2008, Gallup interviewed more than 350,000 U.S. adults as part of
> Gallup Poll Daily tracking. That includes interviews with 1,000 or
> more residents of every U.S. state except Wyoming (885) and North
> Dakota (953), as well as the District of Columbia (689). There were
> more than 15,000 interviews conducted with residents of California,
> New York, Pennsylvania, Texas, and Florida.
>
> This large data set provides the unique ability to give reliable
> estimates of state-level characteristics for 2008. Each sample of
> state residents was weighted by demographic characteristics to
> ensure it is representative of the state's population.
>
> In order to rank the states on partisanship, Gallup analyzes
> "leaned" party identification by state. This measure adds partisan-
> leaning independents to the percentage who identify with either of
> the parties. Thus, the Republican total includes Republican
> identifiers and independents who lean Republican, and the Democratic
> total likewise includes Democratic identifiers and independents who
> lean Democratic.
and
> Given that most states had a Democratic advantage in party
> affiliation last year, to some degree it can be argued that Barack
> Obama could have won many more electoral votes than he did. In fact,
> Obama won 28 states (plus the District of Columbia) to John McCain's
> 22 in the 2008 election.
>
> There are several reasons for possible disparities between the party
> affiliation data and the voting outcomes in a given state. First,
> turnout has typically been an equalizer in U.S. electoral politics
> because Democrats almost always have an advantage in identification,
> but Republicans have been competitive in national and state
> elections over the last three decades because Republicans are
> usually more likely than Democrats to vote. Second, one's partisan
> leaning is not a perfect predictor of voting in a presidential
> election, in which candidate-specific characteristics can influence
> a voter's choice. Third, the party affiliation data reported here
> cover all of 2008, while presidential election voting was limited to
> Nov. 4 or the weeks leading up to it.
>
> But the rank-ordering of the states on the Democratic-to-Republican
> continuum generally follows the election results quite closely --
> Obama won 22 of the 23 most Democratic states (West Virginia being
> the only exception), and McCain won the 17 most Republican states.
>
> Virginia, Florida, and Indiana (all with +9 Democratic partisanship
> advantages) are arguably the most impressive wins for Obama, since
> they were the least Democratic states he won. McCain managed to win
> West Virginia, which had a 19-point Democratic advantage, as well as
> three other solidly Democratic states -- Kentucky (+13), Arkansas
> (+12), and Missouri (+11). McCain also swept the states that had
> narrow Democratic advantages of less than five points.
So WVa et al are full of old racist shits, right?
Jim:
> People right now are waaaay overstating the degree of repub
> collapse. It is dangerous. They are by no means whipped.
> Progressive triumphalism be damned. Frankly, I think as far as the
> voting population of this country goes, it is still a basically
> center-right populace, at least in comparison to the rest of the
> industrialized world. We have yet to move the middle decisively
> leftwards, in even the slightest degree. Everything is still to be
> done.
How is self-ID incompatible with center-right? The Ds are center- right, and the Rs are far right!
Doug