Southern discomfort for Democrats' elections bid

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November 12, 8:16 PM

by Jon Margolis, Bipartisan Political Examiner

 

Go West, Old Party, was Schaller's thesis. He told the Democrats that their 2008 candidate probably couldn’t win any Southern States, and that it didn’t pay to try. Put those resources in Midwestern states such as Ohio, or out West in Colorado and New Mexico, he said. That would be enough electoral votes to win the election.

Schaller was more than half right. As it turned out, Barack Obama won three of the 11 states of the Old Confederacy—Virginia, North Carolina, Florida. But he didn’t really need them. Without them, but with Ohio, Indiana, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada added to the states John Kerry carried in 2004, Obama would be just as much President-elect as he is today.

But maybe not with as much clout. It helps a new president if he appears to be the nation’s choice, not just a region’s. Perhaps one reason the last eight years have been so contentious is that George W. Bush never carried a state on the West Coast, the upper Midwest, or, really, the Northeast. The ‘really’ is necessary because Bush did net New Hampshire’s four electoral votes in 2000, but with a plurality thanks to Ralph Nader supporters, not with a majority.

Obama’s support is broader and more varied. He won some states in either all or almost all regions, the ‘almost’ being if one counts Colorado as a Great Plains state (about half of it is prairie) as well as a Rocky Mountain state. Otherwise, Obama won nothing in the Great Plains, but carried states in all other regions—the South, the Rockies, the Midwest, the Northeast, the West Coast.

That’s why it may be a mistake for a candidate to write off any section. Still, Schaller had a point. Where Obama lost in the South, he lost badly, especially in the deep South. Sen. John McCain’s margins in Alabama, Arkansas, and Louisiana were close to 60-40. In Mississippi, it was 56-to-43 percent.

The exit polls remove any mysteries as to why: Obama got almost no white votes in these states. John McCain got 88 percent of white voters in Alabama and Mississippi, 84 percent in Louisiana, 73 percent in Georgia, 68 percent in Arkansas. Those are huge margins. They support Schaller’s contention that Democrats don’t have a problem with white voters—Obama won a majority of whites outside the South; they just have a problem with Southern white voters.

Maybe, in short, the disconnect is not cultural. Maybe it’s just racial.

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Examiner Coverage: Elections 2008
 

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