Hopkins_2009 the Geography of Majority 2008

8/12/2019 Hopkins_2009 the Geography of Majority 2008

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The 2008 Election and thePolitical Geography of theNew Democratic Majority

David A. HopkinsUniversity of California, Berkeley

Although the 2008 election brought partisan change to Washington, it also

furthered a long-term trend of increasingly large and stable regional alignments

in both presidential and congressional elections. The growing dominance of

the Democratic Party in the Northeast and coastal West, especially within

large metropolitan areas, has effectively countered Republican electoral strength

in the South and interior West, reducing the number of highly competitive states. In

House and Senate contests, Democratic gains across the North and West have

produced an ideologically diverse majority party as well as a congressional

Republican Party increasingly dominated by southern conservatives, raising serious

questions about the future ability of the GOP to compete effectively in much

of the nation.Polity(2009) 41,368387. doi:10.1057/pol.2009.5;

published online 11 May 2009

Keywords 2008 election; elections; political parties; campaigns;political geography; regionalism

David A. Hopkins is a Ph.D. candidate in the Department of Political Science

at the University of California, Berkeley. His research focuses on political parties and

elections, with a particular interest in the political geography of the United States.

He is the co-author, with Nelson W. Polsby and Aaron Wildavsky, ofPresidential

Elections: Strategies and Structures of American Politics, 12th edition. He can be

reached [email protected].

For many, the election of Senator Barack Obama of Illinois as the 44th

president of the United States on November 4, 2008 represented the beginning of

a new era in American politics. To the New York Times, Obamas victory

amounted to a national catharsis,1 while the Boston Globe characterized it as

1. Adam Nagourney, Obama: Racial Barrier Falls in Decisive Victory, The New York Times,

November 5, 2008, A1.

Polity . Volume 41, Number 3 . July 2009r 2009 Northeastern Political Science Association 0032-3497/09www.palgrave-journals.com/polity/


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precipitating an era of profound political and social realignment in America.2

International observers echoed this interpretation; the Times of London calledthe 2008 election a global political event that transformed [Americas] image

in the world,3 while theToronto Stareditorialized that the U.S. ushered in a triple

revolution spanning racial equality, political renewal and generational change.4

Change indeed served as the central theme of the Obama campaigna

message further reinforced by the candidates grassroots organization, relative

youth, and racial identity.

In his victory speech, Obama argued that the results of the election

demonstrated the American peoples hunger for an end to the bitter partisanship

of the recent past, symbolized for him, as for so many others, by the conventional

wisdom that a geographic fault line now divides the nation into politically

warring regions of red (Republican) and blue (Democratic) territory. His

election sent a message to the world that we have never been just a collection

of . . . red states and blue states, Obama declared. We are and always will be the

UnitedStates of America.

This was a familiar theme for the new president-elect, whose keynote address

at the 2004 Democratic National Convention, the speech that first launched him

into the national consciousness, contained a memorable passage denying the

existence of fundamental political differences between red and blue America

while dismissing pundits and spin masters who like to slice and dice our

country. But while Obamas rhetoric might appeal to voters weary of partisan

conflict in Washington, the actual results of the 2008 election confirmed the

enduring presence of a significant regional rift in contemporary American

politics. As states reported their vote returns on election night, the familiar pattern

of Republican red and Democratic blue began to reappear on electoral college

maps. Democratic dominance of the Northeast, urban Midwest, and Pacific Coast

was countered by Republican success in the South and interior West. Television

networks predicted outcomes in 27 states and the District of Columbia before the

first state flipped from its 2004 alignmentOhio, carried by George W. Bush in theprevious two elections, was projected by multiple media sources for Obama at

about 9:20 pm Eastern Time, signaling a likely Democratic victory in the electoral

college.

Far from reordering the political map, the 2008 election results instead

reflected a fairly even national shift toward the blue end of the political spectrum

prompted by widespread public dissatisfaction with the performance of Bush

2. Scott Helman and Michael Kranish, Historic Victory, The Boston Globe, November 5, 2008, A1.

3. A Masterclass in Democracy, The Times (London), November 6, 2008, 2.

4. Barack Obamas Triumph of Hope, The Toronto Star, November 5, 2008, AA08.

David A. Hopkins 369


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and his fellow Republicans. Obama easily carried all 22 states5 won by

either Al Gore in 2000 or John Kerry in 2004, adding seven states that votedtwice for Bush: Indiana and Ohio in the industrial Midwest, Colorado and

Nevada in the urban West, and the New South population centers of

Florida, North Carolina, and Virginiaa significant but limited incursion into

former Republican territory largely explained by his strong nationwide

performance. Had the national pro-Democratic swing of 4.9 percent in the

two-party popular vote between 2004 and 2008 occurred uniformly in each

state, only the three closest states in the nation, all decided by a margin of less

than 1 percent, would have voted differently in 2008: Indiana, Missouri, and

North Carolina.

Although existing regional alignments remained intact, the 2008 election did

bring about significant political change. In fact, when combined with the 2006

midterms, it represents one of the most notable reversals of partisan fortune in

recent memory. Not long ago, one prominent electoral scholar could plausibly

argue that the Republican Party [is] in its strongest position since Herbert

Hoover was elected president in 1928,6 due to Republican control of the White

House, seemingly durable majorities in both houses of Congress, and a similar

numerical advantage among governorships and state legislatures. Net gains

across the 2006 and 2008 elections of fourteen Senate seats,7 fifty-four House

seats, seven governorships, and control of thirteen state legislative chambers

provided the Democratic Party with larger majorities at all levels than the

Republicans had held after 2004, while Obamas victory in the presidential

contestwinning the popular vote over Republican nominee John McCain by

52.945.6 percent while receiving 68 percent of the electoral votewas similarly

decisive, especially in comparison with George W. Bushs relatively narrow

reelection four years before.

While such dramatic transfers of political power often inspire speculation

about the occurrence of an electoral realignment, evidence suggests that the

2008 election produced much more continuity than change in the geographicconstituencies of the two major parties. In fact, the current era is among the

most stable in this regard in American history, with consistent regional patterns

of partisan support now apparent in both presidential and congressional

elections. The ubiquitous discussion of red and blue states in todays popular

5. The District of Columbia, which casts three electoral votes, is considered a state for the purposes

of this article unless specifically noted otherwise.

6. Gary C. Jacobson. Polarized Politics and the 2004 Congressional and Presidential Elections.

Political Science Quarterly120 (Summer 2005): 199218, at 199.

7. As of April 2009, the outcome of the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, a narrow Democratic

victory according to the official state canvass, has been formally contested by the Republican candidate.

Figures in this article assume that the election is ultimately decided in favor of the Democrat.

370 POLITICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE MAJORITY


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political analysis is occasionally simplistic or misguided, but reflects the extent to

which contemporary partisan voting patterns increasingly follow geographiclines.

The new Democratic majority is therefore built upon trends that stretch back

twenty years or more. Over this time, the party has consolidated its electoral

strength across much of the North and coastal West, drawing particularly loyal

support from the residents of large metropolitan areas. The Democratic Partys

establishment of a strong northern geographic base has counteracted the

Republican ascendancy in the South during this period, though with substantially

less notice from most political observers.

Geographic Polarization in Presidential Elections

The contemporary emergence of significant geographic variation in voting

behavior has become conventional wisdom among many popular political

observers since 2000, when the striking regional partisan alignments evident in

that years electoral college mapDemocratic dominance of the Northeast,

industrial Midwest, and Pacific Coast states bracketing an L-shaped area of

Republican territory joining the South and interior Westfirst inspired journalists

and pundits to coin the terms red states and blue states, referring to the colors

used to denote Republican and Democratic victories, respectively, on election

night telecasts. The presence of such stark apparent geographic differences in

partisan preferences appeared to contradict prevailing assumptions that the U.S.

was becoming more politically and culturally homogeneous, and immediately

inspired a steady stream of enthusiastic amateur ethnography purporting to

describe the salient characteristics distinguishing the denizens of red America

from their blue-state counterparts (with the relative popularity of caffe latte and

professional auto racing in a particular location deemed, by general consensus,

to be a reliable indicator of its voting habits).8 The near-perfect replication of the

2000 electoral college results in 2004, despite four intervening years of eventfulnational politics, seemed to confirm the validity of the view that America was

deeply and persistently divided along the redblue fault line.9

Several of the most dramatic assertions made by popularizers of the

red-versus-blue thesis can, in fact, be easily debunked with empirical analysis.

But some scholars have gone even further, arguing that the basic claim of

increasing geographic conflict is itself a myth generated by the news media while

dismissing the current political differences between Democratic and Republican

8. A typical exercise in this genre is David Brooks, One Nation, Slightly Divisible, The Atlantic

Monthly, December 2001, 5365.

9. Only three states voted for different parties in the two elections (Iowa, New Hampshire, and New

Mexico), the fewest since 1904 and 1908.



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states as minor and inconsequential, especially by historical standards.10 To what

extent is the nation becoming more politically divided, if it is divided at all?

One measure of geographic division is the extent to which electoral results

within individual states differ from the national outcome. State-level variation in

presidential elections is in fact growing over time, as revealed by Figure 1. As late

as 1988, more than half of all electoral votes were cast by states whose two-party

presidential vote differed from the national vote division by three percentage

points or less; since George H. W. Bush won 54 percent of the national two-party

vote in the 1988 presidential election, this category includes all states in which

Bushs vote share ranged from 51 to 57 percent. Obama also won roughly 54percent of the national two-party popular vote in 2008, but received between 51

and 57 percent in states casting just one-quarter of all electoral votes. As Figure 1

shows, this trend is consistent over time whether the threshold is three, five, or ten

percentage points. By 2008, the average state differed from the national vote by

8.9 percentage pointsthe highest level since the election of 1940.

Whether an individual state deviates from the national vote by three or five or

ten percentage points might not seem consequential in the abstract. But the states

+/- 10 Pct Points

+/- 5 Pct Points

+/- 3 Pct Points

PercentageofElectoralVotesCastbyStatesW

ithin

EachTh

resholdofDeviationfromtheNational

Two-PartyPopularVote

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Year

1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008

Figure 1

The declining scope of competitition in presidential elections, 19722008.

10. Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope,Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized

America (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005); Stephen Ansolabehere, Jonathan Rodden, and James M.

Snyder Jr.,Purple America, Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (Spring 2006): 97118.



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that closely mirror the national electorate are those that hold the balance of

power in the electoral collegeand are therefore likely to be contested by

presidential campaigns. The size of the electoral battleground depends on the

amount of state-level variation in support for the two candidates; under the unit

rule system of allocating electors, neither candidate has an incentive to investresources in states that are considered safe for one side or the other.

Figure 2 displays the states that fell within the three-point margin in the 1988

election. These states tended to be heavily targeted by both presidential

candidates. Notably, this category included both California and Texasthe

campaign of George H. W. Bush identified California, as well as other states now

considered safely Democratic (such as Illinois and New Jersey), as must-win,11

while Democratic nominee Michael Dukakis selected Texas Senator Lloyd

Democratic Base (112 EV)

Competitive (278 EV)

Republican Base (148 EV)

Figure 2

State alignments in the 1988 presidential election.

11. Darshan J. Goux, Grading the Battleground: A New Measure of Presidential Campaign Activity

in the States, Paper Presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association,

Philadelphia, PA (August 2006).



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Bentsen as his running mate as part of a serious effort to contest a state that has

since become dependably Republican.

By 2008, only a quarter of the nation closely mirrored the national popular

vote. Once again, as Figure 3 shows, the three-point range generally captures the

states actively contested by both the Obama and McCain campaigns. Thesolidification of the Republican electoral advantage across most of the South,

including Texas, is immediately apparent, reflecting the familiar progression of

the regions secular realignment. Equally noteworthy, however, are countervailing

trends elsewhere in the nation. Nearly all of the Northeast and Pacific Coast has

become safely Democratic by 2008, including California, which Obama carried

by 24 percentage points (the widest electoral margin in the state since 1936).

While a number of states remain more purple than truly red or blue, the

proportion of highly competitive states has declined markedly since 1988, leading

to the emergence of a contemporary regional alignment in which an increasinglyDemocratic North and Pacific Coast balances a largely Republican South and

interior West.

Democratic Base (212 EV)

Competitive (137 EV)

Republican Base (189 EV)

Figure 3

State alignments in the 2008 presidential election.



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States

Electoral Votes

Perce

ntageofStates/ElectoralVotesWonbythe

SamePartyinAllFiveElections

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Five-Election Set

1880

-189

6

1888

-190

4

1896

-191

2

1904

-192

0

1912

-192

8

1920

-193

6

1928

-194

4

1936

-195

2

1944

-196

0

1952

-196

8

1960

-197

6

1968

-198

4

1976

-199

2

1984

-200

0

1992

-2008

Figure 4

State-level stability in presidential elections, 18802008.

States

Electoral Votes

Percentage

ofStates/ElectoralVotesWonbythe

SamePartyinAllFiveElections

Five-Election Set

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

1880

-189

6

1888

-190

4

1896

-191

2

1904

-192

0

1912

-192

8

1920

-193

6

1928

-194

4

1936

-195

2

1944

-196

0

1952

-196

8

1960

-197

6

1968

-198

4

1976

-199

2

1984

-200

0

1992

-2008

Figure 5

State-level stability in presidential elections, 18802008.

(Controlling for national party tides).



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With little notice, American politics has entered an era of unusual stability in

state-level presidential election outcomes. Figure 4 displays the proportion ofstates (and electoral votes cast by states) that consistently supported the same

party for president during every five-election period since the end of

Reconstruction. The 19922008 period is, by this metric, the most stable set of

five consecutive elections during the entire timespan covered by the figure, easily

outdistancing the five Roosevelt/Truman elections of 19321948 and even

exceeding any five-election run during the 18801928 period, usually considered

the apex of American sectionalism. Nearly 63 percent of states, casting 64 percent

of all electoral votes, have voted consistently Democratic or Republican over

the last five presidential elections, despite the ever-changing combinations of

candidates, issues, and events shaping the electoral environment.

Of course, it is possible that this state-level consistency primarily reflects

relative national electoral stability; while short-term political forces delivered

coast-to-coast landslide victories to the Democratic candidate in 1964 and to

Republicans in 1972 and 1984, for example, pulling even normally safe party

states into the column of the opposition, no comparable popular margins have

occurred in more recent elections. But accounting for national electoral tides

does not, in fact, contradict the findings above. Figure 5 is identical to Figure 4

except that the national partisan distribution of the vote is controlled for in each

election; figures therefore represent the proportion of states (and electoral votes

cast by states) that consistently voted more Democratic or more Republican than

the national electorate in each five-election sequence. The era of dealignment

in the 1960s and 1970s12 exhibits a great deal of election-to-election volatility in

comparison with other historical periods, but state-level stability has risen steadily

ever since, reaching a post-Reconstruction peak in 19922008. Three-quarters of

all states, casting 79 percent of all electoral votes, remained consistently more

Democratic or more Republican than the national outcome in each of the last

five presidential elections.

Figure 6 reveals that the combination of greater variation and stability at thestate level has led to increased regional differentiation over the past ten

presidential elections. A double-digit gap has emerged between the consistently

Republican interior West and increasingly Republican South on one side and the

comparatively Democratic Northeast and Pacific Coast on the other, with the

Midwest remaining very slightly more Democratic than the nation as a whole.

While southern realignment would render the rest of the nation more Democratic

in comparison even if there were no true change, controlling for the national vote

12. Martin P. Wattenberg,The Decline of American Political Parties, 19521996(Cambridge: Harvard

University Press, 1998); Walter Dean Burnham, The Reagan Heritage, in The Election of 1988: Reports

and Interpretations, ed. Gerald M. Pomper (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1989), 133.



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(as Figure 6 does) actually understates the extent to which Democratic support

increased in the Northeast and Pacific Coast over this period while exaggerating

the movement in the South toward the Republicans, since the overall fortunes ofDemocratic presidential candidates improved over time (averaging 44 percent of

the two-party popular vote from 1972 to 1988 and 52 percent from 1992 to 2008).

As a result, Barack Obamas 2008 presidential campaign could count on a

dependable geographic base centered in the Northeast (with all states in the

region except New Hampshire and Pennsylvania considered safe for the

Democrats) and along the Pacific Coast, including Hawaii, plus his home state

of Illinois: a total of one hundred and ninety electoral votes. This exceeds the

number of electors ultimately won by McCain (one hundred and seventy-three),

suggesting a structural advantage for Democrats in the electoral college, at leastin 2008. However, Obamas overflowing war chest (and steady lead in public

opinion polls throughout the home stretch of the campaign) allowed him the

15%

10%

5%

0%

-5%

-10%

-15%

Year

1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008

Northeast

Midwest

SouthInterior West

Pacific Coast

Regiona

lDeviationfromNationalTwo-PartyVote

Figure 6

Regionalism in presidential elections, 19722008.

Note: Regional definitions are as follows:Northeast: Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Maine,Maryland, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York,Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont.

Midwest: Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Missouri, Ohio, Wisconsin.South: Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana,Mississippi, North Carolina, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee,Texas, Virginia, West Virginia.

Interior West:Alaska, Arizona, Colorado, Idaho, Kansas, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Mexico, NorthDakota, South Dakota, Utah, Wyoming.

Pacific Coast: California, Hawaii, Oregon, Washington.



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luxury of contesting normally Republican states such as North Carolina and

Indiana that were not central to his electoral college strategy; absent thisadvantage, the two parties regional strongholds are of roughly equal size.

Indeed, Obamas success in traditionally Republican territory was in fact fairly

limited, despite some exaggerated press commentary to the contrary. Aside from

carrying three states in the South by modest margins, he did not perform

particularly well in the region, winning just 46 percent of the two-party votethe

worst showing by a victorious Democratic presidential candidate in American

history. Obama even failed to match Kerrys 2004 popular vote share in five

southern states (Arkansas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia),

where his race may well have been a salient factor. Likewise, although Democrats

have often claimed in recent years to be gaining support in the interior West,

Obamas success there was restricted to victories in three states (Colorado,

Nevada, and New Mexico) and a near-miss in Montana, all states carried by Bill

Clinton in 1992, plus a single electoral vote from Nebraska. The rest of the region

remained solidly Republican.

At the same time, the 2008 election demonstrated that even a self-proclaimed

maverick Republican now faces great difficulty in making significant inroads

into Democratic areas. Despite claims early in the year that John McCains

moderate, independent-minded reputation might allow the GOP to contest

normally Democratic parts of the Northeast (such as New Jersey and Connecti-

cut) and the Pacific Northwest, these states were in fact never seriously targeted

by McCain strategists. Even Democratic-leaning but usually competitive states

proved insufficiently promising to justify a significant investment of campaign

resources; McCain pulled his organization out of Michigan in early October, a

decision that prompted a great deal of press commentary about the perilous state

of his candidacy. In the last weeks before the election, McCain identified

Pennsylvania as the most vulnerable of the states won by Kerry four years before,

but multiple public appearances and heavy television advertising failed to

prevent a ten-point Obama victory in the state.The key to Obamas success in Pennsylvania, as in many other states, was his

strong base of support among the residents of the nations largest metropolitan

areas. A generation ago, the dependable Republican leanings of most populous

suburbs tended to counteract the Democratic loyalties of central cities; as

suburban areas grew in population, this trend promised to work to the long-term

advantage of the Republican Party.13 Beginning with the Clinton elections in the

1990s, however, many suburbs, especially within large metropolitan areas outside

the South, began to shift toward the Democrats in presidential voting; this

13. Kevin P. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority(New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969);

William Schneider, The Suburban Century Begins, The Atlantic Monthly, July 1992, 3344.



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Table 1Presidential vote in the twenty largest metropolitan areas, 19882

Metro area 2000 population

(in millions)

1988 1992 1996 2000

New York 21.1 50 58 66 65

Los Angeles 16.4 46 57 57 57

Chicago 9.3 50 60 63 60

WashingtonBaltimore 7.5 50 60 59 59

BostonProvidence 7.1 52 60 67 63

San FranciscoSan Jose 7.1 59 69 68 68

PhiladelphiaWilmington 6.2 48 59 63 61

Detroit 5.4 50 58 63 59

Dallas 5.2 39 45 44 38

Miami 5.0 46 57 64 61

Houston 4.7 42 46 46 41 Atlanta 4.4 39 50 49 45

Seattle 3.6 52 61 61 59

Phoenix 3.3 35 45 49 45

Minneapolis 3.1 55 59 61 53

Cleveland 2.8 54 59 62 58

San Diego 2.8 39 51 49 48

St. Louis 2.7 51 61 58 54

Denver 2.6 49 56 53 50

Pittsburgh 2.4 60 63 56 54

TOTAL: Twenty largest metro areas 122.9 49 58 60 58

REST OF NATION 158.5 44 50 51 45

Note: Figures represent Democratic percentage of the two-party presidential vote.

Source: Compiled by author using federal Metropolitan Statistical Area and Combined Statistical Area definitions.


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tendency continued in 2000 and 2004. By 2008, Obama could count on lopsided

electoral margins from most large population centers, representing not only theoverwhelming Democratic preferences of city dwellers but the partys increasing

popularity among suburbanites as well. As Table 1 shows, Obama received a

majority of the vote in seventeen of the twenty largest metropolitan areas (all but

metro Dallas, Houston, and Phoenix) and won over 60 percent of the vote in each

of the eight most populous.

These twenty metropolitan areas collectively contain 42 percent of the nations

voters and constitute a majority of the electorate in a number of key states, often

spilling across state boundaries. The 2008 election solidified Democratic electoral

dominance of the metropolitan corridor composed of greater Boston, New York,

Philadelphia, and Washington that stretches from southern New Hampshire to

northern Virginia, passing through eleven states casting a total of 123 electoral

votes. Obama carried all eleven, becoming the first Democratic presidential

candidate since 1964 to win Virginia in large part due to his strength in the

Washington suburbs. Lopsided victory margins in large metropolitan areas

elsewhere helped to produce Obama victories in Florida, Ohio, Michigan, Illinois,

Minnesota, Colorado, Washington, and California.

As Table 1 indicates, Obamas strong 2008 showing was not a fluke; residents of

large metropolitan areas have moved disproportionately toward the Democrats in

presidential elections over the past twenty years. Obamas share of the two-party

vote among these voters in 2008 exceeded that of Michael Dukakis in 1988 by 12

percentage points, compared to a four-point difference in the rest of the nation.

On top of his generally overwhelming victories in central cities, Obama also

received large electoral margins in key suburban counties, winning 64 percent of

the vote in Westchester County, New York; 60 percent in Montgomery County,

Pennsylvania; 54 percent in Macomb County, Michigan; and 61 percent in Fairfax

County, Virginia, challenging the conventional view of suburbs as Republican

strongholds. Obama even challenged GOP supremacy in the traditional

conservative bastion of Orange County, California, losing there to John McCainby a slender two-point margin.

The metro-level data presented in Table 1 are also notable for their relative

consistency across the five elections from 1992 to 2008. Although substantial

variation exists in the relative partisan leanings of different metropolitan areas,

the two-party vote share seldom shifted more than a few percentage points from

one election to the next. The low level of partisan change among states during

this period is thus mirrored at the local level as well, further suggesting that

contemporary elections are, by historical standards, unusually stable.

Even the 2008 presidential electiona contest of unprecedented lengthand cost, featuring a unique collection of candidates (for both president and

vice president) and conducted during a time of crisis both at home and



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abroadproduced an outcome that was, in fact, highly predictable: a mostly

uniform national popular-vote shift of about five percentage points toward theDemocrats in comparison with 2004, reflecting widespread dissatisfaction with

the incumbent regime. Whatever change the 2008 election might have brought to

American politics, the electoral coalitions of the two major parties remained

largely intact. While the Republican ascendancy in the South over the past

several decades has received a great deal of attention from scholars and popular

commentators alike, the Democratic Party has, with substantially less notice,

formed a durable majority across the North anchored at opposite ends by the

Northeast and the Pacific Coast. This geographic coalition first emerged at the

presidential level in 1992, but has more recently arisen in elections for the Senate

and House of Representativesproviding another indication that regionalism has

become a key characteristic of contemporary party politics.

Regionalism and Party Ideology in the U.S. Congress

Not long ago, it appeared as if the decline of the coattail effect and the

increasing size of the incumbency advantage had significantly insulated Congress

from the results of presidential elections. Republicans held the White House for

20 of 24 years between 1968 and 1992, while Democrats maintained control of the

Senate for all but six of those years and the House of Representatives for the

entire period. Even the forty-nine-state Nixon and Reagan landslides in 1972 and

1984 failed to threaten the Democrats hold on Congress.

In recent years, however, congressional elections have seemed to mirror

presidential-level outcomes more closely. While the persistence of large

Democratic congressional majorities into the 1990s was in large part due to

southern Democrats continued success in House and Senate elections even after

the region had swung toward the GOP in presidential races, the Republican

Revolution of 1994 substantially closed this gap. Likewise, the nationwide shift

toward the Democrats that occurred in the 2006 midterm elections appeared tobe particularly concentrated in the urban North, suggesting the presence of an

increasing regional divide in the House and Senate.

The 2008 congressional elections indeed closely tracked the presidential

contest. Of the 35 Senate seats up for election in 2008, 28 were won by the party

whose presidential candidate carried the state. Democrats gained 7 seats in states

won by Obama (Colorado, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New Mexico, North

Carolina, Oregon, and Virginia); two-term incumbent Susan Collins of Maine was

the only victorious Republican Senate candidate in a state voting Democratic in

the presidential race. But Senate Republicans successfully retained 14 of 15 seatsin states won by McCain, narrowly losing in Alaska only after incumbent senator

Ted Stevens was convicted eight days before the election on seven felony counts



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of filing false disclosure forms. The strongly favorable national climate left

Democrats holding a 5941 advantage in the Senate (including two independentsaffiliated with the party caucus)the largest margin of control by either party

since the 19791980 Congress.

House elections in 2008 produced a similar pattern. Democrats won 22

additional seats in states carried by Obama while Republicans made a net gain of

one seat in McCain states. Democratic victories in previously Republican-held

seats were particularly concentrated in large- and medium-size urban areas

across the North and West, including Staten Island and Syracuse, New York; Erie,

Pennsylvania; Cincinnati, Columbus, and Canton, Ohio; Battle Creek, Michigan;

Albuquerque, New Mexico; Las Vegas, Nevada; and suburban New York,

Baltimore, Washington, Detroit, and Chicago. The 257178 Democratic advantage

in the House after the 2008 election exactly matched the partys margin of control

just before the 1994 midterms, effectively reversing the gains made in the

Republican Revolution.

The most dramatic partisan shift over the past two congressional elections

occurred in the Northeast. The 2006 election provided House Democrats

with a 211 advantage among the six New England states; in 2008, the single

remaining Republican, Christopher Shays of Connecticut, lost his bid for

reelection, giving the Democratic Party an unprecedented monopoly from Maine

to Connecticut. In neighboring New York, a House delegation in which the

Democrats held just a five-seat edge, 1813, as recently as 2000 consisted after

2008 of 26 Democrats and only 3 Republicans.14 Additional gains in Pennsylvania,

New Jersey, and Maryland left House Democrats with 75 of 92 total House seats,

or 82 percent, across the 11 northeastern states. In the Senate, Democrats

gained two seats in the region in 2006 and one more in 2008, holding an overall

184 majority after the 2008 election. When combined with similar trends in

presidential voting, these results threaten the continued viability of the

northeastern Republican Partyat least in federal elections (although the fact

that Democrats now also hold 8 of 11 governorships and majorities in 21 of 22state legislative chambers suggests that Republican woes extend farther down the

ballot).

Figure 7 displays the partisan seat division in House elections since 1972 for

each of the five regions of the United States. Mirroring the presidential election

results presented earlier, the current regional alignment emerged in the early

1990s. The national pro-Republican shift in 1994 was particularly concentrated in

the South and interior West; temporary gains by the Republican Party in the

Northeast and Pacific Coast states were quickly reversed over subsequent

elections.

14. New York lost two House seats after the 2000 national census.



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Although many analysts assume that the Republican electoral ascendancy in

the South has proceeded relentlessly since Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Civil

Rights Act of 1964, Figure 7 demonstrates that the truth is substantially more

complex. Not only did the South consistently elect the highest proportion of

Democratic House members of any region until the early 1990s, but House

Republicans have also failed to make additional gains since the 1996 election,

stalling at about a 60 percent share of all southern seats. The success of the

congressional Democratic Party at maintaining a viable moderate wing able to

compete effectively in the South (and in the interior West, where Democrats have

made an impressive comeback from holding just 15 percent of House seats in

1996 to a narrow majority after 2008) has allowed House Democrats to continueto outperform the partys presidential candidates in relatively conservative

constituencies. The Blue Dog Coalition, an organization of centrist House

Democrats mostly from the South and rural West, expanded to 47 members in the

20072008 Congress; though the groups tendency to deviate from liberal

orthodoxy may frustrate Democratic congressional leaders, its members ability

to win election in hostile partisan territory represents a key strategic advantage for

the party.

The moderate wing of the House Republican Party, by contrast, appears to

be suffering a long-term declineand was particularly devastated by the resultsof the 2006 and 2008 elections. Many moderate Republicans representing

competitive districts in the Northeast and Midwest fell victim to voter

Percen

tageofHouseSeatsHeldbyDemocrats

Northeast

Midwest

South

Interior West

Pacific Coast

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Year

1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008

Figure 7

Regionalism in the U.S. House, 19722008.



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dissatisfaction with George W. Bush and the Republican congressional leader-

ship; others retired, leaving their politically vulnerable seats open to capture by

the opposition. Of the 58 members constituting the most ideologically moderate

quarter of the House Republican conference in the 109th Congress of 20052006

(as measured by first-dimension DW-NOMINATE scores), just 27fewer than

halfremained in the 111th Congress of 20092010.15 Thirteen were defeated by

Democratic challengers in 2006 or 2008; two lost Republican primaries to more

conservative rivals who were themselves defeated by Democratic candidates; and

sixteen retired or sought higher office (of which eleven were succeeded by

Democrats). In the 1980s and 1990s, the increasing number of southern

Republicans in Congress moved the party toward the ideological right bybolstering the ranks of its conservative wing; these more recent electoral trends

appear to have had a similar effect by subtracting moderate members from the

Republican conference.

The growth of regionalism in the years after 1992 is immediately apparent in

Senate elections as well, as demonstrated by Figure 8. In fact, geographic

variation is comparatively larger due to the larger constituencies and fewer

number of seats in the upper chamber. Senate Republicans have proven more

PercentageofSenateSeatsHeldbyDemocrats

100%

90%

80%

70%

60%

50%

40%

30%

20%

10%

0%

Year

1972 1976 1980 1984 1988 1992 1996 2000 2004 2008

Northeast

Midwest

South

Interior West

Pacific Coast

Figure 8

Regionalism in the U.S. Senate, 19722008.

15. DW-NOMINATE scores from www.voteview.com. For an explanation of the methodology used to

calculate these scores, see Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Ideology and Congress (New

Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007).



18/20

successful than their House counterparts at capturing a consistent majority of

seats in the South (holding 19 of 28 even after the Democratic gains of 2006 and2008), while Democrats have steadily tightened their grip on the Northeast and

Pacific Coast since the mid-1990s. As in the House, the moderate wing of the

Senate Republican Party has become increasingly vulnerable to electoral

challenge. Moderate incumbents Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island, Mike DeWine

of Ohio, Gordon Smith of Oregon, and Norm Coleman of Minnesota all lost bids

for reelection to liberal Democrats in 2006 or 2008.

The results of the 2008 congressional elections mirrored the presidential

contest, resulting in larger national Democratic majorities in both the Senate and

the House of Representatives and a reinforcement of existing trends toward

greater partisan regional differences in American politics. In the aftermath of the

election, Democrats held two out of every three seats outside the South in both

houses of Congress for the first time since 1936,16 having especially consolidated

their electoral dominance in the Northeast and Pacific Coast at the expense of the

increasingly vestigial moderate wing of the Republican Party. These losses

rendered the overwhelmingly conservative southern contingent ever more

dominant within the GOP; 46 percent of the partys members in both the House

and the Senate now hail from the South.

The new Democratic majority in Congress is more northern, more metro-

politan, and possibly more liberal than ever before. Yet enough regionaland,

therefore, ideologicaldiversity remains to complicate efforts by leaders to

enforce party discipline. The still-vibrant moderate wing of the Democratic Party

allows it to remain competitive in Republican-leaning areas of the nation,

especially in the South and interior West, and has therefore provided it with larger

House and Senate majorities in the new Congress than the Republicans held even

at the peak of their power. However, this relatively wide range of constituencies

may present a challenge to the new presidents more ambitious proposals,

especially if public support begins to fade. (Only 46 senators are Democrats from

states carried by Obama in the 2008 election.) In addition, the thinning ranks ofmoderate Republicans may make it more difficult for the administration to gain

bipartisan support for its policy agenda.

Congressional Republicans face a different challenge. While the 2006 and

2008 election results collectively represented in one sense a short-term (though

significant) setback, the publics expression of disapproval of a president who is

now out of office, the decline of moderate Republicanismand, with it, the

partys ability to challenge Democratic electoral dominance of the Northeast,

urban Midwest, and coastal Westhas been in progress for decades. It is not

clear how a party now broadly identified with southern-style conservatism

16. The Republican Party briefly achieved the same feat following the 1952 election.



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rebuilds a viable centrist wing even if it wishes to (which, to date, it has not).

Although congressional Republicans will no doubt regain some of the territorylost in the previous two elections, and may well consolidate their strength in the

conservative bastions of Appalachia, the Deep South, and the rural West, any path

to renewed control of Congress, especially of the House, runs through the

northern metropolitan electorates that have recently become noticeably hostile

to the party brand.

Conclusion

The new Democratic electoral majority is anchored by the partys growing

advantages in the nations largest metropolitan areas, which have allowed it to

establish a dependable regional base within the Northeast and along the Pacific

Coastas well as to compete effectively throughout the urban Midwest and in a

few New South and Rocky Mountain states. Even the revolutionary Obama

campaign formed an electoral coalition that, at least geographically, represents

far more continuity than change. The same set of regional alignments has

emerged in congressional elections as well, with increasing Democratic success

in the Northeast in particular occurring at the expense of the moderate wing of aRepublican Party now increasingly dominated by southern conservatives.

Just four years ago, the notion that George W. Bush, under the direction of his

chief political aide Karl Rove, had established a permanent Republican

electoral majority was at least seriously pondered by a number of prominent

political analysts. Such claims appear foolish in retrospect, of course, but the

credence they were given at the time demonstrates the degree to which the

Republican Party was widely believed to hold an unshakable advantage over

the Democrats on the basis of what were in fact two very close presidential

elections, one of which featured a Democratic victory in the popular vote, and

historically modest margins of control in Congress. It is quite possible that the

ubiquitous color-coded map of the 2000 (and 2004) electoral college results

significantly distorted the actual relative strength of the parties in the eyes of

observers who equated land area with population. A view of the U.S. not as

closely divided, as the vote totals might indicate, but as containing a few liberal

urban enclaves on the coastsBoston, Manhattan, San Franciscoon either side

of a vast expanse of loyally conservative middle America became quite popular

during the Bush years, even among Democrats who wrung their hands over their

partys supposed inability to appeal to heartland voters.17

17. A viewpoint captured most prominently in Thomas Frank, Whats the Matter with Kansas? How

Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).



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The extent to which this attitude became conventional wisdom for many

Republicans was revealed during the 2008 election in what became a recurrentpremise of the McCain presidential campaign: the superiority of the small town

over the metropolis. This theme emerged, perhaps out of necessity, as an attempt

to defend vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin from charges that her pre-

gubernatorial tenure as mayor of Wasilla, Alaska (population 5,500) did not

constitute adequate preparation for national office. Palins frequent invocation of

the honesty, sincerity, and dignity of small-town residents contrasted with

McCains stated disdain for elitists who live in our nations capital and New

York City. A spokeswoman for the McCain campaign even suggested during a

television interview that the Virginia suburbs of Washington, D.C. were not real

Virginia, a statement that took her questioner by such surprise that he offered her

a chance to climb back off that ledge.

This is a curious strategylarge population centers, after all, are where the

votes are. Most Americans live in a metropolitan area of at least 1.5 million

people; a small fraction of the nations population still resides in small towns. The

central challenge facing the contemporary Republican Party is its decaying

support among the residents of large metro areas outside the South, yet party

leaders appear as yet reluctant to craft a message designed to target those voters.

For the Democrats, the 2008 election results not only represented an

unambiguous triumph but also demonstrated the limits of the partys appeal.

Even in an unusually favorable political environment, most of the South and

interior West remained resistant to the Obama candidacy and generally loyal to

Republican candidates in down-ballot races. The new Democratic majority,

though substantially larger than that held by the Republicans during the Bush

years, still pales in comparison to the Roosevelt and Johnson landslides (and

accompanying congressional margins) of the 1930s and 1960s, even as the extent

of the challenges now facing the nations political leaders draws frequent

comparison to those periods in American history. Despite the new presidents

appeal to a sense of national unity and common purpose, these divisions willprove difficult to overcome.


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