GOP Plot Strategy to Turn Maryland Republican

[minionofmidas]

The Dem support is in the DC suburbs mostly. Baltimore area is closer.

[minionofmidas]

A little like Chicago and Illinois, is it that Maryland would vote Republican without Baltimore?

Fwiw, these are the states that would swing if you surgically removed one county, based on 2004 results:
To the Reps:
Delaware (duh, as New Castle is the only dem county in the state)
Illinois
Michigan
Minnesota (Hennepin. Ramsey is stronger Dem but also smaller, and doesn't quite do it.)
Oregon
Pennsylvania (Philly)
Washington
Wisconsin (where there's three counties available to do it with, Dane, Milwaukee and - surprise - Rock.)

To the Dems:
Iowa (Sioux County. Even though it's tiny. That's how outlandish that little Dutch Calvinist pocket in NW Iowa is.)
New Mexico (no less than six different counties, ie pretty much anywhere in Little Texas)

States where removing one county would cover over half the distance:
To the Reps:
California
Maryland (Prince George's)
New Hampshire (Cheshire, Grafton, or Strafford)

To the Dems:
Arizona
Colorado (El Paso)

Didn't mention the county name where it's bleeding obvious.

[minionofmidas]

Wisconsin (where there's three counties available to do it with, Dane, Milwaukee and - surprise - Rock.)

Any Republican who can suck away votes from Milwaukee can likely win the state.

Given that Reps lost by 10,000 votes there obviously was a number of strategies that might have won them the state. Same goes for Dems in Iowa and New Mexico.

[minionofmidas]

Didn't Bush win New Mexico because in 2004, 44% of Hispanics voted for him; whereas in in 2000, 32% did?  In Iowa, I thought the case was simply that between 2000 and 2004 Republican overtook Democratic voter registration.

44%? Tell that to the N New Mexico election results. Clearly a bad exit poll subsample.

[minionofmidas]

Didn't Bush win New Mexico because in 2004, 44% of Hispanics voted for him; whereas in in 2000, 32% did?  In Iowa, I thought the case was simply that between 2000 and 2004 Republican overtook Democratic voter registration.

44%? Tell that to the N New Mexico election results. Clearly a bad exit poll subsample.

Why is it a bad sample?  The white population voted 55%+ for Bush.  So the 44% hispanic number makes sense.

If the state's Hispanics had gotten 12 points more Republican, it would show in election results in the most Hispanic areas of the state. (And please tell me you weren`t just adding 55%+44%=1. Hispanics and Whites are about equal in numbers in the state, but Hispanic turnout is bound to be lower simply because citizenship rate is lower - though higher than in other states with large Hispanic populations.) Actually not just does the 44 figure sound too high, the 32 figure sounds too low, too.

[minionofmidas]

I actually think the 44% Hispanic figure for Bush comes from The Almanac of American Politics, a published source.

And where have they got it from?

New Mexico, despite its many Hispanics - and Hispanics did certainly swing Republican above the national average in California and Texas - , swung a lot less than the national average. So, either Whites in the state swung Dem by quite a bit (possible, actually - look at Los Alamos - but not realistic), or NM Hispanics swung far less than Hispanics nationally.

[minionofmidas]

Yeah NM exit poll is hard to figure out.  I can't find the results from 2000 right now, but 32% seems a little low.  Why couldn't the 44% be correct for 2004?  That was the national average according to CNN exit poll.  That would be a 12% swing, but nationally hispanics swung 9%, so it's not that outlandish.  Couple that with a slight swing among white voters to Kerry and it could add up.

In 2000, Bush got 47.9% of the vote in NM, same as nationally. In 2004, he got 49.8%, 0.9 points less than nationally. So (unless we're assuming a massive increase in Latino and Indian turnout) the Whites would have to swing Dem almost as much as the Hispanics swung Rep.

Here's a localized look, btw...presentation follows the following scheme -
New Mexico 42.1% Hispanic 49.8% Bush in 2004 +1.9 change of Bush percentage over 2000 26.3% increase in vote cast 41.6% votes cast in 2004 as percentage of 2000 census population

Spanish North New Mexico
Rio Arriba  72.9% 34.3% +5.4 24.0% 36.4%
Taos         57.9% 24.7% -0.5 36.1% 49.5%
Santa Fe   49.0% 27.9% -0.3 33.8% 51.2% - these two counties' gringo population is pretty left wing too, o/c
Colfax       47.5% 51.6% +4.0 9.4%  42.1%
Mora         81.6% 32.8% +2.3 29.0% 54.6%
San Miguel 78.0% 27.3% +3.1 32.2% 40.2%
Guadalupe 81.2% 40.3% +7.1 37.4% 48.4%

Little Texas
Union       35.1% 77.3% +5.0 7.1% 45.1%
Harding    44.9% 59.0% -2.7 8.7% 79.5% safe to say Harding County has a ballotstuffing problem
Quay        38.0% 64.6% +5.0 7.3% 40.6%
Curry        30.4% 74.5% +5.1 19.3% 31.7%
Roosevelt 33.3% 69.9% +3.3 26.7% 39.6%
DeBaca     35.3% 71.1% +8.8 1.0% 44.3%
Lincoln      25.6% 67.3% +1.5 33.0% 46.4%
Chaves     43.8% 68.1% +5.4 19.4% 35.4%
Lea           39.6% 79.4% +8.2 27.0% 32.8%
Eddy         38.8% 65.5% +7.4 14.2% 39.2%
Otero       32.2% 67.6% +4.4 28.0% 33.3%

Center of the state
Bernalillo     42.0% 47.3% +0.7 25.7% 46.1%
Sandoval     29.4% 50.8% +2.2 40.2% 49.5%
Los Alamos 11.7% 51.9% -3.1 9.6% 61.0%
Torrance     37.2% 61.9% +3.6 31.2% 38.5%
Valencia      55.0% 55.6% +5.1 21.7% 39.3%
Socorro      48.7% 47.1% +0.6 15.0% 43.4%

Western New Mexico, which is fairly diverse with counties not resembling each other much
San Juan  15.0% 65.6% +3.8 29.9% 39.5%
McKinley   12.4% 35.6% +3.7 29.8% 27.6% overwhelmingly Navajo (74.7% Native American)
Cibola       33.4% 46.4% +7.6 5.5% 29.3%
Catron     19.2% 71.6% -2.8 16.5% 56.3%
Grant       48.8% 45.8% +1.7 31.3% 43.2%
Hidalgo     56.0% 55.0% +3.0 7.1% 33.1%
Luna         57.7% 54.8% +3.5 14.8% 30.4%
Sierra       26.3% 61.3% +2.0 12.5% 38.9%
Dona Ana 63.4% 47.7% +2.1 32.8% 35.5%

Other counties with sizable Indian populations are
Cibola 40.3% (Zuni and Navajo)
San Juan 36.9% (Navajo)
Sandoval 16.3% (diverse Pueblo)
Rio Arriba 13.9% (diverse Pueblo)
Socorro 10.9% (diverse Pueblo)
Taos 6.6% (Taos Pueblo)
Otero 5.8% (Mescalero Apache)

And maybe I should have added data on population size as well... DeBaca and Harding and Hidalgo are tiny. Bernalillo is huge in the NM scheme of things...but that would have made the table even more confusing...

Certainly the really heavily Latino counties swung as a rule a little more Rep than the average, and Reps lost in heavily Anglo Los Alamos (very white collar, you know why) and Catron (Mormon IIRC). Turnout also was up much less than averagely (or maybe population growth since 2000 simply lagged) in Little Texas (the Hispanic populations there are mostly first-generation immigrants from Mexico, and most of them probably don't vote. In fact many are Illegals. Notice most of the region has low participation rates. In the Indian areas the same phenomenon is probably due to massive demographic growth, ie a large proportion under 18) But I certainly don't see anything allowing for a 12 point increase in the Rep share of the Hispanic vote. An increase from about 35% to 39%, 40% is more like it.