oregon

[Alcon]

The thing about Oregon is that I do not see where Republicans can significantly improve. Portland is now nearly as liberal as Seattle - it votes about 75% Democratic, Seattle about 80%, and San Francisco about 85%. Areas like Jackson County are slowly trending Democrat. Wasco County (The Dalles), despite being an inland county very eastern in nature, barely voted Bush.

On the other hand, I see no areas trending Republican all that rapidly. Then again, I don't know all that much about Oregon.

Bob, any comments on this?

[Alcon]

Good points. I agree with most of what you said. But Multnomah is not a growth county, while the growing suburbs ringing it like Washington County are trending back to the GOP(Clinton picked up those counties for the Democrats in the '90's). Also, formerly populist, Democratic counties in eastern Oregon are now Republican strongholds- just compare the 1960 state map with 2004 and 2000. Some personal observations: I live in a very liberal city(Eugene in Lane County), but there were many more Bush supporters than in '00. Bush bumper stickers were EVERYWHERE, although Kerry's did outnumber his by a decent margin. Anyways, I'm not trying to say that Oregon will go Republican in '08, but it definitely is trending towards the GOP.

BTW, Wasco went solidly for Clinton. It's no longer really "eastern" in character, as Portlanders have moved in changing the demographics(like Mono in California).

I suppose this is true. However, Kerry did win Washington County by 6 when Gore won the county by 2 (Nader would make it 6 - but still).

The same thing actually happened in Lane County, where Nader seriously kicked butt in 2000. By the way, Eugene is a great city - I've been there twice, and liked it a lot both times. Bumper stickers aside (saw two Bush ones, two Kerry ones) it's a nice town.

Clackamas County is what I'd worry about. With Nader inputted, it pretty much trended Republican by a bit. Still, I think a Democrat like Bayh would kick butt in Oregon.

[Alcon]

Yeah, Bayh would hammer the Republican in Oregon- I'm thinking with 56-57 percent.

One wierd, Republican trending county is Coos. It's a coastal county in southern Oregon that's traditionally Democratic- it even went for McGovern. But it trended right in the '90's, and switched to Bush in 2000. Now it's solidly Republican.

I think the major threat to the Democrats is southern Oregon. During the campaign, I remember seeing a local news report that said Kerry was tied with Bush in Jackson County, a Republican stronghold where Medford is. Bush ended up sweeping Jackson, along with the rest of southern Oregon just as in 2000. Medford is rapidly growing with an influx of Californians, and it's very conservative.

BTW, I've got some election statistics for the city of Eugene. With a 92 percent turnout(!), Kerry wiped Bush out, winning 67 percent of the vote. He carried all eight City Council wards and all but 4 of 34 precints.

Yeah, Coos is probably slowly trending Republican, in the same way Clackamas did.

As for Jackson, I didn't buy that for a second. Unless Medford drops off of the earth and Ashland becomes a major city, Jackson will not be in play. That poll was probably damaged by its limited sample size, and was likely done by an unexperienced pollster.

I honestly don't much about Medford other than that the parts I've seen are horribly ugly and have bad food. However, unless the city of Medford is larger than the Medford census area (which I think is not true), the census data shows that Medford isn't growing very fast - I believe below Jackson County rate.

By the way, any idea how Ashland votes? Great town. I wish Jackson County would released their darned precinct results!

EDIT: This article states that Kerry won nine precincts in the Ashland and Talent areas (Talent is Democratic?!) combined. Ashland has six precincts - I'm not sure how many Talent has, or whether Kerry got all precincts in Ashland.

Apparently Bush got 59% in Medford and won 2-to-1 or 3-to-1 in Central Point, Rogue River, and other rural areas.

Also: "In three of Ashland’s six precincts, five times as many voters favored Kerry as Bush."

[Alcon]

Also, in addition to Hughento's question, has the school system improved? I recall the way they had it, the city kept approving taxes that the state struck down and Portland's schools were spiraling into destruction.