Talk Elections

Amazing how big the swing was.  In 1988, HW Bush won New Hampshire by a whopping 26 points over Dukakis; his second best state after Utah.  Just 4 years later, Bill Clinton won the state by 1.2%. Yes, I'm aware of the Perot effect, but that alone doesn't explain such a big swing. And demographically, I imagine the state didn't change too much in 4 years.

Thats about the time everyone there started becoming angrier.

Is the state as a whole angry?

The whole Northeast swung dramatically to Clinton. It was because Clinton's 1992 coalition, mostly in tact as the new Democratic coalition of '08 and '12, encompassed suburban and college-educated whites in areas of the Northeast, Midwest and West coast that were Republican in the 70's and 80's.

New Hampshire's economy was hit especially hard by the early 90's recession.

Oh look, an ACTUAL answer!

In case you didn't know, the economy was good under the Clinton Administration.

Perhaps because the unemployment rate in NH nearly doubled from 2000 to 2002, and barely came back down by 2004. Maybe they decided after that they trust Democrats more on the economy than Republicans.

Who knew you could explain electoral trends with facts rather than baseless misogyny.

I never said Arizona or Georgia were solidly Democratic. As for PA, WI, and MI, I never thought those were swing states to begin with.


I was clearly talking about the employment statistics.

Also, New England is extremely secular compared to the nation. Over the past 35 years or so, the GOP has made it a point to consolidate the Evangelicals as a voting bloc, which possibly alienated the traditional Republican base in states like Vermont and New Hampshire. Have you ever thought about that?

Except TN is not a republican he thinks Carter is better then Reagan and Bush Sr , and maybe even with Obama . TN probably is never Clinton democrat

Vermont, New Hampshire, and Maine all used to be reliably Republican, but that very quickly changed in the 90s.

ME-02 is returning to swing district status.... and that's it! I'd say the women in the state got REALLY angry after the 2002 and 2004 Senate elections, when two Democratic women lost to two Republican men. Then it really started to change.

It doesn't seem likely or logical to me that female voters in these states felt personally offended by electoral losses by female Democratic senators and thus are angry at the GOP because of it. Women support Democrats by larger margins than men in every state in the country; your explanation doesn't make sense.

I'm not yet buying ME-02 trending Republican. It didn't show any kind of trend like that in recent elections. I guess we'll know more after this election. I think that part of the 1992 re-alignment was states with a lot of progressives (WA, OR, VT, NH, and ME) moving into the Democratic column. The flip side was states that are more socially conservative (AR, TN, KY, WV, and eventually MO) moved solidly into the Republican column starting in 2000.

1992 was a Realigning election , where the Pacific States and New England, and most of the midwest go democratic, while the South , Mountain West go Republican, making the elections be decided by a few swing states

Obama's coalition is basically the Clinton coalition minus appalachian states (probably due to racism).  Knott County in KY voted for Democrats in EVERY single election from 1852 until 2008, when it swung decisively to McCain. 

Yeah but Gore and Kerry didn't win the Appalachin States though and Hillary isn't gonna win them either.

True; Gore and Kerry did lose those states.  I should've been more specific: the appalachian states were pretty much the only region where Obama did worse in 2008 than Gore/Kerry.  This is odd given that it was a very anti-GOP year.