King County, Texas

[Rob]

here's the inevitable human-interest article on the place http://ac360.blogs.cnn.com/2009/01/30/theyre-registered-democrats-but-they-didnt-support-obama/

At first, it was a challenge to get anyone to talk with us. We called ahead to let people know we were coming, but when we approached them people said they were simple people and had no desire to talk with us. Some people talked off camera about their concerns of having Barack Obama as their president. Others raised his religion as a concern still believing President Obama is a Muslim, but they weren’t comfortable going on camera.

The main concern from most people was morality. They feel President Obama doesn’t share their beliefs about abortion and were much more comfortable with John McCain and Sarah Palin leading the country.

[Rob]

King County is in the middle-of-fucking-nowhere-West-Texas, you see.  That's how people vote there, or least have in the past couple of decades (before that, probably Democratic voters or at least lean)

In King County itself that's been true, but most of the area voted for Clinton, so there's a little more to the story than that.

There are three counties in the area that almost voted for Gore in 2000.

Foard County

2000 (556 votes) Bush 51%, Gore 47%
2004 (587 votes) Bush 59%, Kerry 40%
2008 (538 votes) McCain 61%, Obama 37%

Haskell County

2000 (2,927 votes) Bush 51%, Gore 48%
2004 (2,416 votes) Bush 64%, Kerry 36%
2008 (2,116 votes) McCain 66%, Obama 33%

Fisher County

2000 (1,872 votes) Bush 52%, Gore 47%
2004 (1,923 votes) Bush 60%, Kerry 39%
2008 (1,784 votes) McCain 61%, Obama 39%

[Rob]

61-37 is hardly an overwhelming result for a place like that (Foard County) in 2008. Some of those yellow dogs are still alive and kicking the right lever.

With the likely exception of Austin and environs, that may have been Obama's best showing among white Anglos in the state. I could actually see him carrying Foard, and a few other Plains counties, in 2012- assuming he wins a solid margin nationwide and hasn't imposed shar'ia law.

[Rob]

I just noticed something: Obama won exactly eight votes in the general, sure, but he had 27 votes in the primary. Um...

[Rob]

Yeah, that must be the case. At first I thought it couldn't be right, because those people "should" have preferred Clinton or Edwards (anyone but Obama, really); but that might actually be the reason they voted for him in the primary. i.e., conservatives in an isolated area like King County might assume that the rest of the country felt the same way about Obama, and therefore he'd be easier to defeat?

I dunno.