Alaska, Idaho, Wyoming, Utah, North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Kansas, and Oklahoma are all states that voted for LBJ in 1964 but haven't voted Democratic ever since. Montana voted for LBJ in 1964 but hasn't voted Democratic since except for 1992 (attributed to the Perot factor).
Everyone keeps talking about why the Democrats can't win in the South and theories on how to change this.
I haven't heard people talk about why the Democrats can't win in the Mountain states and Great Plains states. These places are considered conservative. But they're different from the South. Except for segregationists like Strom Thurmond and George Wallace, insurgent candidates like Ross Perot have had their weakest showings in the South but often have their strongest showings in states like Alaska and Montana. Also, while the South and the Northeast tend to vote against each other (except in the biggest landslide elections), the crazy Western states have always voted Republican. While this means that they vote with Mississippi and Alabama today, they voted with Massachusetts and Rhode Island in the previous partisan alignment. While the South is known for slavery and segregation, the crazy Western states were the birthplace of Teddy Roosevelt's Progressive movement and were the first to give women the right to vote.
The Democrats need to compete in all 50 states and stop writing off so many of them because that sends a message of wimpiness and insincerity. I think that the crazy Western states will vote Democratic again before Mississippi, Alabama, and South Carolina will. I predict that the next time there is a Democratic landslide, the electoral map will look similar to that of 1964.
So what will it take to get the crazy Western states to vote with Massachusetts and Rhode Island, as was the case before 1960?
The reason simple why Democrats don't care that much about the west is because there isn't as many votes as in the south. I mean. Clinton did rather well there, capturing (in at least one election) Montana, Nevada, Arizona, New Mexico, and Colorado. That's damn good for any Democrat. However, what I'm trying say, if your a democrat who has a good chance in Florida or Gerogia, it's far more benficial to win there than Montana or Idaho
