I don't think there were too many of these voters.
There were millions.
How else can we explain Obama flipping nine states Bush won in 2004? Or the double-digit landslides he won in states such as Minnesota, Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin, where Bush came within single digits? Yes, there was a major increase in turnout, and Obama won a majority of the first-time voters, but he clearly flipped many Bush voters as well.
Ok. I guess there were a lot more than I realize. Do you think the Bush-Bush-Obama voters were more Working Class, with ancestral Democratic ties? Or something else?
A mix of the two. Obama did win many working-class and rural voters. He carried Indiana, in part, because of significantly outperforming John Kerry in the state's rural areas and small towns. That also explains much of the Obama strength throughout the remainder of the rural Midwest, particularly in Michigan, Minnesota, and Wisconsin, but also in the Dakotas (where he came within single digits) and in Missouri, which McCain won by less than 4,000 votes. But Obama also won over many moderate and independent suburbanites who had gone for Bush twice, and who had previously voted Republican.
He was the first Democrat to win suburban counties like Arapahoe and Jefferson (Colorado), as well as Loudoun and Prince William (Virginia), and Chester (Pennsylvania), since Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964, and the first to carry many of the Collar Counties of Chicago (such as Kane, DuPage, McHenry, and Kendall) since the nineteenth century. Obama also significantly improved over Kerry in the Atlanta suburbs, laying the groundwork for their eventual flip into the Democratic fold by Clinton and Biden.
