Dole 1996/Gore 2000 counties

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There are two counties that flipped from Dole to Gore- Charles County, Maryland, and Orange County, Florida.

It is astounding that there were so few Dole-Gore counties, given that 854 counties flipped from Clinton to Bush. 2000 locked us into the county map alignment that has persisted to the present day.

It's pretty amazing the national swing was only 8% considering how many counties switched, only 300 counties switched to Obama in 2008 when the swing was almost 10% from 2004-2008. The 1996-2000 swing really realigned the nation with major metro areas trending D and small towns trending R really hard relative to the national shift.

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I think it was the 2 parties becoming more clearly delineated on social issues, Clinton in the 1990's to some extent had managed to keep the realignment from occurring via his policies on issues like crime.

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I think it was the 2 parties becoming more clearly delineated on social issues, Clinton in the 1990's to some extent had managed to keep the realignment from occurring via his policies on issues like crime.

Gore made it clear in 2000 that he supported Clinton’s crime policies, and I don’t recall Clinton being socially conservative on any issue besides crime. Clinton was as anti-gun as any Democrat today, if not more so.

Bush was clearly more socially conservative in terms of his appeal than Dole though, Bush didn't try to downplay his religion but embraced, it was pretty clear who was more socially conservative and which candidate was more pro Christian, I think that had a big impact on voters.