Two Guesses

[paul718]

Alright let's see-- 1. He won by 50% and Obama won by 53%. 2. Carter simply was able to cobble up the last of the New Deal coalition for one final swoop and hurrah, Obama cobbled up an entirely new coalition. He won Hispanics by 30 points. He won 20-somethings by 30 points. This is big. The only reason McCain did so well was because he scored so high in the Sothern Highlands and Lower Mississippi.

Reagan only won his first  victory by 9 points. Obama won by 6 points. ...and Richard Nixon won by like 1 or 2 points, yet that was the beginning of the Republican Era of the late 20th century that may have just ended.

I don't see a new coalition here.  Obama was able to pull all of the Kerry states and add a few Bush states.  The credit crisis and subsequent market losses drove the national electorate away from the incumbent party, and the light-Bush states went to Obama.  Carter, on the other hand, was able to win something like twenty Nixon states in '76.

[paul718]

Yes, but you would have to go back 30 years to see those type of numbers...and this is the second most dems in the senate per Congress since the Vietnam War. The Democratic Party is stronger today than anyother time after the fall of Saigon. We may be short a couple of dozen in the house, but when you subtract the PUMAs and DINOs, we are in a superior position.

Also, look at this map- This is the map of the 20-somethings- People don't change that much politically- it is possible that this map could be here by 2012, if not 2016 or 2020.

We will probably need a reaffirming election to show that this is not an abberation....like what 1992 was....but 1992 was simply the cobbling of an old coalition that was brought back to together by external events.

I thought 20-somethings always go to the Democrat, and then tend to vote Republican as they get older.