When did Republicans lose Bush/Bush/Obama voters?

[WPADEM]

I don't think there were too many of these voters.

[WPADEM]

It wasn't at any one point. They bled them fairly consistently from Katrina, Iraq dragging on, the financial collapse and probably lost a few as early as Bush's botched Social Security privatization attempt.

Bizzarely, Obama performed worse than John Kerry in Louisiana in 2008. Kerry won 42.3% while Obama won 39.9% and barely didn't break 40%.

My only guess is that there was some racial resentment from rural whites. Despite Hillary endorsing his campaign, it seemed that a decent chunk of her southern white supporters (many of them voted for her husband Bill in 92/96) stayed home or even switched to McCain in the general :/

There was also a big displacement of black voters in LA between 2004 and 2008 resulting from Katrina. But yeah that’s probably part of it too; it’s even more dramatic if you look at Arkansas, which Kerry came within single digits of winning and where Hillary was polling well ahead of McCain, yet Obama got blown out.

I don't think there were too many of these voters.

My entire county was a Bush/Bush/Obama county and I personally know many such voters including multiple family members. Mostly educated white suburbanites. The shift of that demographic leftward was accelerated significantly by Trump but it was already well underway by this point.

Plus how exactly do you think Obama won the presidency after two Bush wins, including even a state like Indiana where Bush beat Kerry in a landslide, without many voters switching from Bush to Obama?

There definitely were some, but no where near the 9 million or so Obama 12 Trump 16 voters. But there were a number of Bush-Bush-Obama voters in the Midwest.

Obama won in 2008 due to exhaustion with the GOP after Bush II, Working Class voters still having a lot of loyalty to the Democratic party, and Obama bringing out and engaging a lot of new voters who had become politically aware during the Bush II Presidency. He won Indiana thanks to an unprecedented ground game and voter registration drive. The GOP stood little chance in 2008, the Recession really broke open the floodgates for the Democrats to gain a lot of ground.

Too bad they couldn't sustain it. 

[WPADEM]

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?

[WPADEM]

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.

I think this was a major group of Bush-Obama voters. The GOP seemed very dominant in 2005, yet fell very hard during Bush's second term. The financial crisis really caused the bottom to fall out for the GOP in the 2008 campaign, though polarization (and dare I say Palin) prevented a wipeout. Which left the GOP in a position to rise again and much sooner than most would have guessed.