49 state landslide either way. What are the last holdout states? (user search)
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  49 state landslide either way. What are the last holdout states? (search mode)
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Author Topic: 49 state landslide either way. What are the last holdout states?  (Read 7729 times)
Nichlemn
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« on: December 15, 2013, 10:14:26 PM »
« edited: December 16, 2013, 03:21:20 AM by Nichlemn »

1) In a Presidential election held around now, a Republican wins 49 states against a Democrat. What is most likely to be the state that votes Democratic? (DC is not a state, but will obviously be the last electoral votes).

2) In a Presidential election held around now, a Democrat wins 49 states against a Republican. What is most likely to be that last state?

#1 I'm really not sure at all. Purely on CPVI, you have Hawaii at D+20, Vermont behind at D+16 and several other states all well behind at D+11. But those are Obama-specific numbers, go back to the Bush years and those states are much further back. Nate Silver's elasticties for each state gives us an indication - HI, VT, RI and MA are all strongly Democratic states that are nonetheless all well-above average in elasticity, and hence could easily vote for a Republican running strongly nationally. MD and NY, as strongly Democratic and inelastic states, may well be the last holdouts.


#2 Utah is the obvious pick. Wyoming seems slightly more elastic (see it electing a fair number of Democratic governors recently). I could see Oklahoma against the wrong kind of candidate (a highly successful Obama-clone?), but it has ancestral Democratic support that could turn out for a broadly successful national Democrat. Alabama and maybe Mississippi are the other possibilities - less Republican than Utah, but much more inelastic. Still, they have a bit of residual Blue Doggedness.
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Nichlemn
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« Reply #1 on: December 16, 2013, 04:38:13 AM »

The polarization in this country is so high now (including geographic polarization) that it borders on impossible for a candidate to do well in both a state like New York and a state like Oklahoma and win them both (even though FDR, Eisenhower, LBJ, Nixon and Reagan managed to).

I'm going to be slightly more realistic and suggest a 44-state landslide, like the ones FDR got in 1932 and Reagan got in 1980. (Carter also won DC in 1980, which could not vote in 1932). The losing candidate wins 6 states in each case.





On the D-landslide map, AL should be blue, and possibly MS. TN's R swing is too recent for me think it should belong. I'd go for KS over NE.

The D map seems reasonable to me.
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Nichlemn
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Posts: 1,920


« Reply #2 on: December 16, 2013, 07:45:13 AM »

A massive landslide is possible, I just don't think it will be as much of a uniform improvement around the board as some people think.  The kind of Democrat who would sweep the Rocky Mountain West and the South I imagine would have to be running a pretty dang populist message that might upset a few people in New York and Connecticut, thus actually driving down their numbers in those states as opposed to an Obamalike Democrat who could easily get over 60% there.  Same thing could be said about a Republican who ends up winning New Jersey and New York.

It's a lot more likely that the winner would be an incumbent with a strong economy or other reason for their popularity other than their ideology.
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