Falling GOP vote in the Midwest

[Bureaucat]

In his re-election in 2004, George W. Bush received over 62 million votes nationwide. Neither McCain nor Romney came close to reaching those numbers.  Since the raw numbers of total voters tends to increase rather than decrease over time, I used this fine website to check recent history for examples of a party going several election without matching a previous number.  The only example I found were the Democrats from 1964-1988, which is skewed somewhat because LBJ won 61% of the vote in 1964 whereas Bush in 2004 barely received 51%.  It wasn't until Bill Clinton in 1992 that a Democrat surpassed LBJ's vote total from 1964. That correlates nicely with the defection of the southern conservatives and northern white ethnics in reaction to the Great Society in general and Civil Rights legislation in particular.

Getting back to the present day GOP, I looked at the 12 swing states and compared Bush's totals with McCain's and Romney's. In the majority of the states there was a little increase in the raw totals from the Bush numbers albeit the percentage of the vote won by the GOP in many cases decreased. But what was striking to me was that the 2004 totals still represent the high water mark in Iowa, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.  Since these states tend to have higher white populations than the nation as a whole I was surprised to see that the GOP total vote in presidential elections has actually shrunk there.  I know those states are losing population, but I thought it was interesting since some pundits have stated that GOP chances in the future hinge on these very states.

[Bureaucat]

True, Cope

I remember seeing that while Romney carried white voters by 20% nationally, if you exclude the South, (and I think they included Kentucky and Oklahoma in the "South"), Romney's margin fell to 10 or 12 percent, which in many areas wasn't enough to win.  Some states have gone Democratic (Iowa, New Hampshire) 5 of the last 6 times while being overwhelmingly white.

[Bureaucat]

Box,  

I was only talking about the swing states.  I didn't look at those considered locked for one side or another.

Also, I hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year.

[Bureaucat]

This may seem off topic, but in looking at more state data from 2004-2012, it looks like a considerable amount of the slippage in total Republican vote is due to the collapse of GOP vote in Cali and New York.  About 700 thou less in California from 2004 to 2012.  Those are in a sense throw away votes, but those are big states so the numbers really add up.