Why did Obama win Indiana in '08?

[King of Kensington]

The main explanation I've heard is "Chicago media market" but that's a pretty small portion of the state, no?

[Real Texan Politics]

Could be a mix of northwest Indiana Chicago suburbs like Gary, as well as major college towns like Notre Dame and Lafayette, and maybe he did well in the Indianapolis suburbs too?

[Agonized-Statism]

Enormous margins in the Democratic centers of the state and a blue collar revolt after the Lehman collapse. This was before the map fully transformed to rural GOP blowouts, and McCain wasn't playing a social conservative character like Bush. McCain just represented the worst of the status quo to Indianans- all the war and the economic hardship without the red meat. Combine that with the fact that Obama already had a strong presence in the area and it was the perfect storm.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Evan Bayh was still Senator from IN and he had WC appeal. Now, IN is a red state, the only D that could win is John Gregg but he retired after he lost in 2016

[Del Tachi]

Could be a mix of northwest Indiana Chicago suburbs like Gary, as well as major college towns like Notre Dame and Lafayette, and maybe he did well in the Indianapolis suburbs too?

Obama's 2008 squeaker was not powered by suburbs.  Obama ran well, well behind Biden in suburban Hamilton County (61-38 McCain, 52-47 Trump.)   Biden and Obama will get almost the exact same margin out of Marion County too (~63%). 

Sure, Obama ran up his margins in NW Indiana (Lake, Porter, LaPorte, St. Joseph) but the real key was in strength in the rural parts of the states.  For example, Benton County went from 70-28 Bush in 2004 to 57-41 McCain in 2008.  In 2020, it was 73-24 Trump.  Benton County is not in the Chicago media market either, FWIW

Obama's 2008 margins across the rural Midwest were insane (by contemporary standards, someone like Bayh, Edwards or even Hillary Clinton in 2008 might have done better.)  Obama won ~880 counties in 2008, and while this was actually a record-low for a winning candidate at the time,  Democrats have managed to beat their own record again in 2012 and 2020.     

[Hnv1]

The bigger question is how did IN flip but MO didn't despite coming to so close. in 2008 MO was still considered at least a possible battleground

[Inmate Trump]

The bigger question is how did IN flip but MO didn't despite coming to so close. in 2008 MO was still considered at least a possible battleground

Obama was also very close in Montana.  I wish he'd won both of those states, the map would've been prettier.

[Hope For A New Era]

The bigger question is how did IN flip but MO didn't despite coming to so close. in 2008 MO was still considered at least a possible battleground

Race. Hill would have won MO easily.

[Hnv1]

The bigger question is how did IN flip but MO didn't despite coming to so close. in 2008 MO was still considered at least a possible battleground

Race. Hill would have won MO easily.

Indiana has quite a lot of racial “history” of its own

[pbrower2a]

A trifecta of economic disaster.  A telling area is Elkhart, a center for the RV industry. Look at what could all go wrong:

1. a scary economic meltdown. When people are comparing 2008 to 1929, that's horrid for the incumbent's Party.

2. a credit crunch. Even if many RVs are paid for in cash, many are bought on time-payment plans. When credit tightens, consumer purchases flee from big-ticket consumer items. RV's are about as big-ticket as one gets short of housing.

3. Soaring petroleum prices. There was speculative activity in petroleum as the last speculative game in town. I once saw gas prices at $5.49 a gallon in the autumn of 2008. (That would crash). RV's devour gasoline like a tiger devours meat.

By 2012 all of those were over, and Indiana voters went back to voting R.   

[perpetual_cynic]

Precisely the same reason that Obama did well in the Rust Belt, the state of Illinois and those adjacent, the Democrats were focused almost primarily on rebooting the Rust Belt and the auto industry. The second plank is that Obama won lots, and I mean lots of socially conservative voters in ancestrally Democratic areas. The third plank is that without the 2008 housing crisis, Obama probably would not have done as well in these places.

[GregTheGreat657]

Could be a mix of northwest Indiana Chicago suburbs like Gary, as well as major college towns like Notre Dame and Lafayette, and maybe he did well in the Indianapolis suburbs too?

Weirdly enough, the Indy suburbs were McCain's strongest part of the state

[OSR stands with Israel]

The bigger question is how did IN flip but MO didn't despite coming to so close. in 2008 MO was still considered at least a possible battleground

Race. Hill would have won MO easily.

Indiana has quite a lot of racial “history” of its own

Indiana though is a Midwestern state through and through while large parts of Missouri is like the upper south

[Xing]

Del Tachi certainly has a point, Obama managed to narrow the margins considerably in rural Indiana, since McCain only got over 60% in a handful of counties. I'd also mention that turnout among young voters was critical. For example, Kerry only won Monroe county by 8% (after Gore narrowly lost it), but Obama won it by 32%, and got over 40,000 votes there. While Democrats have done well there, they still haven't hit Obama's numbers there, and high turnout in college towns were definitely a part of his win, coupled with above average performance in small towns and the Northwestern part of the state, where the manufacturing industry got hit hard.

[Frozen Sky Ever Why]

Yes, much of R-leaning rural America was still willing to vote Dem in 2008. Hillary would have won MO/WV/AR and been competitive in KY/LA. Edwards (sans baby scandal) probably would have won all four and been competitive in TN/OK. 2007 polls had him well above 50% in OK against some Republicans.

[Make America Grumpy Again]

I think it's a combination between WWC resentment to Bushism, Obama being from neighborhood Illinois and a large enough number of ancestral Dems in Southern Indiana voting D.

[TDAS04]

The bigger question is how did IN flip but MO didn't despite coming to so close. in 2008 MO was still considered at least a possible battleground

Race. Hill would have won MO easily.

Interestingly, Obama managed to barely win the Missouri primary, while narrowly losing Indiana to Clinton.

Anyway, yeah, Obama actually generally performed pretty well among rural whites (outside the South).

[Asenath Waite]

Record high black turnout combined with a general rust belt swing against the Republicans.

[Redban]

He won Indiana because he won the election by 7-8%

[sg0508]

2008 was the definition of a major youth vote turnout and minority turnout.

[Mr. Smith]

He won Indiana because he won the election by 7-8%

Bill didn't manage despite an 8-9 point win in '96.

Meanwhile Missouri actually had a record of voting for the winner each time sans 1956.

[Matty]

You guys are missing the answer


It’s 100% because Indiana was absolutely blasted by the 08 collapse. More than any other state.

North West Indiana was where things like RVs were made. Complete devastation

[Schiff for Senate]

Another obvious factor is that Obama was from next-door IL and was a Midwestern son.

Hot take: if it was Clinton who was the Democratic nominee instead of McCain, IN goes red by over a point.

Then there's obviously massive outperformance in NWIN and the Rust Belt and rural areas generally, as others mentioned.

And the reasoning behing why the suburbs weren't crucial to Obama's win is faulty. Yes, he did equal to or worse than Biden in the Indianpolis area, but that's not the point - the point is, he did much better than John Kerry (we're comparing 2004 to 2008, not 2008 to 2020, and suburbs were redder in 2004 than they were in 2008 and redder in 2008 than they were in 2020 - the point is, the latter fact is irrelevant since we aren't discussing 2020, we're discussing 2004). Yes, Hamilton County was Trump+5 despite being McCain+22. But compare that to 2004, when it was Bush+49. Similarly, while Marion was Obama+28 and Biden+29, it wasn't nearly as blue in 2004 and it really trended massively to the left in 2008. (In 2004, it was just Kerry+2.) These counties swung massively to the left in 2008, and of course, they've some have further bluened since then. Obviously their bluening up has not had much of an effect because of how the entire rest of the state has trended rightward, but the suburbs were a big part of Obama's win.

[Anzeigenhauptmeister]

If Obama really won the general election in Indiana owing to its proximity to Chicago, why is it that Hillary won the Indiana primary, when a myriad of Democratic Hoosiers live in the 1st congressional district, where the Chicago media market exerts its biggest influence?

[OSR stands with Israel]

If Obama really won the general election in Indiana owing to its proximity to Chicago, why is it that Hillary won the Indiana primary, when a myriad of Democratic Hoosiers live in the 1st congressional district, where the Chicago media market exerts its biggest influence?

Primary performance isn’t the same as general election unless by that same definition, Ted Cruz would have been a better fit for Wisconsin than Trump was vs Hillary