Most surprising single county result of 2008?

[bagelman]

What was the biggest single county surprise of Obama's mini-landslide?

[Matty]

Somehwere in Indiana probably

[OSR stands with Israel]

How big of a surprise was Orange County being very close

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

How about Floyd and Knott in Kentucky?


Both went overwhelmingly for Kerry in 2004 (as they had for basically every Democratic nominee ever), but both also went to McCain in '08.

[Mr. Smith]

Beaver County, PA (or much of Southwest PA sans Allegheny)

[brucejoel99]

Beaver County, PA (or much of Southwest PA sans Allegheny)

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

How big of a surprise was Orange County being very close

In hindsight, the bigger surprise with Orange County, CA is that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama lost the County in all of their presidential runs.

[OSR stands with Israel]

How big of a surprise was Orange County being very close

In hindsight, the bigger surprise with Orange County, CA is that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama lost the County in all of their presidential runs.

Lol no OC of the 90s is massively different than OC of today.

[brucejoel99]

How big of a surprise was Orange County being very close

In hindsight, the bigger surprise with Orange County, CA is that Bill Clinton, Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama lost the County in all of their presidential runs.

Whatever you're smoking, I want some.

[Calthrina950]

Beaver County, PA (or much of Southwest PA sans Allegheny)

I've been looking through the 2008 county maps recently, and there are certain "swings" that stood out to me. Looking at Pennsylvania's swing map, the southwestern region of the state sticks out like a sore thumb:

Armstrong, Beaver, Fayette, Lawrence, Washington, and Westmoreland Counties all swung to McCain, who flipped Beaver, Fayette, and Washington-which had voted for Kerry four years earlier. But Greene County, which Kerry lost, swung to Obama, although it stayed Republican. This region of Pennsylvania was once the most Democratic region of the state. Most of these counties gave Lyndon Johnson over 70% of the vote in 1964. But now, of course, it is one of the most Republican (bar Allegheny County).

Much of Eastern Ohio, Eastern Kentucky, and West Virginia swung against Obama as well that year. I can only assume that the general Democratic collapse in coal country continued unabated through this election, and of course there was the race factor.

[Asenath Waite]

Not a county but I’ve been studying Massachusetts town level data and I’ve been surprised by a number of towns that swung from Kerry to McCain. I think there’s at least one that was a Kerry-McCain-Romney-Hillary-Biden town.

[Vosem]

Yeah, the answer here is McCain flipping multiple counties in PA in spite of Obama winning the state by double-digits.

There aren't any counties in IN where it's bizarre that Obama carried them (if anything, the county map looks much more like a narrow defeat than a narrow victory; Obama was more reliant on urban support than a typical Democratic victory in Indiana), but there certainly are a few in IL and WI. Waupaca WI is a bizarre victory even in the context of the 2008 landslide -- it and a few neighboring counties swung much more than WI as a whole, but those neighboring counties were winnable already, while Waupaca really wasn't before or after -- as is Stephenson IL.

(Waupaca WI is probably the answer if we have access to both the past and the future; if it's just most surprising on Election Day 2008, the answer is probably Fayette PA, which swung the most of the Pennsylvanian Kerry/McCain counties.)