nimh wrote:Noteworthy with both Romney's and Giuliani's numbers is also how the numbers compare if you look at the difference between the 2004 results and current polling. There's a lot of variation, but over time a clear trend has caught my attention: Giuliani and especially Romney do worse than Bush did in '04 pretty much across the board, but it's in the core red states, especially in the South, that they lose the most ground, also in relative terms, from the way it looks.
In the blue states, on the other hand, they do less badly. Giuliani in some cases does better than Bush did in '04, mostly in the Northeast, and Romney at least loses a lot less ground on Bush's results in the blue states than he does in the South. (Romney's Mormon background does mean he holds up well in some parts of the West [..].)
Is it because Rudy's and Mitt's relatively unorthodox backgrounds meet some solid resistance in the most traditional conservative states? Mitt's Mormonism, in particular, might hit bigger resistance in the evangelical South than in the more individualist West. Or is it simply because the hard core Republicans are feeling disillusioned and unmotivated this year, and that shows up most starkly in the hard core red states? 2004 was a year of massive partisan mobilisation, and the core red states mobilised en masse for Bush. With that fervour gone, the drop-off might be steeper there than in MOR states. Or does the shift from terrorism and war as the main themes of the '04 elections to the economy and economic insecurity now hurt the Republicans especially in the poorer red states of the south and midwest?
The pattern should be a nice ground for other speculation too. For example, in spite of all the talk of how a Hillary candidacy would be uniquely polarising, state polls this last half a year or so seem to show an opposite phenomenon. In a race between Romney or Rudy and Hillary, red states would be less red, and blue states would be less blue (in the case of Giuliani) or at least less starkly blue in comparison with [the] red states (in the case of Romney). Rudy and Romney as very much unintentional vehicles for the political 'desegregation' and purplefication of the country?
In the hectic ahead of the Iowan caucuses tonight, background-type reflections like these obviously take a backseat. But I still find this pattern interesting. So I decided to line up the "colour" that the individual states turn in different hypothetical match-ups in a simple side-by-side overview.
Right. A one-glance comparative overview of how the stakes change on a state-by-state level depending on who the Republican challenger is, and on whether the Democrat is Hillary or Obama.
Again, of course, since the colour of a state in this list (see the legend for a rough definition) can be based on anything between 1 and 7 polls, you should take the individual results with a big grain of salt.
At most, this list can be used to
signal some general patterns. I see three:
- One is clear: McCain fares best against the Democrats, and Romney does worst. Giuliani and Huckabee are in between, with not much overall difference between them, though their regional permances differ; Giuliani does better in blue states, and Huckabee better in red states.
- The second, as mentioned: in the state-by-state data of the last couple of months, Hillary surprisingly fares better on the whole than Obama. Dont really know why. Probably better await further polls to draw definite conclusions.
- The third is the one I started describing above: the surprising vulnerability of the South (and the relative invulnerability of the West). This side-by-side confirms that impression.
I'll expound on the third one. As you can see, I have added pluses in the fields where the Democrat does two whole categories (or, if a race comes from or goes to the "tossup" semi-category, one and a half category) better in the race at hand than Kerry did against Bush. Eg, where Kerry trailed by 7-13% (the "lean Republican" category), but the polls now have the Democrat leading or the race a tossup. Or where Kerry barely carried the state (by 0-5%*), but the Democrat in question now leads with 14+% (the "safe Democratic" category).
In the same way, I've added a minus where the Democrat does one and a half or two categories worse than Kerry did.
Finally, I've added attention arrows to the left of a row where Hillary or Obama did better (or worse) that strongly in at least two of the four match-ups.
What's the result?
- Hillary does strikingly better in the polls now than Kerry did in the 2004 elections in Missouri, Virginia, Tennessee and Kentucky (three or four pluses).
Who'd have thought? I was betting that it would be Colorado, Nevada and perhaps Arizona that would be moving toward the Dems most starkly this year. But so far the polls do not bear that out. Instead, it appears to be the borderlands of the South where the Republicans are losing ground in particular! Against Hillary, in any case. Enough to move MO and VA to the Democratic column and KY and TN into battleground status.
- Hillary also does particularly better than Kerry did in her home state Arkansas - except when facing Huckabee, who's also from there; and to a lesser extent in Alabama and Oklahoma, though that's pretty much irrelevant as those will never go Dem.
- Obama does strikingly better in the polls now than Kerry did in the elections in 2004 in Iowa, Missouri and Virginia.
In Iowa they know him very well by now, and that's worked in his favour - which has got to be a good sign. Missouri and Virginia are just shifting toward the Democrats especially strongly in general right now, apparently, if you look at Hillary's numbers there as well.
- Obama does not apparently do particularly better than Kerry in the other Southern states where Hillary does clearly outdo Kerry's result. Not in TN, KY, AR, AL or OK. He also shows some weakness vis-a-vis McCain and Giuliani in New York - which is understandable enough in the case of native son Giuliani.
