Looking at these Survey USA 50-state results, Ezra Klein
concluded that "Obama's electoral coalition is Western, while Clinton relies more on the Midwest. He's Sun Belt, she's Rust Belt."
I disagree. There's a few states between Midwest and Northeast where Hillary does clearly better than Obama: New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West-Virginia. But elsewhere in the greater Midwest, Hillary has no advantage - and in the Western reaches of the region (WI, IL, MN and IA) Obama actually does distinctly better.
Meanwhile, I associate "Sun Belt" with the Southwest, specifically, and perhaps Florida too. But there is no Obama in advantage in Arizona, California or Florida.
No, there is a clear geographic contrast between the two candidates' general election appeal, but Ezra mis-defines it. One look at the Cogitamus maps reveals it, I think. Hillary's relative strength is in the (old) South; Obama's relative strength is in the Mountains and Plains states.
In both regions, of course, the Republican Party remains very strong either way, and pick-ups would have to be very hard-fought indeed -- but those are the regions where Obama's and Hillary's numbers diverge most sharply. Hillary gets hammered in the West and doesnt do badly in the South; Obama gets hammered in the South and doesnt do badly in the West.
Conveniently, I was already making the point about Hillary's relative strength in the South here
months ago and
in January, and covered the differences in the candidates' performance in both South and West
a couple of weeks ago :wink:
To verify the impression I get from a brief look at the Cogitamus maps, I copied the new Survey USA polling data into an Excel sheet, calculated the leads/deficits that Obama and Hillary have versus McCain per state, and then calculated the difference between how the two candidates perform.
In the table below, the states at the top are the ones where Hillary outdoes Obama the most in a match-up against McCain, while the states at the bottom are the ones where Obama outdoes Hillary the most. As you can see, Hillary does double digits better in Arkansas, West Virginia, Tennessee, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Massachusetts and Florida. Obama does double digits better in a full 18 states, and more than 15% better in Washington, Alaska, Illinois, Idaho, North Dakota, Nebraska, Vermont, Hawaii and Utah.