I was THERE and it was like being at the Vatican on Easter, with lots of sunscreen, hats, and water bottles. There were TONS of white republicans -- both young and old -- in addition to Libertarians and independents. I was surrounded in line by republicans. And, believe me, there was plenty of time to get to know them. We waited in line together for 3.5 hours and walked (very slowly) 12 blocks to get in. The line stretched for blocks and blocks behind me. The overall atmosphere was elation, rather than impatience at the wait ... A surprise for me has been the knowledge that my grandmother, who has been a life-long republican, switched her party affiliation so that she could vote for Obama.
A new Star Tribune Minnesota Poll found that Obama leads McCain 51 percent to 38 percent among the state's registered voters. Clinton leads the Arizona senator 49 percent to 40 percent.
Independents, who will almost certainly be crucial to victory in November, may still be largely up for grabs, as none of the three candidates can claim majority support among that group.
The poll also found that the economy has emerged as the top election issue in Minnesotans' minds, leaving the war in Iraq a distant second priority.
At this point, less than six months before Election Day, the Democrats are in a slightly stronger position in Minnesota than they are nationwide, where recent polls show them with considerably smaller leads over McCain.
Jason Ehresman, 38, a retail manager from Moorhead, said he has been drawn to support Obama because of "the way he speaks, the way he frames issues. It's hard to put your finger on any one thing that makes him so attractive."What about the Hardworking White Folk? From NY Times:
"Yet Democrats, and some Republicans, too, think the state is Mr. Obama’s to lose, that the momentum that in recent years has given control of the governor’s office and the Legislature to Democrats is still on the uptick. They even say so out in the orchards.
“This used to be what one would say is a Republican stronghold,” said Ron Rivers, a grower and chairman of the Hood River County Board of Commissioners. “And I don’t think it is anymore.”
As if to prove the point, Mr. Rivers, himself a Republican, noted that his wife just changed her party affiliation to Democratic so she could vote for Mr. Obama and that he, while remaining a Republican, planned to vote for Mr. Obama if he was the general election nominee.
“I’ll never vote for McCain, never,” Mr. Rivers said. “To me, it’s four more years of Bushism.”
Here in Hood River, said Tim Hibbitts, a longtime pollster in Oregon, “there’s a macro trend and a shorter-term trend.”
The macro trend, which Mr. Hibbitts said held true to varying degrees in some other growing cities as well, like Bend, has helped Democrats win 19 of the last 22 statewide races: Urban, better-off and better-educated voters have moved to rural places for the quality of life and brought their political interests with them. That has helped Democrats in general in places where they typically struggle.
The shorter-term trend, however, appears to directly favor Mr. Obama, both against Mrs. Clinton and Mr. McCain. The vast majority of new voters who have registered this year are Democrats, and well more than half are 30 or younger, a group that has embraced Mr. Obama. In addition, of the 83,000 voters who changed parties this year alone, a large majority switched to Democratic. A small fraction switched to Republican
It's widely accepted that Hillary Clinton does better with older voters, less educated voters and white voters. These demographics perfectly match West Virginia -- and, more loosely, the entire Appalachian region. A few key points from tonight's exit polls demonstrate the point: 4 out of 10 voters were over 60 years of age. 7 out of 10 lacked a college degree -- the highest proportion of any electorate in the country. And 95% of the electorate was white.
Basically you have a state that is made up almost exclusively of Clinton's voters. But there's a deeper historical explanation that we have to apply as well -- one nicely illustrated by the origins of West Virginia itself.
During the 18th and 19th centuries, in the middle Atlantic and particularly in the Southern states, there was a long-standing cleavage between the coastal and 'piedmont' regions on the one hand and the upcountry areas to the west on the other.
It's really the coastal lowlands and the Appalachian districts. On the other side of theAppalachian mountain range the pattern is flipped, with the Appalachians in the east and the lowlands in the west.
These regions were settled disproportionately by Scots-Irish immigrants who pushed into the hill country to the west in part because that's where the affordable land was but also because they wanted to get away from the more stratified and inegalitarian society of the east which was built by English settlers and their African slaves. Crucially, slavery never really took root in these areas. And this is why during the Civil War, Unionism (as in support for the federal union and opposition to the treason of secession) ran strong through the Appalachian upcountry, even into Deep South states like Alabama and Mississippi.
As I alluded to earlier, this was the origin of West Virginia, which was originally the westernmost part of Virginia. The anti-slavery, anti-slaveholding upcountry seceded from Virginia to remain in the Union after Virginia seceded from the Union. Each of these regions was fiercely anti-Slavery. And most ended up raising regiments that fought in the Union Army. But they were as anti-slave as they were anti-slavery, both of which they viewed as the linchpins of the aristocratic and inegalitarian society they loathed. It was a society that was both more violent and more self-reliant.
This is history. But it shapes the region. It's overwhelmingly white, economically underdeveloped (another legacy of the pre-civil war pattern) and arguably because of that underdevelopment has very low education rates and disproportionately old populations.For all these reasons, if you're familiar with the history, it's really no surprise that Barack Obama would have a very hard time running in this region.
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