Can 2008 Be Re-Created?
» Newsweek: Obama’s 2012 Game Plan (Michael Tomasky)
The article is less about Obama’s game plan and more about the lay of the land in 2012. Still worth a read for that, though …
The base vote can still emerge in large numbers, but the dominant factor this time won’t be hope and change. Instead, the factors will be fear of the other side, state and local political conditions (think of how motivated Democrats are to regain control of their politics in Wisconsin), and demographic changes that are still redounding to the Democrats’ benefit. And because we elect presidents by states, the place to assess Obama’s prospects is on the ground.
Wake County, N.C.; Arapahoe County, Colo.; Franklin County, Ohio—these are representative base Democratic counties. They are in swing states, which means the president will need a big vote in these places to offset a presumed high conservative turnout in other parts of these states. And they are counties that have only recently become solidly Democratic, because of demographic changes.
The article bounces around in an effort to assess the datapoints provided in the 2008 and 2010 elections. But it touches on the fact that turnout is key among those lessons. For the sake of putting some harder numbers to the narrative, here are the three counties that Tomasky profiles.
DEM GOP TV
-------------- -------------- -------
Wake County 2008 250,891 (56.7%) ... 187,001 (42.3%) 442,245
2004 169,909 (48.7%) ... 177,324 (50.8%) 349,239
Arapahoe County 2008 148,218 (55.7%) ... 113,866 (42.8%) 266,156
2004 110,262 (47.5%) ... 119,475 (51.4%) 232,365
Franklin County 2008 334,709 (59.6%) ... 218,486 (38.9%) 561,729
2004 285,801 (54.3%) ... 237,253 (45.1%) 526,240
And just for the sake of drawing a Texas parallel, here are some comparables …
DEM GOP TV
-------------- -------------- -------
Dallas County 2008 422,989 (57.3%) ... 310,000 (42.0%) 738,463
2004 336,641 (49.0%) ... 346,246 (50.3%) 687,709
Harris County 2008 590,982 (50.4%) ... 571,882 (48.8%) 1,171,472
2004 475,865 (44.6%) ... 584,723 (54.8%) 1,067,968
Travis County 2008 254,017 (63.9%) ... 136,981 (34.4%) 397,714
2004 197,235 (56.0%) ... 147,885 (42.0%) 352,113
I’d have to include myself as the pessimist that Obama can match each of the turnout and percentage peaks seen in 2008, both nationally and in Texas. Not that I think the 2010 showings for any of these counties is the relevant downside, though. I’ll dig up those numbers for tomorrow and do a fuller comparison. But increases seen here from 2004 to 2008 indicate much of the strength seen in the last Presidential election. More troubling, if you follow the assumption that 2008′s peak won’t be hit, is Obama’s bare majority in Harris County. Something to mull over in the meantime.
The point in all of this is that I’m curious to see if we’re entering a phase where we get vastly different election results based on the cycle of each election, with Presidential years attracting an increasing number of voters unique to that year (and much more likelier to vote Dem), non-Presidential years perhaps being a reaction to that – with an increasing number of older, more Anglo voters tilting elections as they did in 2010, and odd-year elections cutting the profile of voters even further toward an older, more Anglo universe. In short, this is what is on full display in southwest Harris County. The disparity in terms of turnout and vote shares seen in State House district 133 is a key, as is the fact that the existing City Council District F typically votes 55-60% Dem in even-numbered years, but has never elected a progressive city council member (though MJ Khan did have support of Democratic voters in his 2003 runoff). There should be numerous examples to choose from in Dallas County, also. And that just scratches the surface in Texas.
Obviously, it’s still early in the collection of datapoints for the type of swings we’ve seen since 2006 and I’m not pronouncing anything to be the “new normal” just yet. But the next step toward identifying any trend will be to see how the turnout and vote shares for Obama fare against the 2004 and 2008 results.