In the past I tried to ram through my post-election writeup the day after the election, but am finding that I prefer to wait for more data to roll in and for a few more House races to be called before taking to my keyboard for an analysis and overview. It's usually quite a ballbuster to crank out such a large writeup in the 24 hours after an election anyway, especially with all the returns hanging out there just dying to be digested. Anyway, I was surprised to the extent that the 2012 election ended up being a mini-version of 2008 where just about everything that could have broken the Democrats' way did. It was pretty clear in the final week of the campaign that Obama had the momentum--partially because of the Hurricane Sandy follow-up but I think there was just a general second-guessing about Romney by a lot of late-breaking voters who never were able to trust him--but it was still striking to see the extent to which this had downballot tentacles for Democrats.
There were two overarching national trends that jumped out at me this election. Much acclaim is deservedly being given to the Obama campaign for getting out their vote, and clearly the Republicans who refused to believe all the polls showing Romney losing were stunned by the continued rise in nonwhite voters who funneled into Obama precincts in key battleground states, but looking at the overall data it's easier to understand why the Romney team thought they had this thing. The issue wasn't so much record numbers of nonwhite voters, but a very real decline in white voters. There are probably a million or more late and provisional votes to be counted nationally, but as of November 17 there are approximately six million fewer voters who cast a ballot in 2012 than in 2008. Amazingly, Mitt Romney is still slightly behind John McCain's overall haul from 2008, even though McCain was perceived as uniquely uninspiring to Republican voters. It's easy to see why the Romney campaign believed these mostly white voters would turn out and support him and while there may be many factors contributing to their sitting the election out, I suspect the primary issue was Romney's Mormonism. When you look at the states where he underperformed McCain--most of them in the Deep South--it suggests there's a faction of religious conservative voters who couldn't overcome their Mormon bias in the end. While the overall turnout decline wasn't entirely unforeseeable (I predicted a year ago we'd see lower overall turnout), it was still a little bit surprising given the high stakes race that this ultimately became that several million fewer voters showed up last Tuesday.
The other consequential national trend is Obama's wholesale collapse in Appalachian coal counties stretching from Pennsylvania to Oklahoma, which constituted the majority of his national slippage from 2008. I had a feeling this was gonna be bad, but it ended up being a little worse even than I expected with one of Romney's key swing state arguments (the "war on coal") being extremely effective. I think the merits of the posture are about 50% reality based. Decreased coal production is largely the result of cheaper natural gas, a consequence of the fracking boom. On the other hand, I don't doubt that new EPA regulations have been added to the books making the operation of coal plants increasingly untenable in the past four years, as is widely argued. Ultimately the merits of reducing coal emissions is more important than propping up the coal industry, particularly with the current group of insufferable sharks in charge of the coal industry, but it's easy to understand why vulnerable coal county residents would be decidedly cool to Barack Obama. With that said, Obama's collapse in overwhelmingly white coal counties helps explain his "white voter" problems, which appear to be almost entirely regional, limited to the South and Appalachia. Granted, this is a massive section of the country to write off overwhelming majorities of white voters, but it's still not enough to prevent Obama (or Democrats in general) to win decisive Electoral College majorities.
Now onto the state-by-state analysis....
Alabama--I touched upon it above, but one of the biggest surprises in the 2012 election was that Obama didn't do any worse in the Deep South than he did four years ago. Given that Obama got only 10% of the white vote in Alabama four years ago, he didn't have much further to fall, so I wasn't expecting a complete collapse, but my suspicion was that black voters in uncompetitive Southern states would revert to more traditional turnout levels this year, no longer inspired by the prospect of electing the first black President as they were in 2008. It turns out the opposite happened. Black voters came out in similarly strong numbers while it was the white voters who stayed home. Whether Romney's Mormonism was a factor here or not is impossible to fully discern, but the last thing I expected out of Alabama was to see that Obama picked up two counties that John McCain won four years ago. There were no competitive House seats in Alabama this year and given the extent of the racial polarization, there probably won't be for the decade to come.
Alaska--The original election night tally showed Romney at only 55% in the dark red state of Alaska, several points below where McCain stood four years ago, albeit with favorite daughter Sarah Palin sharing the ticket with him. Since then, more Republican-heavy absentee votes have trickled in and increased the spread, but even so, Alaska ended up being the state where Obama saw the most improvement from four years ago. Crazier yet, Obama in 2012 is the best performer in a Presidential election in Alaska presumably since 1964, which is a result that I definitely did not see coming. That doesn't mean Alaska is likely to be a battleground state four years from now, but at the very least it could portend slightly better chances for Mark Begich to hold his highly vulnerable Senate seat in 2014.
Arizona--If Alaska was the biggest surprise in the country for its movement towards Obama, Arizona was the biggest surprise for its lack of movement towards him. It was an article of faith four years ago that favorite son John McCain was the only thing keeping Arizona out of the Obama column given the performance of the state's neighbors, and the Obama campaign briefly entertained the idea of pursuing the state's 11 electoral votes in 2012, banking on a fast-growing Hispanic vote delivering a narrow victory. A number of polls showed encouraging toplines even as late as October, but just about everybody ultimately conceded the state for Romney, even though they anticipated Obama would improve upon his nine-point deficit from 2008. But that didn't happen. The provisional ballots continue to trickle in and narrow the margin, but Obama will still be lucky to match his 2008 margin, suggesting a polarizing vote along ethnic lines with whites becoming increasingly Republican to match the growing and Democratic Latino vote. Also disappointing was Democratic Senate candidate Richard Carmona's defeat, as he appeared well positioned until the final week or so to take down Republican Jeff Flake. The margin continues to narrow but it looks as though Flake will win by about three points, giving the Democrats a rare disappointment in the Senate races even though Carmona's strong performance positions him for a future run for another office, possibly if McCain's seat is open in 2016. Democrats had a better showing in the Arizona House delegation, albeit with a trio of high-anxiety nailbiter races that could prove hard to hold in subsequent cycles. A nonpartisan commission produced a district map that seemed poised to give Democrats a 5-4 advantage late last year. But three of those seats proved highly tenuous and were only awarded to the Democratic candidates in the days after the election because of their closeness. Ann Kirkpatrick got back her geographically large northern Arizona district, which was the first of the three close races called. The new Tempe-based district went narrowly for Democrat Krysten Sinema a day or two later. But it wasn't until the morning I'm writing this, 11 days later, that Gabby Giffords' old seat was formally called for her former Chief of Staff and successor Ron Barber in the suburban Tucson district. As I said before, all of these seats are gonna be challenging holds in 2014 and beyond.
Arkansas--I anticipated a much larger Obama collapse in Arkansas, but it appears most Arkansans abandoned him already in 2008 when McCain won the state by an eye-opening 20 points (10 points more than Bush). While Romney still did a couple points better than McCain, the 30-point Romney landslide that I anticipated, based on the state's continued overrepresentation of conservative blue-collar whites, didn't materialize. That's not to say this was anything other than a disastrous year for Democrats in Arkansas. The state's House delegation officially flipped to 4-0 Republicans as Mike Ross' open seat predictably flipped to the GOP, following the most delirious redistricting fail of the decade by the Democrats who controlled the Arkansas Legislature and state House following 2010. I say "controlled" past tense because both houses of the Arkansas Legislature flipped to the GOP this year as well. It's a safe bet that Democratic Senator Mark Pryor, up for re-election in 2014, is getting very nervous. I wouldn't doubt if he retires rather than runs for re-election and face the same humiliation that Blanche Lincoln did in 2010.
California--The state that always takes forever to count all of its ballots continues to add tens of thousands of new votes to the tally every day and can be expected to continue doing so right up until the day of the final canvass in December. But we're officially to the point where it will no longer any outcomes as the last disputed House races were called late this week. It seems like every cycle the Democratic stranglehold over the state of California just keeps getting tighter. Obama will win with margins similar to what he scored in 2008 (well over 20 points), Dianne Feinstein is returning to the Senate having won by an even larger margin than Obama, and Democratic margins in the U.S. House and the state legislature have expanded to more than 2-1 majorities, thanks to a nonpartisan redistricting commission shaking loose the old district lines which preserved a number of Republicans in safe districts that became more competitive. Even aside from the district lines, however, the surging Latino population in just about every corner of the state is rendering more and more of those previously "safe" Republican districts as unwinnable. The Democrats picked up four seats and the state's House delegation is now 38-15 Democratic, with one Republican incumbent (Gary Miller) hanging on only due to a complicated technicality even while presiding in a 56% Obama district. Ousted Republicans include Dan Lungren in the Sacramento suburbs, Mary Bono Mack in Riverside County, and Brian Bilbray in suburban San Diego. Jeff Denham held onto his seat, making him the only Republican survivor in the contested races as Democrats Julia Brownley and Mark Takano both prevailed in the two southern California open seats.
Colorado--Demographic trends continue to look favorable for Democrats in the state of Colorado with 2012 being the fifth consecutive election cycle where they outperformed early expectations. Long expected to be a nailbiter in the Presidential race based upon predicted slippage upon upscale white suburbanites, the state swung decisively to Obama in the campaign's final couple of weeks and he ended up winning by five points, reproducing a nearly identical county map to four years ago. Even Colorado's not insignificant Mormon population didn't seem to do much to help Romney, although it probably helped Republican Scott Tipton comfortably hang on to his contested western Colorado Congressional district rather comfortably, given that most of Colorado's Mormons live in this district. Obama's coattails also proved no help in the southern Denver suburbs where Republican Mike Coffman was re-elected in a district which Obama won, despite making controversial birther comments just this year. The failure to take out Coffman despite Presidential turnout and the marijuana ballot initiative stands out as one of Democrats' few wasted opportunities this cycle.
Connecticut--Most polling indicated that Obama was poised to lose a great deal of support in Connecticut this year, presumably because Wall Street financiers were abandoning him. While the hedge fund crowd did decisively abandon him, their numbers didn't prove too consequential as Obama's statewide margin is still in the neighborhood of 59%, down only a couple points from 2008. And despite all the fanfare about Linda McMahon's improved Senate run positioning her for possible victory, I never doubted that Democrat Chris Murphy would pull ahead in the end, as he did with a decisive eight-point win. And the last puzzle piece was the House seat that Murphy left behind to run for the Senate, which is the least Democratic in Connecticut but still voted for Democrat Elizabeth Esty over her moderate Republican challenger, meaning that Connecticut's all-Democratic Congressional delegation holds. Hard to ask much more from the state than what they did in 2012.
Delaware--The only election in recent memory when Delaware races were newsworthy was 2010 when the "I am not a witch" candidate was on the ballot. In 2012, the state returned to being predictable and buzz-less. Obama's margin shrunk by a few points but he still won the state by 19 points, holding onto both of the counties he won four years ago. Democrat Tom Carper was elected to a third term by an even larger margin against token opposition along with Democrat John Carney in the House and Democrat Jack Markell in the Governor's race. I continue to be a little surprised that Delaware is as Democratic as it is given it's status as a financial industry hub.
District of Columbia--As usual, not much to see here. Turnout was down but Obama still won with more than 90% of the vote, down just a point from his all-time record 2008 margin.
Florida--Never would I have imagined that Rick Scott's Florida would be going Obama in 2012. Even while acknowledging the state's fast-changing demographics, I still thought the grumpy old white guy turnout would overwhelm the new voters even though the media wrongly believed until the end that Paul Ryan's Medicare position would doom the Romney ticket among retirees. As expected, the senior vote went stronger for Romney than for any Republican in recent memory, and continued erosion of the Jewish vote for Democrats contributed to that. Obama's 58% showing in heavily Jewish Palm Beach County was five points worse than the Gore-Lieberman margin in 2000. Even against this headwind, three groups collectively saved Obama. The first was African-Americans who turned out as strongly as they did four years ago and once again held Romney's margin to just a few points in Duval County (Jacksonville), a damning margin for Republicans in that GOP-leaning area. African-Americans also powered high Democratic turnout in bellwether Hillsborough County (Tampa), won for a second time by Obama. The second group that saved Obama was Puerto Ricans who again delivered massive margins for Obama in the Orlando area, leading to overwhelming Obama victories in counties that were 50-50 during the Bush years. But these two groups alone were not enough to push Obama over the top in Florida. The decisive demographic this year was South Florida Cubans who turned decisively towards Obama. When the most of the vote was in from Miami-Dade County and showing Obama winning 62%, I speculated that the remaining uncounted precincts were likely Republican-heavy Cuban precincts that would shrink Obama's margins, but it turns out the Cuban precincts were in....and they were THAT strong for Obama. It would have been hard to imagine this 20 years ago when even Bill Clinton couldn't win Florida based on the near monolithically Republican Cuban vote. If this trend continues, Republicans will have a major problem on their hands in Florida, and I think it increases the likelihood that the 2016 Presidential ticket will include one or both of Jeb Bush or Marco Rubio. Downticket, the Bill Nelson-Connie Mack Senate race long thought to be close ended up a double-digit blowout by Democrat Nelson, who continues to luck out with his opponents and the political climate where he runs. And Democrats also made nice gains in the House, with Alan Grayson returning to Congress picking up the new seat in the Orlando area and three additional Democratic pick-ups including Lois Frankel in an open seat in Palm Beach County; Joe Garcia in a Cuban-heavy suburban Miami district where the Republican incumbent was upended following a very amusing scandal; and best of all, Patrick Murphy who narrowly (and surprisingly) took out one of the Democrats best trophies of the night, the odious Tea Party nut Allen West. Given the closeness of the race and how marginal the district is, however, don't count West out for a comeback in 2014.
Georgia--Obama targeted Georgia four years ago and came within five points of victory, closer than I would have predicted heading into election night. It was a foregone conclusion that Romney would win the state in 2012, but the rising black and Latino populations nonetheless keep it on the watch list for future election cycles. Once again, I was impressed that Obama ended up doing as well as he did this year, losing by eight points and holding most of the new counties he picked up four years ago. Again, it appears as though black turnout held up better than white turnout in the state as was the case in most of the Deep South. I still think Democrats are at least eight years away from realistically competing in Georgia at the Presidential level, but the demographic shifts just might accelerate the state's road towards competitiveness. With that said, Republicans still dominate today, and the new district the state picked up after redistricting went to the Republicans who gerrymandered themselves a much more favorable map than they had in the last decade. The bright side for Democrats is that east Georgia conservative Democrat John Barrow was expected to be a casualty of that gerrymander, losing a good chunk of his base vote in Savannah. But after running a good campaign and drawing a weak opponent, Barrow pulled out a decisive eight-point win in a highly unfavorable 65% white district. While I could tell Barrow would probably survive in the campaign's final weeks, I still thought it would be a very close race, so his strong performance was encouraging that at least some southern whites are winnable for a certain kind of Democrat. Even so, with a likely diminished black turnout in 2014, Barrow will have his hands full winning the district again under the current lines.
Hawaii--It seemed likely that the thrill of electing native son Barack Obama would be gone for Hawaiians this time around and that turnout would crater. But Obama held up quite well again in 2012, with Hawaii being his best state and going for him with more than 70% of the vote once again, his margin down only 1% from 2008. Just as impressive was Democrat Mazie Hirono crushing her very respectable challenger, former Governor Linda Lingle, with 64% of the vote. A win that decisive can't be credited exclusively to riding Obama's coattails. Tulsi Gabbard, newly elected representative who won Hirono's open seat, is now hands down the hottest chick in Congress. The other House race in Hawaii was the only source of concern, however. Incumbent Democrat Coleen Hanabusa won with only 55% against previous challenger Charles Djou even with the best possible political environment, suggesting future challenges by Djou could be more successful.
Idaho--Given that Idaho is more than 25% Mormon and about 75% rock-ribbed conservative, I expected even more substantial gains by Romney this year than what he got. While it's hard to say that a 66% Romney win is anything less than dominating, he still underperformed Bush in 2000 and 2004, and Obama held on to Latah County (the college town of Moscow) which is better than I expected. This suggests to me that Hispanics are an increasing presence at the voting booth in Idaho, holding down GOP margins a bit. Still, the state is a GOP stronghold and both House seats held strong for Republicans.
Illinois--The outcome of the various races in Illinois this year really stand out as a lesson in contrasts. At the Presidential level, favorite son Obama took a significant tumble, especially downstate where he lost a number of counties that have been going Democratic all the way back to Michael Dukakis. But he also took a hit in the suburban reaches of Chicagoland. Granted, no Democrat had any business winning some of those crimson red Chicago exurbs the way Obama did four years ago, but their swing to Romney this year reinforced how tenuous of a connection Obama's home state voters have for him now that he's no longer their Senator. But despite Obama's five-point tumble at the top of the ticket, Democrats soared in both the Congressional and legislative races. Much of this was the result of Democrats hanging onto their legislative majorities in 2010 and drafting an aggressive gerrymander that positioned Democrats to pick up as many as five seats in the House. The Democrats went four for five in those battleground seats and also held on to a wobbly open seat in far southern Illinois. Extinct incumbent Republicans include suburban Chicago moderate Judy Biggert; Bob Dold in a strongly Democratic northern Chicago suburban district where Republicans have been defying gravity for a decade now but finally got taken out this year; Bobby Schilling, who scored a surprise victory in a heavily Democratic Rock Island-Peoria-based district two years ago but was decisively beaten this year; and the disgusting Tea Party SOB Joe Walsh who won a fluke victory in 2010 but then got redistricted into a heavily Democratic new district for this cycle, losing by 10 points to Democrat Tammy Duckworth (and frankly I was surprised a guy as slimy as Walsh was even able to get 45% in this district). The only disappointment of the night came in another downstate race in the Springfield/Decatur area vacated by retiring Republican Tim Johnson. Democrat David Gill came within 1,000 votes of an upset and providing Democrats a clean five-seat sweep in the state. More surprising to me, and a likely product of favorable state-level redistricting maps, Democrats managed decisive gains in both houses of the Illinois legislature as well, suggesting the Blagojevich stain that harmed Democrats across the ballot in Illinois two years ago is diminishing.
Indiana--As recently as a few weeks ago, I thought Obama would have a more respectable showing than expected in Indiana, losing by about 5-7 points. He ended up losing by more than 10, surrendering well over half of the impressive gains he made when he won the state four years ago. That was a fluke that few expected to repeat, and the good news is that Obama didn't slip back to the gory numbers Democrats saw in Indiana during the Bush years. The changing demographics of Indianapolis account for most of the Democrats' gains in the state in recent years, I suspect, as the rural and suburban areas of the state continue to be solidly Republican. The GOP's strong statewide base helped muscle the GOP to something close to a clean sweep this year, holding onto the two southern Indiana House seats that were briefly in Democratic hands last decade and picking up an open seat in northern Indiana with a narrow victory by Jackie Walorski, a candidate often mentioned in the same sentence as Michele Bachmann due to her extreme conservative. And even though the race was closer than expected, Republican Mike Pence won the open seat for Governor and the GOP made serious gains in the state legislature. But there was one major black eye for Republicans in Indiana and that was the Senate race, a race that would have been a slam-dunk Republican victory if Richard Lugar had been the nominee. But the guy who beat Lugar in the primary, Tea Party radical Richard Mourdock, threw it away in the final debate with delirious pro-rape comments, handing a victory to Democrat Joe Donnelly, who gets this year's Chris Coons award for luckiest Democrat in America, prevailing by six points and helping Democrats towards their historic Senate gains in what should have been an extremely defensive cycle for them.
Iowa--I was extremely impressed with how well Obama held up in Iowa as I was fully prepared for another nailbiter along the lines of the 2000 and 2004 races in Iowa, but Obama performed nearly as well as he did in 2008 in a number of key counties in central and eastern Iowa. I was most surprised by how well Obama held up in southern Iowa, a stretch of rural and culturally conservative counties near the Missouri border where I expected Obama would completely implode, but in most cases he dropped only one or two points from his 2004 numbers. There was one massively weak link to Obama's coalition, however, and that was western Iowa, where a number of counties that went for him last time shifted to double-digit Romney wins this time, often times dramatically underperforming even Gore and Kerry. Many of these counties are populated by white Catholics, suggesting the contraception issue may have had some traction with conservative Catholics. This weak showing by Obama in western Iowa hurt downticket as well with both of the contested House races going decisively for Republicans. The incumbent versus incumbent mashup between Democrat Leonard Boswell, who has a reputation as both a survivor and an underperformer, and Republican Tom Latham, who always outpolls other Republicans on the ticket, broke dramatically for Latham with a nine-point victory in a race that seemed over months ago despite looking like it would be competitive on paper. In the rural and conservative fourth district, based primarily out of northwestern Iowa, an expected strong challenge from Democrat Christie Vilsack came up dramatically short, with King romping by a surprisingly high nine points. Even in the perfect storm of 2008, McCain still won this district under its current lines by two points, so I had a hard believing Vilsack would prevail, but even I thought it would be closer than this and was surprised at the extent to which moderate farm counties all went for King. The upside for Democrats came in the legislature where Democrats held on to a tenuous advantage in the Senate and made huge gains in the House.
Kansas--Very little to report from Kansas, which stands out as a sea of crimson red as it does nearly every four years, bouncing up to over 60% for Romney again this year after slacking it a little in 2008 and going only 57% McCain. Nothing was competitive downballot either as the only potentially vulnerable Republican in the all-GOP delegation was Kansas City-based Kevin Yoder, who for some odd reason didn't even draw a Republican challenger.
Kentucky--It's impressive how the Kentucky Democratic Party has successfully dominated in state and local races over the past decade, defying gravity in the national political climate that is making them less competitive every two years in federal races. As predicted, Romney soared to margins even higher than Republicans scored in the Bush years in 2012, doing so even while metropolitan Louisville went much stronger for Obama than it ever did for Gore and Kerry and as Lexington has stayed in the blue column. The east Kentucky coal counties was where the Democratic blood really got spilled, as a few counties that went more than 60% for Democrats as recently as Gore and Kerry now went more than 70% for Romney. The political climate was that terrible for Democrats in coal country, but interestingly Obama did prevail in one Kentucky coal county, the only coal county in all of Appalachia that he won....and that was Elliott County, a tiny east Kentucky county that has gone for the Democratic Presidential nominee every election since its existence in the 1870s. The bad news is that even there, Obama dropped from a 26-point margin in 2008 to a 2-point margin in 2012. Ouch! This coal country collapse managed to significantly cut Democratic margins in the Kentucky state legislature and also took out Democratic Congressman Ben Chandler, who barely held on in 2010 and despite getting a less Republican district this year, was toppled by the anti-Obama headwinds in his district's coal counties. It's a very troubling development to see all these coal counties realign to Republicans so abruptly and so dramatically, but it's not as if it's a big surprise given the rising profile of climate change and coal's role in it.
Louisiana--Here's another state where most people expected Romney to make significant gains on McCain's already impressive 19-point margin four years ago, even though there wasn't much more room for Obama to fall amongst white voters (he got only 14% in 2008). Instead, it was Obama whose margin improved by a point or two, suggesting that a number of blacks and liberal whites have returned to New Orleans since 2008. There's not a lot to celebrate for Democrats in Louisiana though and holding this seat is gonna be brutally tough for Senator Mary Landrieu in two years, but it appears as though Democrats have hit bottom in the state and are incrementally rising again. But with the black voters concentrated in one Congressional district more than ever after the last round of redistricting, expect the state's 5-1 Republican delegation to hold for the rest of the decade.
Maine--While an Obama victory in Maine was never in doubt, the fact that his margin only dropped one point from his perfect storm 16-point victory in 2008 was very impressive. I suspect part of it was pushback against the accidental Tea Party-controlled state government in which Republicans grabbed control of the Maine legislature in 2010 and right-wing Governor Paul LePage prevailed with a 37% plurality in a three-way race. LePage and legislative Republicans have been very unpopular in Maine, but they still have not apparently learned their lesson as they elected the egomaniacal Independent Angus King to the Senate, who finally made clear his intentions to caucus with the Democrats after playing coy ever since he got into the race, and even then equivocating that he might caucus with the Republicans if they take over the Senate. This selfish jerk leaves a bit of an asterisk on the Democrats' two-seat pickup in the Senate as it will always be tenuous whenever Angus King is party of that majority. A serious disappointment since we could have had Democrat Chellie Pingree in the seat if King hadn't run.
Maryland--The state of Maryland has always been one of the toughest states in the country for Republicans to crack and it seems to get worse for them every election cycle as the Democrats coalition of white liberals and African Americans see their ranks grow in proportion to the exurban and rural Republicans who were a minority even 20 years ago. Obama's 25-point margin of victory is identical to his 2008 numbers while redistricting netted Democrats the opportunity to create a new blue district stretching from western Maryland into Democratic precincts in Montgomery County. The result was a humiliating defeat for veteran Republican Roscoe Bartlett, leaving the state with a 7-1 Democratic advantage in the House. A third-party candidate ran strong in the Senate, but Democrat Ben Cardin still prevailed with a clear majority statewide.
Massachusetts--There have been some indications in the past few years that Massachusetts is becoming less Democratic. That may be true, but it's happening slowly and not helping Republicans much on a cycle to cycle basis. It was never in doubt that Obama would win big, but the state's incremental rightward movement on top of whatever residual benefit Romney would have from being Governor in the state suggested the numbers would shrink from 2008. They did, but only a little, with Obama still prevailing with more than 61% of the vote. In the marquee Senate race of the country, Democrat Elizabeth Warren had been pulling away in the final month of the campaign and Brown's nice guy image was starting to unravel a bit, so it wasn't surprising that Warren prevailed by eight points in a Presidential election year. The fact that a Cabinet position promotion for John Kerry could catapult Brown back into the Senate in a matter of months dampens my enthusiasm some for taking him out. There was only one contested House race in Massachusetts but it was a barn-burner, with Democratic incumbent John Tierney plagued by a family scandal and left for dead a few weeks before the election. But despite representing Massachusetts' least Democratic district and running against a likable moderate Republican challenger, Tierney somehow pulled off a one-point victory. Tierney's victory tells me that even without Brown's late mistakes in the Senate race, Warren would probably have edged him out anyway during a Presidential year in Massachusetts.
Michigan--All things considered, Michigan was one of our more disappointing states in 2012. Yes, Obama did win by nearly 10 points, but one would think the outsized impact of the auto bailout which saved the state from ruin--and the dramatic contrast with Romney's position on the issue--would have been worth more. Looking at the returns, however, it appears that the impact of the auto bailout was only measurable in the Detroit area where Obama's numbers were generally comparable to 2008. Everywhere else in the state, however, Romney appeared to benefit some from legacy voters during his dad's gubernatorial tenure, as Obama lost more than half of the counties he won in rural Michigan four years ago, even managing to lose a couple of the counties that John Kerry won. The disappointment extended downticket. Democratic Senator Debbie Stabenow smashed her Republican challenger, but beyond that, a couple of ballot initiatives that would help prevent Michigan from becoming another Wisconsin failed, and in the House, two seats that should have gone to the Democrats did not. Republican Dan Benishek on the Upper Peninsula was widely expected to be a goner with all of the polls showing him behind, but he eked out a narrow victory and held onto the seat, likely with some help from Romney legacy voters who went strongly Republican in that part of the state compared to 2008. The other open seat in suburban Detroit went to a certifiably certifiable reindeer herder (!) whose own brother says he struggles with sanity prevailed over a Democratic doctor with an ethnic name (Syed Taj), and given the information out there about this race, it's impossible to conclude that race wasn't a factor in Republican Bentivolio's decisive win.
Minnesota--If Michigan was a disappointment for Democrats in 2012, Minnesota was a big success story. At the top of the ticket, my suspicions that the vote would break Romney's way in the final weeks and make for a narrow Obama win didn't happen as Obama went on to win by nearly eight points, holding margins similar to 2008 in Minneapolis, St. Paul, and its first two rings of suburbs, as well as northeastern Minnesota and southeastern Minnesota. Romney made gains in exurbia but still didn't pull off the numbers Bush did eight years ago. Romney's more decisive gains came in western Minnesota, where Obama overperformed four years ago due to his advertising domination in North Dakota media markets. Plus, it's likely that the gay marriage ballot initiative worked against Obama among the conservative farm Democrats of western Minnesota. In the Senate race, popular Democratic incumbent Amy Klobuchar walloped her fourth-rate Republican challenger in the biggest landslide of my lifetime (more than 2-1) in a Minnesota Senate race. And while I suspected Democrat Rick Nolan would upset Chip Cravaack in the heavily Democratic northeastern Minnesota House district that the GOP picked up in a flukish race against an out-of-touch incumbent in 2010, I was surprised by the nine-point margin Nolan won by, outperforming Obama. A bigger surprise was how close business Democrat Jim Graves came to taking out Michele Bachmann in a district that hardly has any Democratic leaning precincts left after redistricting. Graves won handily in the St. Cloud area but Bachmann remained just a little too strong in her exurban base, resulting in a heartbreaking one-point loss in what was likely as close as we'll ever come to taking out Bachmann. Democrats picked up both houses of the Minnesota legislature and two Republican ballot initiatives on gay marriage and voter ID both failed. It was a great night for Democrats in Minnesota, and I'll probably do a more detailed Minnesota-specific writeup in the weeks ahead.
Mississippi--Another Deep South state, another surprisingly weak Romney performance as a lot of white Republicans apparently stayed home while black turnout remained high. If I was asked the week before the election which would be one of the few states where Obama would do better than in 2008, Mississippi would not have been high on my list of guesses, yet that's exactly what happened, and instead of losing any of the Bush counties that Obama picked up four years ago, he managed to gain one more. Not that this helped any Democrats downticket. Roger Wicker was easily re-elected to the Senate while the two House seats that Democrats lost in 2010 remained in Republican hands this year.
Missouri--Missouri's ongoing trendline towards Republicans has been visible since the late 1990s, but it wasn't until the 2010 midterms when it became clear how long-gone the state is for Democrats, to the point that the state now has a 6-2 Republican House delegation and the only two Democrats come from majority black districts in Kansas City and St. Louis. The fact that Obama couldn't win here in the perfect storm year of 2008 reinforced how ugly Missouri has become, with just about every square inch of territory in rural Missouri having turned into Tea Party hell, along with a couple of suburban counties that were still Democratic even for Al Gore. I guess it was no big surprise that Obama collapsed from a near-tie in 2008 to a 10-point defeat in 2012, but it's still hard to figure out what accounts for the dramatic political transformation crossing the border from southern Iowa to northern Missouri. Of course there was a lone bright spot for Democrats in Missouri and it happened entirely by accident with Democratic Senator Claire McCaskill hanging on to her seat due to the gaffe of the year by her Republican challenger Todd Akin. Even so, I figured till the end that Akin would prevail given how ferocious Missouri has become for Democrats, so I was very surprised that she not only won, but crushed Akin by 16 points, winning a number of rural counties that went more than 70% Romney. Apparently there are limitations even to what misguided Tea Party voters are willing to put up with.
Montana--I mentioned above that Illinois had conflicting results on election night, with disappointing Presidential numbers but good downballot numbers. The same can be said about Montana, where Obama collapsed much more than expected, having come within two points of McCain four years ago but losing by 14 points this year. Given that Obama did worse than the polls suggested, it was all the more surprising that Democratic Senator Jon Tester performed better than the polls, winning by four points over Republican challenger Denny Rehberg. While most polls in the last weeks of the campaign showed Tester narrowly ahead, it was largely predicated on the libertarian candidate getting a good chunk of the vote and allowing Tester to squeak by with 46 or 47% of the vote. But Tester ended up with 49%, suggesting he would have probably won even without the libertarian on the ballot. And while Republicans held the open statewide House seat, the Democrats managed to hold the open seat for Governor, with Democrat Steve Bullock narrowly ekeing out a win. When you look at how perfectly the stars have to be aligned for the Democratic coalition of Indians, college students, and union retirees to produce a winner, it's rather spectacular how frequently Democrats are able to score these narrow wins in Montana.
Nebraska--Four years ago, Obama made some very impressive gains in Nebraska, even scoring an electoral vote based on his win in the Omaha-based Congressional district which would have seemed unthinkable four years earlier. While Obama didn't win either Omaha or Lincoln in 2012, he still performed closer to his 2008 numbers than the Gore/Kerry blowouts of the Bush years, meaning I don't expect to see Nebraska rivaling Wyoming and Utah for its redness as it did not so long ago. That's not to say anything good will be coming out of Nebraska for Democrats in the near future. The mythical Bob Kerrey surge that was reportedly developing in the final weeks of the campaign never materialized with Republican Deb Fischer prevailing by a decisive 16-point margin and scoring the Republicans only pick-up of a Democratic held seat this year. However, there was apparently a huge missed opportunity for Democrats in the Omaha House district where incumbent Republican Lee Terry, vulnerable at times in the past, won by only two points in a race where Democrats were caught napping, having not contested the seat despite Terry's obvious vulnerability.
Nevada--Arguably the biggest surprises of 2008 and 2010 came from Nevada, with Obama crushing McCain by 12 points in a state Bush won twice in 2008, and then Harry Reid overcoming all the polls to win a decisive victory in the Senate race in 2010. The 2012 results were a little more predictable. Obama exceeded his poll numbers a little, but came down to earth with a seven-point margin over Romney, and suggesting that this may be the last time Nevada's a battleground state in a Presidential election, having moved so significantly towards Republicans. The depth of Obama's coattails counted for a lot downballot in Nevada this year but were not what they needed to be for a dominating Democratic performance. Obama was only one point away from dragging Democrat Shelly Berkley across the finish line in the Senate race, but Republican Dean Heller eked it out in one of the few Republican bright spots of the night. Even though Democrats won most of the close races, a Berkley win would really have been nice here to offset likely losses in the wildly defensive 2014 Senate landscape. In the House races, Democrat Steven Horsford ultimately pulled it out, and rather decisively, despite polls showing Republican challenger Danny Tarkanian beating him right up until the end in the newly formed Las Vegas area seat. However, the other contested Vegas area seat remained comfortably in Republican hands.
New Hampshire--It appears wave elections are the new normal in the state of New Hampshire, with Democrats scoring landslide victory up and down the ballot in 2006 and 2008, Republicans having their own landslide in 2010, and now Democrats running the table again in 2012. This is understandable given the state's peculiar political profile, which seemed like a good match for a faux-moderate Republican like Mitt Romney, so I was pleasantly surprised when Obama won by a decisive five points. As usual, Obama ran up the score in the rural areas while narrowly losing the state's most populated southeastern corner, making New Hampshire a rare state where its rural areas are bluer than the urban areas. More impressive than Obama's victory was the Democrats winning back both of the state's House races, even with two mediocre candidates including the accidental former Congresswoman Carol Shea Porter who seemed unlikely to score a comeback. Maggie Hassan held the Governor's mansion for the Democrats and even after swinging violently to the GOP in 2010, Democrats won back the state House this year. This overcorrection likely means a similar overcorrection the other way in 2014 which could mean trouble for Democratic Senator Jeanne Shaheen, but it's nice to savor the big victories when they happen.
New Jersey--It was a wide-open question what the impact of Hurricane Sandy would be on hard-hit New Jersey. I'm guessing there are still provisional ballots hanging out there yet to be counted, but as of today, turnout is down a substantial 12% in the state, which is not surprising. What did probably surprise most people is that the beneficiary of this debacle was Obama. While some will credit his praised storm response as moving the needle his direction and helping him perform a full-point better than in 2008, winning by 17 points, it's also worth mentioning that the hardest hit area of the state was the heavily Republican Jersey Shore area, which might simply mean that Republican voters were more likely to skip voting this year than Democratic areas. Whatever the case, Obama's margin was impressive, as was the fact that Democratic Senator Bob Menendez prevailed handily despite a prostitution scandal that emerged in the week before the election yet appeared to have zero impact on the race. Democrats got hosed in redistricting in New Jersey, however, and appear stuck with a 6-6 House delegation as blue as the state is, at least until blue-district Republican Frank LoBiondo from southern New Jersey retires.
New Mexico--Four years ago, New Mexico was one of the Democrats most unequivocal success stories. In 2012, Democrats had another big win in the state but without the pomp and circumstance of 2008. Obama won the state by 10 points, probably held down a little by the state's former Governor Gary Johnson, who was the Libertarian Party candidate and got 3.5% of the vote. In the Senate race, Republican candidate Heather Wilson always outperformed polls when she was in the House and did a little better than the polls indicated again this year. But she still lost by six points to Democratic challenger Martin Heinrich, reinforcing the suspicion that New Mexico has gotten out of reach for Republicans with its Hispanic population growth and its consolidation towards Democrats. As expected, Democrats easily held the open House seat in the Albuquerque area.
New York--I hope there's a large chunk of storm-related provisional ballots hanging out there in New York because the current vote count shows a largest-in-the-nation 19% decline in turnout compared to 2008 In a state the size of New York, that's a million and a half votes. The good news is that even with such a huge loss of voters, Obama's margin in the state is almost identical to 2008, winning more than 62% and overperforming his 2008 numbers in metropolitan New York City and holding up very well upstate, particularly in the rural counties in the state's northeast which was rock-ribbed Republican country as recently as the Bush years. Kirsten Gillibrand dominated in the Senate race with the biggest margin for any Democrat in the country, and things generally went well in the House as well. As predicted, Democrats won back the Syracuse-based seat taken away from them by Tea Party aberration Ann Marie Buerkle in 2010, and had a surprise victory in the Poughkeepsie-based 18th district where Democrat Sean Maloney upset one-term Republican Nan Hayworth. Democrats held onto tenuous seats in their delegation as well, including Tim Bishop on Long Island and Bill Owens in far northern New York who continues to skate by with very modest margins. Louise Slaughter hung on against a strong challenger in her Rochester-based district as well. But Democrats had a few heartbreakers as well, including a narrow two-point loss by Kathy Hochul who won a special election last year but was redistricted into a brutally Republican area of suburban Buffalo and did very well considering the pedigree of the district. Democrats came just short of picking off incumbent Republican Chris Gibson in upstate New York and were caught napping by failing to contest Tom Reed in a Republican district in western New York, where Reed managed only 52% of the vote even against a largely faceless Democratic challenger.
North Carolina--Democrats didn't have much to hang their on in North Carolina this year, mostly as a result of terrible timing that allowed the Republican to first win power and then consolidate it through redistricting. Obama held up better than I expected him to in North Carolina, falling two points short after his historic victory there in 2008 and indicating that North Carolina is still moving Democrats direction at the statewide level. But downballot, it was a Democratic bloodbath, albeit a predictable one, as Republicans picked up three Democrat-held House seats in districts gerrymandered into Republican strongholds that led Democrats Heath Shuler and Brad Miller to retire rather than try to defend them. Larry Kissell fought it out but came up several points short in his south-central Carolina district made several points more Republican. One Democrat appears poised to hang on although his race is now the last in the nation yet to be called, and that's Mike McIntyre from the state's southeastern corner who ran a good re-election campaign and was lucky enough to face off against a weak challenger, yet still leads by only about 500 votes in a district where he has little chance of winning in again without Presidential year turnout. That leaves Democrats with only three seats in North Carolina, where most of the states Democratic voters are packed into. It was a lethal gerrymander likely to keep the GOP with a 10-3 House majority in a 50-50 state for most of the decade. Adding insult to injury, tough gerrymanders in the legislative districts helped Republicans gain even more seats to their majorities there as well, now with a newly elected Republican Governor in Pat McCrory replacing the unpopular outgoing Democrat Bev Perdue. For a state trending the Democrats' direction, Democrats have very little to show for it after 2012.
North Dakota--There are two diverging trendlines in the state of North Dakota ultimately canceling each other out. The east side of the state, including the population centers of Fargo and Grand Forks, are becoming much less Republican. Obama didn't win them this year as he did in 2008 when he contested the state of North Dakota, but his margins of defeat were less than three points, a far cry from the Bush years when Democrats were losing by more than 15 points. Unfortunately, the west side of the state is moving the other direction. Western North Dakota was always the most Republican part of a Republican state, but the oil boom, presumably along with a desire to build the Keystone Pipeline through the area, has pushed the region ever more dramatically towards Republicans, with all-time high margins for Republicans coming out of the Williston-Dickinson corridor. For Romney to still be able to win North Dakota by 20 points while performing so modestly in Fargo and Grand Forks is astonishing. But more astonishing yet is that even with the headwind of a 20-point Romney win at the top of the ticket and western North Dakota moving ferociously against Democrats, Heidi Heitkamp was still able to pull off a win in the Senate race. This was the most exciting Senate race in the country for me just because of how big of a longshot it was for the Democrats to prevail, but prevail they did. Republicans won handily in both the open statewide House race and the Governor's race, so Heitkamp was the only good news of the night from North Dakota.
Ohio--The marquee Presidential battleground lived up to its reputation by being the state whose ultimate call at 11:15 eastern time pushed Obama over 270 electoral votes and to victory. In retrospect, however, it's a little surprising they called Ohio for Obama so early given that his underwhelming 100,000-vote margin was actual smaller than Bush's margin over Kerry in 2004. Despite Romney's indefensible late posture accusing Chrysler of preparing to move operations to China, it appears some late polls showing the race tightening were correct. And it also appears that Obama's victory can be credited more to a higher black turnout than to any serious strength among working-class whites. For example, Obama hung onto Hamilton County (Cincinnati) which is heavily black, but appears to have lost bellwether Lake County (suburban Cleveland) and Stark County (Canton), which are mostly white and both of which he won four years ago. The county map of Ohio is fascinating with Obama holding up very well in Toledo, Cleveland, Cincinnati, and especially Columbus, where he did better than he did in 2008, but generally underperforming in northeastern Ohio which was long thought to be his source of strength. Unsurprisingly, the coal counties along the Ohio River, which have been trending Republican for years, shifted even further to Romney, but more surprisingly was that Obama performed better than he did in 2008 in a number of counties to the east and south of Columbus, including small cities such as Chillicothe and Portsmouth. Ultimately, the coalition was just enough to get Obama over the finish line, but ultimately a little disappointing considered it appeared as though Obama would do better in the state than he did four years ago. In the Senate race, one of the nation's best Senators Sherrod Brown did a couple of points better than Obama, but his modest victory against his joke of a challenger nonetheless speaks poorly about a very large minority of Ohio voters. The House races were a different story as Republicans who controlled the Ohio Legislature after 2010 stitched together a lethal gerrymander that worked out as expected, producing a 12-4 Republican advantage. Democrats put up a fight in two seats but came up short in an Ohio River Valley coal district in southeastern Ohio where former representative Charlie Wilson was beaten by incumbent Republican Bill Johnson in a very poor political climate in that area, while Republican Jim Renacci got the better of an incumbent-vs.-incumbent race in the exurbs of Cleveland and Akron over Democrat Betty Sutton under district lines that significantly favored the Republican. None of these outcomes were surprising but nonetheless a little disappointing that the auto bailout was unable to leverage a better outcome for Ohio Democrats than what we got this year.
Oklahoma--The only thing surprising about the results in Oklahoma this year was that Obama didn't collapse even further. While he did a couple points worse than 2008, I fully expected Romney to get more than 70% in Oklahoma given that the state's largely white working class demographics suggested there was room for continued attrition. Apparently, Obama came close to bottoming out two years ago with urban precincts in Oklahoma City and Tulsa keeping him from sliding much further. Nonetheless, there was still one place left in Oklahoma where Democrats had an opportunity to surrender additional terrain, and surrender it they did. I'm speaking of course about the open House seat in eastern Oklahoma vacated by Democrat Dan Boren, which predictably flipped to Republican Markwayne Mullin despite a solid effort by Democrat Rob Wallace to hold the seat. The good news, if you can call it that, is that Democrats officially have nothing left to lose in Oklahoma.
Oregon--One after another poll in the final weeks of the campaign showed Obama with a surprisingly modest 6-7-point margin in Oregon, which was a little hard to believe given the state's decadeslong trendline towards Democrats. It turns out the polls were all wrong as Obama ended up winning by a 12-point margin, down a few points from the 16-point margin of 2008 but still very decisive. Not much else to report with no Senate races in the state and with Democrats easily hanging onto their 4-1 House majority in the state.
Pennsylvania--I never did understand why the Romney campaign dismissed their chances in Pennsylvania until the last two weeks of the campaign. It's not as if they didn't have the money to contest the state. Had they done so, it's easy to see how they could have made a race out of it, even though it's hard to imagine Republicans being able to win a state where Philadelphia produces a 465,000-vote margin for Obama. Outside of Philly, Obama held up well in the inner-ring Philly suburbs as well the Allentown and Scranton-Wilkes-Barre area, and while he lost Chester and Berks Counties by a point each, Democrats would have killed to lose those two counties by only one point as recently as the Bush years. Outside of the southeast quadrant of the state, however, Obama took quite a dive, and no place more than in southwestern Pennsylvania which has been moving rapidly against Democrats since the 90s. He held up in Pittsburgh itself, but everywhere else in the region was brutal, with Romney improving to double-digit margins in the coal counties. Democrats are very lucky that metropolitan Philadelphia has moved their way so decisively in the past decade to offsets these huge losses in the southwest quadrant of the state. In the Senate race, Democrat Bob Casey exceeded Obama's five-point margin by three points but still underperformed by running a lazy campaign against a third-rate plutocratic challenger. And thanks to yet another horrific Republican gerrymander, Democrats got filleted in the Pennsylvania House races. With the narrow loss of conservative Democrat Mark Critz in a tough, gerrymandered southwest Pennsylvania district, Republicans own a 13-5 House delegation advantage that is gonna be very hard to crack.
Rhode Island--With Rhode Island's financial situation in even worse shape that California and Illinois and multiple cities on the cusp of bankruptcy, I had a suspicion the state would make a move towards Republicans this year, even though Obama would still obviously win big. That didn't happen as Obama won by an identical 28-point margin to 2008, while Sheldon Whitehouse won his Senate race by an even larger margin. Most surprisingly, however, was the double-digit victory of unpopular Democratic Congressman David Cicciline, who has taken a lot of heat over his stewardship of the city of Providence when he was mayor. Polls showed a very tight race between him and Republican challenger Brendan Doherty, and while I figured Obama's strength at the top of the ticket would be enough for Cicciline to prevail, the 10-point margin was nonetheless surprising.
South Carolina--Obama dropped less than one point from his 2008 performance in South Carolina, consistent with his numbers throughout the Deep South, presumably the result of a solid black turnout and a tepid white turnout. Obama managed to hold all the territory he won in 2008 and even picked up a county, but the Republicans counties held just as strong for Romney making it a wash. South Carolina gained a seat in the House and it was of course another Republican seat, ensuring a 6-1 GOP majority in the state for the foreseeable future, and as we saw in the past two years, South Carolina's Tea Party delegation is the most uncompromisingly radical of any state in the country. So even if Obama is nominally within striking distance statewide here, Democrats are still light years from overturning the state's toxic political culture.
South Dakota--There were no competitive high-profile statewide races in South Dakota this year, and typically when that's the case, turnout on Indian reservations that is critical for Democrats is weak. Such was the case this year, allowing Romney to make big gains over McCain and win the state by 18 points. Obama gave up most of the gains he made from 2008 along the I-29 corridor from Sioux Falls to Brookings to Watertown to Aberdeen, reducing him to a map closely resembling the 2004 John Kerry county map. There was some outside hope that the state's at-large representative Kristi Noem could be taken out, but Democratic challenger Matt Varilek only managed to do a couple points better than Obama. Democratic Senator Tim Johnson probably has a very challenging re-election race on his hands in 2014 if he even chooses to run which I have increasing doubts about.
Tennessee--The magnitude of the Democratic Party's collapse in Tennessee since 2006 is breathtaking, and while it's pretty clear that it was gonna happen anyway, it's also clear that a figure as audacious as Barack Obama accelerated the trend. In 2000, Al Gore won 36 counties in the state in what was considered a weak performance. In 2004, John Kerry's county half dropped in half to 18. But in 2008, Obama won only 6 counties, including the respective counties of Memphis and Nashville, two heavily black rural counties in west Tennessee, and two Yellow Dog Democrat holdouts that had gone more than 2-1 for Gore in 2000. Fast forward to 2012 and both of the Yellow Dog counties slipped away, leaving Obama with just four county victories out of 95 in the state, and a statewide defeat of more than 20 points, five points worse than 2008. It was even worse downballot, with the Democrats running the nation's biggest joke of a Senate candidate against Bob Corker and getting throttled by a 65-30 margin which actually overstates how poor of a candidate Mark Clayton was. Worse yet was the Democrats' collapse in both houses of the Tennessee state legislature where Republicans now hold supermajorities approaching what you'd expect in Wyoming or Utah. But the biggest indication that Democrats have gone the way of the Whigs in Tennessee is their performance in the rural Fourth Congressional District of Middle Tennessee, where freshman Republican Scott Des Jarlais was outed weeks before the election for having an affair with one of his patients (he was a doctor of some manner or another) and pressuring her to have an abortion. The fact that he was having an affair with a patient was itself a serious breach of medical ethics worthy of having his medical license taken away. And from there, the dirt just kept coming out regarding drug usage, additional affairs with patients, and supporting multiple abortions by his wife before they divorced. So the "values voters" of Middle Tennessee must have reprimanded this guy hard for his sins right, especially since a perfectly capable and well-funded conservative Democrat named Eric Stewart was waiting to take him on? Wrong. Des Jarlais not only held onto his seat, he won by 12 points. It's pretty that if Scott Des Jarlais is able to win Tennessee only weeks after a scandal of this magnitude breaks, Democrats have no chance of winning anywhere in the state outside of Memphis and Nashville for the foreseeable future.
Texas--Despite outperforming his 2008 numbers among Latinos in Texas, as evidenced by his margins in heavily Hispanic counties along the Rio Grande River Valley, Obama still managed to do lose 2% of his statewide support from four years ago, which tells me he must have gotten less than 20% support from white voters in Texas this year. This dynamic reinforces my long-standing theory that the Republicans may not be in as big of demographic trouble as Democrats and pundits believe they are, simply because whites are probably gonna just keep getting more Republican to compensate for the rising tide of Democratic-leaning Hispanic voters. Whatever the case, it was another big Republican year in Texas with a 16-point Romney win and a new Tea Party Senator elected in Ted Cruz. In the House, Texas gained four districts and because of the Voting Rights Act, two of the four new seats were won by Democrats. In addition to that, Democrat Pete Gallego picked up a Republican-held seat running along the Rio Grande Valley in southwest Texas that has been bouncing back and forth between Democrats and Republicans in recent years. For all intents and purposes it's the only Texas seat held by Republicans that Democrats have much of a chance of picking up in the foreseeable future. So for all the talk of Texas being a swing state in a decade or so, I'll believe it when I see it.
Utah--Predictably, the nation's first Mormon candidate for President performed exceptionally well in the 65% Mormon state of Utah, winning 74% of the vote and scoring 10 points better than McCain in 2008. Given Romney's personal connection as the head of the 2002 Winter Olympics, he even managed to win Summit County, home of the increasingly liberal granola town of Park City. None of this was surprising, nor was Orrin Hatch's easy re-election to the Senate seat he's held since before I was born. But what incredibly surprising was the performance of Jim Matheson, the lone Democrat in Utah's House delegation. In cycle after cycle, facing one round of brutal Republican gerrymanders after another, Matheson has managed to persevere, but this year he was considered a dead man walking, redistricted into an uglier district than his old one, facing the headwinds of Romney at the top of the ticket in Utah, and a top-tier challenger in Republican Mia Love. All the polls showed him losing decisively, but in the biggest surprise of 2012 in the House races, Matheson WON, prevailing by one point in a district that had to have gone well over 60% for Romney. This victory officially crowns Matheson with the Jim Gerlach Congressional Survivor Award of the Millennium.
Vermont--It appears as though Obama's huge 2-1 victory in Vermont in 2008 was no fluke. The state really has become that liberal from corner to corner as he replicated his margin from four years ago almost to the voter. America's best Senator, self-proclaimed socialist Bernie Sanders, was re-elected to his Senate seat by an even more lopsided margin, and Democratic Governor Peter Shumlin was also re-elected comfortably. And all this from one of only two states in the country that never voted for Franklin Roosevelt because of its rock-ribbed Republican tradition that is now a distant memory.
Virginia--It was interesting how my original thoughts on how the 2012 election would play out seemed to return to form in the end, with the exception of Florida. In Virginia, I always expected Obama's stable coalition of African Americans and upscale white professionals would come together once again. But I had some doubts for the first time after the first debate, when it appeared Romney had found some traction over the issue of military cuts in the very military-heavy state of Virginia. In the end, however, Obama's coalition reassembled very close to what it was in 2008. I was especially impressed how his numbers were almost identical to 2008 in military-heavy Tidewater. Obama still won decisively in northern Virginia, but didn't do as well as 2008 there. It turned out he didn't have to as he still won the state by three points, a larger margin than in Ohio which everybody believed would be the tipping point state. Obama's only genuine weak spot in Virginia were the coal counties in the southwest corner, but Romney's heavy courtship of that part of the state proved to be a mistake because there simply aren't enough votes there to cut deeply enough into Obama's advantage in the eastern half of the state. Tim Kaine won the open Senate seat by a couple points more than Obama did, reinforcing that Democrats are really on the march in Virginia. You'd never know it based on their House delegation though, with gerrymandered seats providing a Republicans an 8-3 margin. Some of those seats are pretty tenuous, however, and as Virginia continues to trend towards Democrats, a couple of them could slip away.
Washington--The increasingly Democratic state of Washington gave Obama a 15-point margin this year, down just a little from his 17-point margin in 2008. Democratic Senator Maria Cantwell was handily re-elected over token opposition, and the Democrats picked up the new seat Washington added after redistricting due to its population growth. This still only gives Democrats a modest 6-4 House advantage in Washington, however. Voters approved gay marriage in Washington state, as they also did in Maine and Maryland, suggesting a changing of the guard on that issue, at least in blue states. But the most interesting result in the state was Democrat Jay Inslee's victory in the gubernatorial race which extends Washington's longest-in-the-nation streak of electing Democratic Governors, stretching back to 1980.
West Virginia--Back in 2000, it seemed as though West Virginia breaking with its long-standing Democratic tradition and voting for George W. Bush might have been a fluke, the result of the Democrats nominating a uniquely ill-suited candidate in Al "Ozone Man" Gore for a state with a massive carbon footprint. Little could I have known that Gore's six point defeat in West Virginia would represent the Democrats' high-water mark for the coming millennium in Presidential elections. As the conflict between the West Virginia coal industry and the Democratic Party's position on climate change has become increasingly untenable, the culturally conservative shift has found itself having less and less in common with the party, and they seem to be in the middle stages of a permanent realignment right now. Obama failed to win a single county in West Virginia this year as I suspected he wouldn't, and Romney's 27-point margin of victory means that West Virginia is now a brighter shade of red than Nebraska and Kansas! And while we didn't see wholesale downballot consequences this year, it's pretty clear they're coming. Democratic Senator Joe Manchin was re-elected in a landslide with the help of odious perennial GOP challenger John Raese and Governor Earl Ray Tomblin was also re-elected decisively, but both did so distancing themselves about as far as they possibly could from Obama. Republicans made serious gains in the previously impenetrably Democratic West Virginia legislature, and Nick Rahall, the last Democrat in the state's House delegation, was held to a 54-46 margin against token opposition. Expect this realignment to make Democrats as endangered as they are in Mississippi in another decade, with Jay Rockefeller's Senate seat being the first to go in 2014 whether Rockefeller retires or runs for re-election.
Wisconsin--After a very erratic stretch of recent election cycles swerving from far left to far right, Wisconsin appears to have settled back into a center-left pattern in November 2012. Obama's 14-point margin of victory in 2008 was an anomaly, but he held up better than I expected heading into election night this year as I suspected a narrow margin just a little better than Kerry's rather than a decisive seven-point Obama win. Romney picked up most of the counties in the Fox Valley and northeastern Wisconsin where he made his biggest gains four years ago, but the region was still split much more closely than the Bush years where Republicans won handily. Meanwhile, Paul Ryan's presence on the ticket didn't seem to help him much even in his home district where Obama's numbers weren't far off from 2008. Democrat Tammy Baldwin scored an impressive and decisive victory in the Senate race, having been given very little chance against Tommy Thompson only a couple of months before the election before pulling away rather decisively at some point in early October. The only dark spot was the House, where redistricting consolidated Democrats into three dark blue seats, giving Republicans an advantage in the other five and allowing Sean Duffy and Reid Ribble to hold their seats quite decisively.
Wyoming--The Rocky Mountain states moved towards Romney in general this year, and of course Wyoming was always the reddest of the bunch in the first place, meaning Romney's surge this year brought him to over 70% and a higher margin of victory even than Bush was able to win in 2000 or 2004. The coal issue obviously looms large in Wyoming on top of its general libertarian brand of conservatism. And Republican Senator John Barrasso gets the prize for the most lopsided Senate victory in country, dispatching his token opponent by a 76-22 margin.
The Democrats won the national popular vote in House races yet still stand poised to win no more than 201 House seats, 17 short of a majority, as a consequence of redistricted tilting wildly in Republicans favor. That dark spot of the 2012 election is that the Democrats aren't far from their realistic ceiling in House races short of a 2006-style wave which is unlikely to happen again anytime soon, and having a ceiling of less than 205 seats means a defensive posture for the foreseeable future and few opportunities for good-faith corrections to any number of endemic problems facing the country. The Democrats need to take full advantage of their Senate majority to replace Breyer and Ginsburg on the Supreme Court in the next two years, having seen how consequential Court appointments are to the fate of any and all progressive legislation.
Overall, I'm left to wonder what it will feel like to have a status quo election. Some clueless pundits like to pretend that's what 2012 was, but 2012 was a Democratic romp. The last four elections have been either waves or mini-waves, as 2004 was the last cycle where both parties largely fought to a draw. Unfortunately, the traditional "six-year itch" in Congressional races coupled with the Democrats' brutally defensive 2014 Senate map suggests I shouldn't expect a status quo election next time either.
