There is not going to be a dump of all the polls at once at 10:30 tonight or on Sunday night. We'll be posting them one at a time as we finalize them throughout the night each of those evenings. For instance, our Oregon poll won't even be out of the field until midnight tonight so final results aren't likely until a while after that.
The first one up will be West Virginia. It doesn't look like good news but don't get flipped out about the rest of them just because of that one.
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Eh, it's cool. I don't think any of us thought we'd take WV.
Its neighbor to the left is a much bigger treasure trove.
That's alright I guess. Obama will take it during his re-election. '12 will be much like '84. Reagan didn't get them all the first time either.
I am glad you folks are working so hard. Have fun with the data! :-)
What has changed in West Virginia over the years that Dukakis was able to take it in 1988 when he only got 10 states, but the Democrats have gotten blown out there in the last couple of elections and are going to lose again probably this year? Anyone?
I would think it would be culture war stuff, but that doesn't explain Dukakis winning it.
WV was one of those yellow dog Democratic states. Gore took it for granted in 2000 and didn't start campaigning until Bush took the lead. Bush wisely campaigned there and everyone thought he was wasting this time (sort of like NC and Obama this year). But traditionally it was one of the most consistently Democratic states out there. Sort of like CA and IL being solidly Republican states for many years until Clinton turned them around.
The deal with WV: God, guns, gays. I think that when Obama proves himself to be a friend to working people, and not a secret Muslim terrorist, he will do much better in 2012. It wouldn't hurt if Obama made a few trips as President to the heart of Appalachia at the breaking ground ceremonies of a few new tech schools or clean coal processing plants or something.
I think West Virginia is one of those red states like Indiana and North Carolina where Obama could really have made some inroads and turned it into a toss-up, but it needed a lot of time to work on. They weren't even thinking about the state until pretty recently, and unfortunately it's probably too late now.
With Indiana and North Carolina, Obama had the advantage of pummeling them with ads and campaign visits for quite a while before McCain started to sweat. I think there are a lot of other red states that could have been Dem pick-ups with enough time and effort (LA, AR, MS, SD...), but there's only so much time and resources to spend.
Here's the thing. Unions aren't as big as they used to be, and WV is a labor, big union state. The shift in WV is merely a reflection of the change in values.
The republicans have been successful at attracting the social conservatives, and WV is a pretty conservative state.
For opposite reasons, you are seeing the mountain west drifting toward the left because they are becoming more diverse (huge hispanic populations) and are socially more moderate/liberal.
In summary, Democrats lost the coal union workers who are socially conservative. You barely hear Obama talk about unions, and I rarely heard kerrey talk about them either.
Indiana and NC probably made more sense to target due to the favorable demographic changes in both these states and the richer electoral votes. Indiana has 11, NC has 15, WV has 5. It's an uphill battle.
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