My friend Bob Poulsen at NowChannel.com (the artist formerly known as 2.004k.com) made an interesting observation yesterday.
Eight states that went for Gore four years ago backed Kerry by even larger margins this week: District of Columbia, Maine, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. Several of these states were key battlegrounds in which BC04 had invested considerable time and resources, but they not only didn’t close the gap, they found an even wider gap after the dust cleared.
Nine states, meanwhile, backed Bush this year by smaller margins than four years ago: Alaska, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, North Dakota, South Dakota, Virginia, and Wyoming.
Of course, some of these states — let’s call them the less-red states — are wildly out of play. No matter who our nominee is or what the national conditions, chances are very strong that the Dem presidential candidate will not be competing for Wyoming’s 3 electoral votes in 2008. Call it a hunch.
But Bob’s observation offers some valuable tips to the party. Key Midwestern states like Minnesota and Wisconsin, which BC04 half-expected to pick off, are trending stronger for the Dems, not weaker. Simultaneously, Dems are finding two key Western states — Colorado and Nevada — more appealing than ever. Kerry came up short, but these were two states the GOP had hoped to take for granted, only to find Bush’s margin shrink, not grow. Indeed, in Colorado’s case, this traditional Republican stronghold not only gave Bush a narrow win, but also elected a Dem senator (Ken Salazar) and Dem majorities in the state legislature.
Something to think about when targeting in ’08.