The whole damn country is red. The democrats need to stare at this and realize that appealing to their base in major metropolitan areas ain’t gonna get it done.
There’s a map for 2000 also. Back then, Bush lost the popular vote, but won the county count 2,439 to 674. This can be blamed on morons in the boonies from now until the next election (and it sounds like that is precisely what is going to happen), but, guess what, there are people with cable and newspapers all the way out there. They can read and those that cannot can watch it all on TV and make informed decisions.
It looks like “way out there” makes up a big, fat portion of this country.
I’m just saying if the electoral college is going to move, some of these states are going to have to go Democrat and some are not even close. Whereas some that went Democrat, were close to going red.
If you think simply getting more 20-somethings out in those population centers is going to do the job next time, more power to you, but the DNC needs a new gameplan, IMO.
The DNC just needs 3% more of the Electoral vote. Or, somewhere North of 100,000 votes in freaking Ohio. If Bush hadn’t won Ohio, he would have lost, and you’d be posting here about how the RNC “needs a new gameplan.”
YOu are right. Sorry. The topics have come fast and furious here and I took a break from P&R for a breather.
Well, you can say “if” until the cows come home. If a few more had turned out this way it could have been a landslide for Bush or if all those extra Fundamentalists had gone to prayer circles then Kerry could have won by a landslide.
ANyway, I’ll go read the other thread as this was all probably covered by people smarter than me.
Oh, and no I would not. WHile I do not like Kerry, I would not want the RNC to change a thing if they lost. I just want a better Democratic nominee and a better chance of that nominee winning in 2008.
Of course, had only 129K votes switched in PA (less than in OH by both raw number and percentage of vote), we’d be looking at a 307-231 EC vote. Let’s face it, 2004 was a close election, and there’s not going to be any easy way to seperate Jesusland from the United States of Canada.
You must not spend much time in the west, then. Until you drive through it a few times, it is hard to comprehend the hundreds of unpopulated miles out there. For instance, Utah is one of the pure red states, and has a 2003 population estimate of 2,351,467. Compare that to the comparative little speck that’s Los Angeles County, where the 2003 population is 9,871,506.
We can even add in the two other pure red states, Nebraska at 1,739,291 and Oklahoma at 3,511,532, and we still are 2.2 million people short of just Los Angeles County.
Try driving across Nebraska on I-80 sometime. There is a lot of very sparesely populated land in the U.S.
I still remember the fun culture shock I inflicted when I was chatting with a fellow in the U.K. and trying to explain to him where Nebraska was in terms of some landmark he would understand. He knew where Colorado was from a ski-trip so I explained the Nebraska and Colorado where neighboring states and it was “just a quick 6 hour car trip” over to Denver from where I live in Lincoln. He got a funny disbelieving look in his face and asked me to repeat that 6 hour number. Turns out that from where we were (Slough) there is pretty much nowhere you can go that is 6 hours of driving away without leaving the country.
