Conservative Blog

Note: In addition to taking a close look at what separates the candidates on the big issues, we’re going to be looking at the Electoral College race. We’ll update the predictions as circumstances change; for example, VP selections. We started off by giving Obama an automatic 3 electoral point lead for the District of Columbia. Outside of D.C. we’ve given New Hampshire’s 4 electoral votes to John McCain.

Recent History:
Pennsylvania is consistently tossed out as a battleground state, but should be a prime candidate for moving into the “strong Democrat” category, having only gone to the Republican candidate in the four largest conservative sweeps in recent history. In fact, in the last ten presidential elections, PA has gone Democrat more often than California. PA voted for Al Gore and John Kerry, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and even Hubert Humphrey in 1968. We’ll give the +2% (with 3% being the maximum) to Obama.

Primaries:
Republicans: By the time of the primary in PA, McCain was essentially uncontested, though Huckabee and Paul were still on the ballet. Still, it was somewhat surprising to see that 27% of conservative voters decided to vote for someone other than McCain. The primary was not well attended by Republicans; still, having over a quarter of voters bother to cast what amounted to a protest vote is at least a little significant. We’ll give McCain no points for winning this primary.

Democrats: PA is Clinton country and showed it during the primary, famously going 58% to 42% in favor of Hillary despite Philadelphia going to Obama by 30%. Prior to Clinton dropping out of the race, she consistently showed better in the national election than Obama. While history has shown that coming in second during a primary isn’t a great hindrance within a state (those voters have to go somewhere, after all, and are much more likely to stick with their party’s nomination) we can’t give any points to Obama in this case. He was clearly not the choice of PA Democrats.

National Mood:
President: To avoid rehashing this with every state, we’ll just say that the country is pretty annoyed with President Bush. The economy is struggling under ridiculous gas and food prices, and the war on terror has been so successful that the country has grown weary of it. Pennsylvania has a tendency to track just below the national average in Bush’s approval ratings. Given the national mood and where PA tends to fall in surveys of this sort, we’ll give +3% to Obama.

Nitty Gritty:
In the primaries, McCain fared best in the most liberal portions of the state, around Philadelphia, where he doesn’t stand a chance in the November election. Looking to the more conservative middle and western portions of PA, we see his totals in some counties dropping below 70%. Essentially, he is strong where it hardly matters and weak where he needs to be strong. The state is at around 10% African-American, slightly below average, but only around 4% Hispanic, which is well below average. Conventional wisdom expects McCain to get more of the Hispanic vote than Obama, so this is another factor against McCain in PA. We’ll go +2% to Obama.

Bottom Line:
Despite all of this, Bush lost both the 2000 and 2004 elections by relatively narrow margins. In 2000, he lost by 4.17%; in 2004, by only 2%. There is a diehard crew of conservatives in PA who have shown up on election day and made it close. Nevertheless, it doesn’t appear as though McCain has, as of yet, inspired this core. Even if he manages it, it appears it would be a fruitless attempt. Pennsylvania only goes for the Republican when nearly everyone else does, too. Unless something dramatic happens, this looks to be a wider Democrat victory than in the previous two elections. We’ll go with +7% to Obama.

6-12-2008: Pennsylvania, 21 Electoral College votes to Obama.

Current CP total: McCain 4, Obama 24.

(Note: In addition to taking a closer look at what separates the candidates on the big issues, we’re now going to begin looking at the Electoral College race. We’ll update the predictions as circumstances change; for example, VP selections--I'm not going to try to take into account all the possibilities now. We’re going to start off by giving Obama an automatic 3 electoral point lead for the District of Columbia. Yes, it’s a shaky limb, but someone has to go out on it.)

New Hampshire Presidential Election History

Recent History:
Seven out of the last 10 elections went to the Republicans; however, three of the last 4 went to Democrats. How much of a trend is this? Well, after the first Bush presidency, NH went for Clinton and stayed with Clinton, as did many states, during the Clinton reelection. Several fairly conservative states abandoned Bush Sr. in 1992 and stayed the course in 1996. The 2004 election was a little different, however, as the conservative power states stuck with Bush despite his unpopularity, while NH went with Kerry (a nearly indefensible selection by the Democrats) though only by about 9000 votes. I have to think that one would still consider NH a slight conservative lean given that they very nearly voted for Bush twice, but I can’t really justify it either way. We’ll call this even.

Primaries:
Republicans: In the 2000 Republican primary, NH went for John McCain over George Bush by 19%. In 2004 Bush was unopposed. In 2008 McCain took on a crowded and confused field that still included Guiliani, a well-loved moderate who, despite not really bothering to campaign, took 9%, Thompson, Paul and Huckabee. McCain ended up beating Romney by 5%. A brief look at the history seems to point to McCain being New Hampshire’s pick whenever he’s been available. We’ll give a +2% to McCain.

Democrats: As was seen earlier, NH liked Bill Clinton quite a bit (despite voting for Paul Tsongas in the 1992 primary) and came out for Hillary in 2008, though only by 2%. The state has an amazingly low number of minorities, with African Americans coming in at about 1%, so Barrack Obama can’t count on a lot of built-in help here. Not being the state’s pick in the primary is not hardly a nail in the coffin (see Tsongas/Clinton above), especially since the race was this close. Yet this Democratic primary is especially contentious, with one disaffected group battling against another. And only one of these disaffected groups lives in New Hampshire. With McCain being moderate and well-liked in New Hampshire, I’m going to have to put this one at +2% to McCain.

National Mood:
President: The electorate tends to have a short memory of positive results and a slightly longer one over negative results. Given that the circumstances behind such results are almost always glossed over, and even with our short memory spans, it’s hard to imagine that there aren’t people out there thinking on how nice things were under the Clinton administration versus the Bush administration. There’s no nice way to put it. At this time, it’s hard to imagine the country being less behind President Bush. That has to have an impact. And New Hampshire, despite being an extraordinarily wealthy state, tends to track right along with the rest of the country in their presidential approval ratings. It’s one of the things that makes NH such a bellwether swing state. I tend to want to go with more than the self-imposed maximum of +3% to Obama except that McCain is such a different candidate than Bush. The Democrat calls of this being a third term for Bush are not overly effective. Still, Bush is extraordinarily unpopular. Let’s stick with +3 to Obama.

Nitty Gritty:
In the primaries, McCain won all the NH counties that Obama won plus a couple of Clinton’s counties. The significance here is that all of the strong Obama counties are somewhat neutralized by the fact that McCain also won there. McCain won three counties Clinton won, and Clinton won the two counties where McCain lost. This means that there could be more voters who have to pick a new candidate in areas that McCain is either slightly favored (where McCain and Clinton both won), or where no primary preference was shown (neither McCain nor Obama won) and, again, the many Clinton voters are not overly happy with Obama at this point. We’ll go +2% to McCain.

Bottom Line:
New Hampshire is the quintessential swing state that could reasonably be expected to go either way. The state voted for Bush in 2000 then for Kerry (by 9000 votes) in 2004. They basically start with a clean slate. One would assume that this naturally favors the Democratic candidate in 2008, but McCain is a popular figure in the state and there might be some fall-out from a contentious Democratic primary. Considering demographics and detailed primary results, this looks like a McCain state. We’ll have to come back and revisit this if circumstances or moods change, but right now it looks like an okay lean, maybe +3%, to John McCain. The most current Real Clear Politics average at this point has McCain up by 1.4%, thought the latest poll, by Rasmussen, has Obama up by 5. Expect there to be a temporary bump in most of these polls now that Obama has “officially” won the party nomination.

John McCain wins New Hampshire's 4 Electoral Votes:
Current CP total: McCain 4, Obama 3.