The 2008 election and the political geography of the new democratic majority

Polity

Volumn 41, Issue 3, 2009, Pages 368-387

  Hopkins, David A ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA   (United States)

Author keywords

2008 election; Campaigns; Elections; Political geography; Political parties; Regionalism

Indexed keywords

EID: 68249132577     PISSN: 00323497     EISSN: 17441684     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1057/pol.2009.5     Document Type: Article

References (20)

1. Adam Nagourney, "Obama: Racial Barrier Falls in Decisive Victory," The New York Times, November 5, 2008, A1.
2. Scott Helman and Michael Kranish, "Historic Victory," The Boston Globe, November 5, 2008, A1.
3. "A Masterclass in Democracy," The Times (London), November 6, 2008, 2.
4. "Barack Obama's Triumph of Hope," The Toronto Star, November 5, 2008, AA08.
5. The District of Columbia, which casts three electoral votes, is considered a state for the purposes of this article unless specifically noted otherwise.
6. Gary C. Jacobson. "Polarized Politics and the 2004 Congressional and Presidential Elections." Political Science Quarterly 120 (Summer 2005): 199-218, at 199.
7. As of April 2009, the outcome of the 2008 U.S. Senate race in Minnesota, a narrow Democratic victory according to the official state canvass, has been formally contested by the Republican candidate. Figures in this article assume that the election is ultimately decided in favor of the Democrat.
8. A typical exercise in this genre is David Brooks, "One Nation, Slightly Divisible," The Atlantic Monthly, December 2001, 53-65.
9. Only three states voted for different parties in the two elections (Iowa, New Hampshire, and New Mexico), the fewest since 1904 and 1908.
10. Morris P. Fiorina, Samuel J. Abrams, and Jeremy C. Pope, Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America (New York: Pearson Longman, 2005);
11. Stephen Ansolabehere, Jonathan Rodden, and James M. Snyder Jr.,"Purple America," Journal of Economic Perspectives 20 (Spring 2006): 97-118.
12. Darshan J. Goux, "Grading the Battleground: A New Measure of Presidential Campaign Activity in the States," Paper Presented at the Annual Meetings of the American Political Science Association, Philadelphia, PA (August 2006).
13. Martin P. Wattenberg, The Decline of American Political Parties, 1952-1996 (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998);
14. Walter Dean Burnham, "The Reagan Heritage," in The Election of 1988: Reports and Interpretations, ed. Gerald M. Pomper (Chatham, NJ: Chatham House, 1989), 1-33.
15. Kevin P. Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1969);
16. William Schneider, "The Suburban Century Begins," The Atlantic Monthly, July 1992, 33-44.
17. New York lost two House seats after the 2000 national census.
18. DW-NOMINATE scores from www.voteview.com. For an explanation of the methodology used to calculate these scores, see Keith T. Poole and Howard Rosenthal, Ideology and Congress (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2007).
19. The Republican Party briefly achieved the same feat following the 1952 election.
20. A viewpoint captured most prominently in Thomas Frank, What's the Matter with Kansas? How Conservatives Won the Heart of America (New York: Henry Holt, 2004).