
 |
|
May 13, 2013
David G. Savage: Church-state, literally? Supreme Court weighing public school graduation in a church
May 10, 2013
Rabbi Berel Wein: Be all that you should be
May 8, 2013
Peter Ford: Why China is welcoming both Israel's Netanyahu and Palestinians' Abbas
Warren Richey: Obama administration quietly backs out of appeal over new contraceptive mandate
Fred Weir: At Kerry-Putin meeting, US-Russia relations thaw --- a tad
The Kosher Gourmet by Leela Cyd Ross : Almost too pretty to eat, this colorful salad with Sicilian inspiration will tickle the taste buds and delight your visual sensibility
May 6, 2013
May 3, 2013
Kids, kittens the Same? With employee perks at struggling Internet pioneer Yahoo! it's hard to tell
Sandy Kleffman: Artificial kidney offers hope to patients tethered to a dialysis machine
April 29, 2013
Roy Gutman: Poland's new Jewish museum celebrates life, doesn't revisit Holocaust
Mark Clayton: Terrorism in America: Is US missing a chance to learn from failed plots?
Kim Murphy: Boston Bomber's 'Svengali' Revealed
Pete Spotts: Tiny satellites + cellphones = cheaper 'eyes in the sky' for NASA
April 26, 2013
Clifford D. May: Defense in the Age of Jihadist Terrorism
Sharon Palmer, R.D.: How to feel your best -- with plenty of energy, a healthy weight and optimal mental and physical function -- without driving yourself batty
April 24, 2013
|
| |
Jewish World Review
August 11, 2008
/ 10 Menachem-Av 5768
The Ghosts of Political Leanings
By
Michael Barone
| 
|
|
|
|
http://www.JewishWorldReview.com |
To understand changes in the political map, we naturally tend to look for contemporary explanations. But American political alignments are not written on an empty slate. Beginnings matter, and the civic personalities of states tend to reflect the cultural folkways of their first settlers.
So I was not startled when I compared state poll results in this election with the results of the 2004 election and found patterns that reflect the surges of historic internal migration. For this year's polls, I used the results from FiveThirtyEight.com, which discounts results based on its estimates of pollsters' accuracy and the recentness of the polls. Thus, they don't fully reflect the recent tightening of the national polls.
In two broad swaths of the country, John McCain is running about as well as George W. Bush did or better. One is the route of the westward surge of New England Yankees across upstate New York, northern Ohio, southern Michigan and into northern Illinois. McCain is running ahead of Bush in Massachusetts and just 1 percent behind in New York and (despite its economic problems) Michigan. Historically, this Yankee-settled region has been turned off by Southern accents, such as Bush's Texas twang, and McCain evidently is less off-putting to its cultural liberals.
The other area in which McCain is running even with or better than Bush is the set of states settled by the Scotch-Irish stock, who thronged to the Appalachians in Colonial days and whose descendants followed the southwest path pioneered by their hero, Andrew Jackson. Barack Obama, who has lived in university communities all his adult life, did very poorly in primaries here. McCain, a career military man, runs ahead of Bush in Tennessee and Arkansas and about even in Kentucky, Missouri and Oklahoma. He's running further behind in West Virginia only because Bush ran especially well there.
Obama is distinctly ahead of John Kerry in two differently settled areas. One is what once was called the Old Northwest but could be called Germano-Scandinavian America: Wisconsin, Iowa, Minnesota, the Dakotas, Nebraska and the northern Rocky Mountain states to the west. Historically, this was a dovish, even pacifist region. It produced nearly half the 56 members of Congress who voted against declaring war in 1917, and it was the heartland of isolationism in the years before Pearl Harbor. Michael Dukakis ran well there in 1988, carrying Wisconsin, Iowa and Minnesota; Obama seems to be running similarly. There are also local factors at work. These states never have had very many blacks and have no history of racially divisive politics. And Bush did unusually well for a Republican in Montana, Wyoming and Idaho, where farmers and ranchers bitterly opposed the environmental policies of the Clinton-Gore administration, which now have faded from memory.
The other region where Obama is running better than Kerry or Al Gore is the string of states originally settled by Southern planters and their slaves from Virginia south through the Carolinas and Georgia and west to Alabama and Mississippi. None was a target state in 2000 or 2004, but culturally liberal suburbanites in northern Virginia and North Carolina's Research Triangle plus possibly higher black turnout may be moving them toward Obama.
Not all of these different shifts in opinion will alter electoral votes. McCain is not going to carry Massachusetts; Obama is not going to carry Wyoming. But they do explain why Obama is targeting North Dakota and Nebraska (where he might win the electoral votes of the Omaha and Lincoln congressional districts); why Virginia, Republican since 1968, is competitive; and why McCain is running better in economically ailing Michigan than in economically thriving Minnesota.
We like to think our political choices are rational responses to issues of today. But the numbers suggest otherwise. Indeed, they just might be linked to the distant past, to what Abraham Lincoln called "the mystic chords of memory."
Every weekday JewishWorldReview.com publishes what many in the media and Washington consider "must-reading". Sign up for the daily JWR update. It's free. Just click here.
BARONE'S LATEST
The New Americans
Now, more than ever, the melting pot must be used to keep America great. Barone attacks multiculturalism and anti-American apologists--but he also rejects proposals for building a wall to keep immigrants out, or rounding up millions of illegals to send back home. Rather, the melting pot must be allowed to work (as it has for centuries) to teach new Americans the values, history, and unique spirit of America so they, too, can enjoy the American dream.. Sales help fund JWR.
|
JWR contributor Michael Barone is a columnist at U.S. News & World Report. Comment by clicking here.
Michael Barone Archives
© 2006, US News & World Report
|
|

Arnold Ahlert
Mitch Albom
Jay Ambrose
Michael Barone
Barrywood
Lori Borgman
Stratfor Briefing
Mona Charen
Linda Chavez
Richard Z. Chesnoff
Ann Coulter
Greg Crosby
Larry Elder
Suzanne Fields
Christine Flowers
Frank J. Gaffney
Bernie Goldberg
Jonah Goldberg
Julia Gorin
Jonathan Gurwitz
Paul Greenberg
Argus Hamilton
Victor Davis Hanson
Betsy Hart
Ron Hart
Nat Hentoff
A. Barton Hinkle
Jeff Jacoby
Paul Johnson
Jack Kelly
Ch. Krauthammer
David Limbaugh
Kathryn Lopez
Rich Lowry
Michelle Malkin
Jackie Mason
Ann McFeatters
Dale McFeatters
Dana Milbank
Jeanne Moos
Dick Morris
Jim Mullen
Deroy Murdock
Judge A. Napolitano
Bill O'Reilly
Clarence Page
Kathleen Parker
Star Parker
Dennis Prager
Wesley Pruden
Tom Purcell
Sharon Randall
Robert Robb
Cokie & Steve Roberts
Heather Robinson
Debra J. Saunders
Martin Schram
Greg Schwem
Culture Shlock
David Shribman
Roger Simon
Lenore Skenazy
Michael Smerconish
Thomas Sowell
Ben Stein
Mark Steyn
John Stossel
Cal Thomas
Dan Thomasson
Bob Tyrrell
Diana West
Dave Weinbaum
George Will
Walter Williams
Byron York
ZeitGeist
Mort Zuckerman

Robert Arial
Chuck Asay
Baloo
Lisa Benson
Chip Bok
Dry Bones
John Branch
John Cole
J. D. Crowe
Matt Davies
John Deering
Brian Duffy
Everything's Relative
Mallard Fillmore
Glenn Foden
Jake Fuller
Bob Gorrel
Walt Handelsman
Joe Heller
David Hitch
Jerry Holbert
David Horsey
Lee Judge
Steve Kelley
Jeff Koterba
Dick Locher
Chan Lowe
Jimmy Margulies
Jack Ohman
Michael Ramirez
Rob Rogers
Drew Sheneman
Kevin Siers
Jeff Stahler
Scott Stantis
Danna Summers
Gary Varvel
Kirk Walters
Dan Wasserman

Tech Q&A
Mr. Know-It-All
Ask Doctor K
Richard Lederer
Frugal Living
On Nutrition
Bookmark These
Bruce Williams
|