Beyond Red & Blue

A subprime gazetteer

Forbes.com reports on "America's Hardest-Hit Foreclosure Spots." Detroit's Wayne County tops the list, followed by Las Vegas's Clark County. No county from New England places in the worst 50, though parts of New York are there.

Super Tuesday poll round-up, Jan. 31

As of noon, the RealClearPolitics average of polls for the Democratic nomination has Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama by 43 percent to 34 percent, but most of the polling was done before John Edwards dropped out of the race, and what will happen to his 13 percent may be crucial. Late January polls had Edwards still getting more than a quarter of the vote in Missouri and Oklahoma, but Obama whould have to inherit an overwhelming percentage of the Edwards vote to catch up to Clinton. The New York senator also has a 59-26 edge in a new poll from Tennessee. Obama can be heartened by his 43-35 lead in an aggregate of polls from Georgia and a surprising 40-40 tie in a poll from Connecticut. In the biggest state to vote next Tuesday, RealClearPolitics's average is 45 for Clinton and 33 for Obama, but the latest polls show a tightening of the race there.

On the Republican side, a big question is whether Mike Huckabee's support holds up on Tuesday. Recent polls have him above 25 percent in Alabama, Georgia, Missouri, Oklahoma, and Tennessee. If his voters drift into a choice between John McCain and Mitt Romney, how will they go? If McCain inherits the support of Rudy Giuliani and sweeps the Northeast primaries, Romney will somehow have to stop the Arizona senator from also picking up wins in the South.

The national average has McCain at 27 percent and Romney at 20 percent, with Huckabee still close behind at 19 percent. The average of California polls has McCain at 33 percent and Romney at 24 percent.

Where to find the candidates: Jan. 31

Today is all about California. Democrats Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are in Los Angeles for their first two-candidate debate, which will air at 8 p.m. on CNN. A Rasmussen poll has Clinton holding on to a three-point lead in the California primary, thanks to support from women, Latinos, and self-identified moderates.

Republican John McCain is expected to be in California to accept the endorsement of Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger. Mitt Romney is campaigning in Long Beach, Orange County, and San Diego. In the 2000 Republican primary, McCain ran strongest in the San Francisco area but also did well in San Diego; Los Angeles and Orange County were solidly for George W. Bush, and Romney clearly hopes that some anti-McCain sentiment remains there.

Arlington bets on casino revenue

Gov. Deval Patrick's proposed budget for fiscal 2009 includes revenue from casino licensing fees, even though casino gambling has not yet been approved by the Legislature (see Boston Globe story by Frank Phillips). Now town goverments may follow Patrick's lead, if a story by Shauna Stavely in the Arlington Advocate is any indication. Stavely reports that Arlington town officials are basing revenue projections on the assumption that casino money will make up for any shortfall in aid from the state lottery. Town manager Brian Sullivan says that $657,000 in local aid "depends on the casino plan," adding that "if support can't be garnered for casino revenue, then [the governor and the Legislature] need to find it somewhere else."

A reminder: Contributing writer Phil Primack examines the economic assumptions behind Patrick's casino plan in the current issue of CommonWealth.

The first since JFK...

Barring a last-minute surge for Mike Huckabee next Tuesday, or at least one brokered convention this summer, the next president of the US will be Hillary Clinton, John McCain, Barack Obama, or Mitt Romney. That means one or both of the following:

--The next president will be the first since John F. Kennedy to be elected directly from the US Senate (if it's Clinton, McCain, or Obama).

--The next president will be the first since Kennedy to be elected (not appointed, so Gerald Ford doesn't count) from the northern half of the country (if it's Clinton, Obama, or Romney).

Correction

Note that one of the Florida primary maps has been corrected. Maybe it's better not to make so many maps so quickly on a "morning after"!

Where to find the candidates: Jan. 30

Barack Obama is spending this Wednesday in pursuit of Western votes: He had a "community gathering" this morning in Denver. A recent poll gave Obama a slight lead in Colorado, which holds caucuses on Super Tuesday. Denver County backed Jerry Brown over Bill Clinton in the 1992 Democratic primary. From there, Obama heads to a rally in Phoenix. (Fun fact: Arizona is the only state outside of New England that has given victories to all four recent Democratic presidential candidates: Ted Kennedy in 1980, Michael Dukakis in 1988, Paul Tsongas in 1992, and John Kerry in 2004.)

Hillary Clinton is looking to the South, with a town hall this morning in Little Rock, Arkansas (a state she should have little trouble winning next week). Then she's off to Atlanta, where she will speak at the Georgia Democratic Party's Jefferson-Jackson Day Dinner. Georgia is another of the handful of states where Obama has caught up to her in the polls, but she may be hoping to do well in the northern part of the state now that John Edwards (from neighboring North Carolina) is out of the race.

A flurry of Florida primary maps

For the boring, vanilla maps, go to The Boston Globe (Republican results here, Democratic results here). Our four maps below are pretty self-explanatory. First, we see that for all the brouhaha over the Republican primary, Democrat Hillary Clinton polled the most votes in most of the state:

Even more worrisome for Republicans, more people participated in the Democratic primary in every county, even though the Democrats did very little campaigning here (having pledged to boycott the state because it held its primary so early) and the front-running Republicans blitzed the state with campaign events and TV commercials. I will be posting an accurate map on Dem. vs. Rep. vote shortly.

Here is the correct map. There were about 200,000 more votes in the Republican primary (1.86 million vs. 1.67 million). Still, it's notable that the Democrats outpolled the Republican in the Gold Coast and in much of the Panhandle. The GOP is becoming more reliant on the Gulf Coast and interior (which is nothing to sneeze at, in terms of possible votes).

 

On the Democratic side, Hillary Clinton got just shy of a majority (49.7 percent, according to the latest figures, to Barack Obama's 33.0 percent). Her victory was helped greatly by Broward and Palm Beach counties on Florida's "Gold Coast," which has large numbers of older voters and ex-New Yorkers. Her margin out of Miami-Dade County was not quite as impressive (she got 52 percent there, compared with 57 percent in Broward and 60 percent in Palm Beach), but it may indicate continuing strength with Latino voters. She did much less well in the northern part of the state, including Jacksonville's Duval County and Tallahassee's Leon County.

John McCain's victory in the Republican primary was also largely attributable to the votes from the Gold Coast -- especially in Miami-Dade County, which went almost unanimously for George W. Bush in 2000. (See map.) It should be noted, however, that the huge margin noted on the map was against Mitt Romney, who finished third in Miami-Dade. McCain's margin over second-place Rudy Giuliani was about 35,000 in that county, and it seems likely that if Giuliani had done better, a lot of his votes would have come out of McCain's hide. Romney may have been hoping that McCain and Giuliani were a lot closer on the Gold Coast, allowing him to win statewide on the basis of his strength on the Gulf Coast and in the Jacksonville area. It may be that Giuliani's fade in the closing days of the Florida campaign was a bigger boon to McCain than Giuliani's endorsement will be.

Super Tuesday poll round-up, Jan. 29

Averaging the six most recent national polls, RealClearPolitics has Hillary Clinton at 43 percent, Barack Obama at 33 percent, and John Edwards at 14 percent. According to polls in individual Super Tuesday states, Clinton is running best in Massachusetts (59 percent) and New York (50 percent); Obama is strongest in Georgia (41 percent) and Illinois (51 percent); and Edwards is highest in Missouri (28 percent) and Oklahoma (27 percent). California and New Jersey are the biggest battleground states, where Clinton is now running close to her national average.

On the Republican side, RCP has John McCain at 26 percent, Mike Huckabee at 20 percent, and Mitt Romney at 19 percent. McCain seems to be doing especially well in Super Tuesday states (unless there's been a very recent drop in national support that isn't yet reflected in state polls). He has 40 percent in Arizona, 31 percent in California, 39 percent in Connecticut, 31 percent in Illinois, 32 percent in New York, and 37 percent in Oklahoma.

Huckabee's support is concentrated in the South: Alabama (27 percent), Georgia (34 percent), Missouri (27 percent), and Tennessee (30 percent). Romney runs best in Colorado (43 percent) and Massachusetts (50 percent), but he's also expected to do very well in Montana and Utah (no recent polls available). That leaves Minnesota and New Jersey as key battleground states.

Pats 1, Democracy 0

The prospect of the New England Patriots capping a historic undefeated season with a victory in the Super Bowl this Sunday in Arizona already has officials discussing plans for a possible victory parade next week.  Such a celebration, the Boston Globe reports this morning, would have to take place next Tuesday because players evidently couldn't make it back to Boston for a Monday parade and eight of them must leave on Wednesday for Hawaii to play in the Pro Bowl the following Sunday.  But Tuesday also happens to be the date when Massachusetts voters (along with those in 21 other states) cast ballots in the presidential primary, raising concerns about whether hundreds of thousands of Patriots fans crowding the streets of downtown Boston might pose an obstacle to those trying to get to polling locations at Boston City Hall, the State House, and the main Boston Public Library in Copley Square. The state's chief election official, Secretary of State Bill Galvin, suggests that voting rights must come before any exercise of bragging rights:

"With all due respect to the New England Patriots - and I wish them well; I hope they win - holding the election of the next president of the United States is a little more important," said Galvin, who has been overseeing the Boston Election Department since dozens of precincts ran out of ballots in November 2006.

But Patriots mania seems to have a hold on others who perhaps ought to be sharing Galvin's concerns.  "You can't have a parade without the players," Mayor Tom Menino told the Globe, explaining why Tuesday must be parade day. Thomas Patterson, an election specialist at Harvard's Kennedy School, even gamely suggests that a parade could boost voter turnout. "Being out and being in a crowd with people talking about the election and voting may in fact help spread the word," Patterson said.  Uh huh.

Maybe a parade won't interfere with the primary (and of course if the Patriots lose there won't be a parade at all), but it seems like there's enough concern that the mayor should declare that any parade will have to wait until Wednesday.  Patriots owner Bob Kraft could even charter a private jet to whisk the eight players off to Hawaii immediately after a Wednesday parade.  You wouldn't think it's asking too much for a handful of football players to adjust their schedule a little to allow democracy to proceed unimpeded.  But evidently it is.

It is not only here, however, that football seems to be winning out over the minutiae of electing a new president.  This entry from a Houston Chronicle blog suggests the newspaper is similarly clear about its priorities, with pass patterns and point spreads deemed more worthy of coverage than the mundane matter of presidential succession. 

How much is a degree worth?

The Census Bureau has just posted new data on how educational attainment affects personal income. Among the findings: Workers with vocational education earn the most in the electronics field (an average of $3,726 per month) and the least in cosmetology ($1,861). For those with associate's degrees, engineering/drafting is the most lucrative field ($4,435), with education at the other end of the scale ($2,299).

The worth of a bachelor's degree ranges from $5,730 per month in the computer industry to $2,924 in education. For those with advanced degrees, the highest-paying field is medicine/dentistry ($10,795), and the least is liberal arts ($3,477).

Mind reading Mitt Romney

In today's Boston Globe, Peter Canellos has a good column pointing out the similarities between Mitt Romney and George Herbert Walker Bush, "both sons of prominent politicians whose careers stalled short of the presidency." But Canellos may get a little too psychoanalytical in his conclusion:

Romney clearly sees something of himself in the elder Bush. What each man probably sees is a decent, moderate man who secretly hates what he had to do to get ahead.

Romney, of course, admits no such thing, and one can make the case that he is simply an effective candidate with no reason to "secretly hate" any of his actions. But as a purely semantic matter, isn't it a bit of a contradiction to say that a "decent" person does whatever it takes to get ahead?

Lay of the Land: New York Democratic primary

Following the model of yesterday's map of California, below is a map of how New York counties have voted in the Democratic primaries of 1980, 1984, and 1992. One big difference is that New York's primary votes are highly concentrated in a small area; New York City has a much bigger footprint, electorally, than Los Angeles has in California. The percentages shown on the map refer to the share of the total votes in the 2004 Democratic presidential primary that came from each group of counties with similar voting patterns, and the dominant group includes all five boroughs of Manhattan, plus suburban Nassau, Westchester, Rockland, Orange, and Sullivan counties, as well as Rensselaer County on the Massachusetts border. Not surprisingly, this group supported the statewide winners of Ted Kennedy in 1980, Walter Mondale, in 1984, and Bill Clinton in 1992.

A subgroup of three boroughs -- the Bronx, Brooklyn, and Manhattan -- voted for Jesse Jackson in 1988, while the rest of metropolitan New York supported Michael Dukakis. Can Barack Obama take these boroughs against home state candidate Hillary Clinton? Perhaps, but they may not vote in unison: The Bronx, with its heavily Latino population, was the only county in the state to give an absolute majority to Bill Clinton over Paul Tsongas and Jerry Brown in 1992.

The second biggest grouping of counties is in dark green on our map, and it covers the cities of Buffalo and Rochester, along with the suburbs and small towns between them. Interestingly, it broke in the opposite direction from New York City in 1980, snubbing Ted Kennedy and sticking with Jimmy Carter. This coolness toward Obama's most prominent endorser, along with Hillary Clinton's close attention to upstate matters during her time in the US Senate, indicates that she should do very well here no matter what happens in NYC.

Where to find the candidates: Jan. 29

Today's New York Times has a cool map showing where the Republican presidential candidates have campaigned leading up to today's Florida primary. (Go here and look for the pop-up graphic under "Multimedia" in the left column. The Times has put more effort into making these maps than in making them easy to find.) Mitt Romney made an impressive zig-zag pattern across the entire state yesterday, while John McCain took a simpler route from Tampa to Orlando to Jacksonville.

Today, the major Republicans are still in Florida, and Democrat Hillary Clinton has an election night stop in the state, according to the Times. Meanwhile, John Edwards and Barack Obama are on the road to interior states that have primaries and caucuses on Super Tuesday, presumably trying to get some support to balance what polls suggest are double-digit leads for Clinton in California, New York,  New Jersey, and Massachusetts.

Edwards has public events in Jefferson City's Cole County, Missouri, one of his stronger counties in 2004 against John Kerry (he got 33 percent to Kerry's 40 percent); in Tulsa County, Oklahoma (which went for Wesley Clark in 2004); and in St. Paul's Ramsey County, Minnesota.

Obama is going to Butler County, Kansas (which gave a majority to Bill Clinton in its 1992 primary); and to Kansas City's Jackson County, Missouri (where Kerry beat Edwards by more than 2-to-1 in the last primary).

Lay of the land: California Democratic primary

The map below groups California's 58 counties by voting patterns in the last three competitive presidential primaries on the Democratic side: 1980, when Ted Kennedy beat Jimmy Carter (45 percent to 38 percent); 1984, when Gary Hart defeated Walter Mondale (39 percent to 35 percent); and 1992, when Bill Clinton scored a late win against Jerry Brown (48 percent to 40 percent). The map's legend shows the percentage of all votes in the 2004 Democratic primary (which John Kerry won easily) cast by each grouping of counties.

The inclusion of counties that supported Kennedy is especially interesting now that the senior senator from Massachusetts has endorsed Obama. Will he be able to transfer some of his strength in the Bay Area and in southern California (particularly among Latino voters) to Obama, or is a victory from 28 years ago just too distant to mean much next week?

Obama should do well in the orange counties (if not necessarily Orange County), since they voted for Kennedy but not for Bill Clinton; conversely, Hillary Clinton may try to mine votes in the green counties, which voted for her husband but not Kennedy. But neither grouping counts for that much. Almost two-thirds of the votes in California come from the blue and purple counties, which voted for both Kennedy and Clinton. They include all of metropolitan Los Angeles, plus the noncoastal suburbs of San Francisco. How will they break on Feb. 5?

Interesting side note: The tiniest slice of California on our map is the solitary county that voted for Carter in 1980, Mondale in 1984, and Clinton in 1992. Since those three men were the eventual Democratic nominees, California doesn't a great track record as a bellwether for the entire primary season.

Massachusetts leads the way in financial services and septic tanks

The US Census Bureau has posted a handy chart showing industries in which Massachusetts leads the nation in terms of sales per capita. (Oh, yes, there are similar charts for every other state as well.)

As of 2002, the Bay State generated more sales per capita than any other state in the categories of "wholesale electronic markets and agents and brokers," as well as portfolio management, and the manufacturing of navigational instruments. Those were the big three (generating at least $8 billion each in total sales or receipts), but Massachusetts was also tops in automotive glass replacement (not really an export business, so apparently we have a lot of broken windshields here), coin-operated laundries, septic tanks, and "diet and weight reducing centers."

Elsewhere in New England, the biggest industries in which each state finished first were: "petroleum bulk stations and terminals" in Connecticut, paper manufacturing in Maine, retail trade in mall-heavy New Hampshire, "miscellaneous manufacting" in Rhode Island (how myserious!), and computer manufacturing in Vermont.

One week before Super Tuesday

There will be lots of maps in this space before and after Super Tuesday, now that we know there will be highly competitive primaries in both parties. In the meantime, check out Dave Leip's excellent Atlas of US Presidential Politics for county-by-county results from Saturday's South Carolina Democratic primary.

Hail, hail, Freedonia!

Good magazine's Christopher Ketcham looks at the secessionist movement in Vermont. One of its leaders is 70-year-old author Kirkpatrick Sale, who wants the US out of the Green Mountains:

One day two years ago, I heard Sale speak before 1,500 attendees at a meeting of the SVR. Sale, who has the build and mien of a terrier on methamphetamine, reasoned out the desire for separation from the behemoth. "It is intolerable," he said, "for a citizen to succumb to a government that is in favor of unjust and unjustified warfare, brutal torture in defiance of all conventions, illegal detentions, the fostering of terrorism, war profiteering, sky-high trade deficits. … It is intolerable, I say, for a citizen to live under such a government, in such a country."

"But," Sale went on, "I have no intention of going to Canada, or France. I love my home, and I want to leave this country without leaving home. And the only way to do that, ladies and gentlemen, is … secession." The crowd exploded, but gently.

Sale was also an organizer of the Second North American Secession Convention, held last year in Chattanooga, Tennessee. That event was co-sponsored by the League of the South, which has a Confererate flag on its website. The League wants to separate from the US and form a Southern nation "based on its Christianist faith," with a ban on income, property, and inheritance taxes.

So if lefty Vermont and the right-wing South act in concert to become independent nations, will they immediately declare war on each other?

Miami not so nice to McCain?

Next week's Republican primary in Florida could be a key turning point in the campaign, as it's the last chance for candidates to gain momentum before the primaries on Feb. 5, or "Super Tuesday" (or "Tsunami Tuesday," or "Big Bang Tuesday," or whatever). There hasn't been a seriously contested GOP primary in Florida since 1980, when Ronald Reagan defeated the first George Bush here, so there's not a lot of geographical data to offer clues about what will happen on the 29th. But the map below shows where John McCain had pockets of strength against the second George Bush in 2000. Keep in mind that McCain had actually ended his campaign before Florida got to vote, so the 20 percent he got here seems fairly hard-core. Because of the more crowded field this time around, he may be able to win with just 10 more points statewide, or with unusually high turnout in his strongholds, notably Palm Beach County.

I've highlighted the six counties that cast more than 40,000 votes in the 2000 primary, and while McCain had pretty high support in "snowbird" counties of Broward and Palm Beach, he got very little love from the biggest county in the state, Miami-Dade. That county is famous for its high numbers of Cuban-American Republicans, and that demographic group went overwhelmingly for George W. Bush, continuing its pattern of leaning toward the more conservative candidate in Republican primaries. Can McCain do better there this year? My guess is that he doesn't have to win it, given his probable strength elsewhere on Florida's Gold Coast, but I can't see him taking the state if he can't get at least 15 percent there.

Not surprisingly, former New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is making a strong play for Miami-Dade, and he has a speech scheduled in Miami for Friday. (He'll also be in Palm Beach County's Boca Raton and in Sarasota County over the next couple of days.) McCain has a town hall meeting in Orlando on Thursday; if he can extend his base northward to Disney Country, he'll certainly be in a better position to weather a big loss in Miami. As for Mitt Romney, his schedule was not yet up at the New York Times website today, but he seems to be running a statewide campaign -- though the Gulf Coast seems especially ripe for the picking. (Northern Florida seems hospitable to Mike Huckabee, but it just doesn't cast enough votes to give him a victory statewide.)

An election rumble in Milford?

There's plenty of election action outside of the presidential primaries this spring. The Milford Daily News reports on the battle for the highway surveyor's position in that Worcester County town of 27,000. The job pays $80,000 and includes the supervision of snow plowing, street sign replacement, and other forms of upkeep on town roads. (We were surprised to learn that this is an elected position. Are there important philosophical differences on the best way to paint a crosswalk?)

The incumbent is Shelly Leclaire, whose 1999 election "marked the first time in Massachusetts history a woman was elected as a town highway department head," according to the News. She's may be challenged by Robert DeMarco, who has pulled nomination papers but hasn't made a decision on whether to run. DeMarco says he would make "smarter" purchasing decisions than Leclaire does, but the News reports on a possible handicap to his candidacy:

A former Massachusetts Highway Department director, DeMarco was fined $2,000 by the State Ethics Commission in 2003 for violating a conflict of interest rule while soliciting donations for his competitive drag racing team.

The town election is scheduled for April 7.

Lay of the land: How McCain won South Carolina

As a follow-up to this post, here is how McCain was able to put together a narrow plurality in Saturday's South Carolina Republican primary. As in 2000, McCain did best along the coast, including Charleston and resort areas such as Hilton Head. Unlike the contest of eight years ago, however, this time McCain was able to carry Lexington County, a major source of Republican votes outside of Columbia.

McCain got about 138,000 votes statewide, which was actually considerably less than the 231,000 votes he got while losing to George W. Bush. In Charleston County, his victory margin zoomed from 3,663 to 9,584, but he still got a lot fewer votes (15,155 vs. 23,516 eight years ago). But with a low turnout and a larger field of candidates (the margins on the map are over second-place finisher Mike Huckabee), McCain didn't need nearly as many votes to win.

 

Is the press doing its job? Case study 2:

More on the question of whether journalists are upstaging the candidates they cover: Matthew Ygelsias makes his case against Tim Russert:

Viewers watch a candidate getting grilled by Russert not to assess the candidate's views but to assess his or her ability to withstand the grilling. And, when this sort of toughness and sparring becomes its own reward, the vacuity of the questioning is almost guaranteed.

Is the press doing its job? Case study 1:

Was AP reporter Glen Johnson being persistent or obnoxious in repeatedly interrupting Mitt Romney at a press conference? Dan Kennedy has the video. Kennedy comes down on Johnson's side, but scroll down to the comments on his post; some people think the reporter crossed the line of professionalism.

Will New Jersey and New York decide the GOP race?

Last year, I noted that Rudy Giuliani was the only Republican presidential candidate with significant support in almost every state for which polls were available, giving him a substantial advantage in the race for the nomination. I'm not stubborn enough to say that Giuliani is still the frontrunner, but I do think that the candidate with the fewest "dead zones" (that is, states in which he is likely to get wiped out in the hunt for delegates) will win the nomination.

So I'll be watching the polls out of the Super Tuesday states of New Jersey and New York. Giuliani is dropping fast in both states, but Mitt Romney and Mike Huckabee are still below 15 percent, according to the most recent polls. (See New Jersey here and New York here, courtesy of Dave Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections.) Only John McCain has been able to rise into the 20s as a result of Giuliani's fall. McCain's inability to win a majority of registered Republicans in Michigan and New Hampshire is a sign that he has a tough road ahead, but if Romney and Huckabee are completely shut out in New Jersey and New York, I don't see how either can win the nomination (because I think McCain could pick up some delegates practically everywhere). The question after Michigan: Can Romney finally start to peel away Giuliani supporters in the Northeast?

The GOP's three-way fight

The Boston Phoenix's David Bernstein gives John McCain better odds to survive the Republican-voters-only primaries than I do, but his breakdown of the GOP primary electorate into three groups makes sense to me.

Clinton's Michigan majority

Because she was the only major candidate on the ballot in Michigan, Hillary Clinton's main rival was the number 50. Getting less than half of the vote would have been a major humiliation for Clinton -- and a boost for Barack Obama, who did not campaign here. But Clinton got a comfortable 55 percent, and the map below shows that Macomb County (the more blue-collar of the two major counties in suburban Detroit) gave her a sizable advantage; she got 64 percent of the vote there and roughly a quarter of her statewide raw-vote margin over the dreaded 50 percent level. Flint's Genesee County and industrial Monroe County also gave her strong support. As in New Hampshire, Clinton seems to have done best in white working-class communities.

The "uncommitted" (i.e., Obama) vote beat Clinton in Ann Arbor's Washtenaw County and in three rural counties in the far north. In Detroit's Wayne County, Clinton got 50.07 percent of the vote (according to complete but preliminary returns). Exit polls suggested that a large majority of black voters went for the "uncommitted" line, but they weren't enough to take the state's largest county away from Clinton.

What happened to McCain in Michigan?

How did John McCain go from an eight-point victory in the 2000 GOP presidential primary to a nine-point loss this year? The short answer is low turnout. The number of votes cast in the primary slid from 1,324,732 to 867,541, and most of McCain's votes from 2000 seem to have vanished this year. While the Democratic primary didn't get much attention this year (with Hillary Clinton the only major candidate on the ballot), there wasn't a Democratic primary at all in 2000, so it was inevitable that fewer independents would be available to McCain this year.

The map below shows where McCain suffered the greatest losses in votes; the top three counties in terms of a percentage decrease and in terms of a raw-vote decrease are noted. Detroit's Wayne County and surrounding Macomb and Oakland counties cut McCain's total the most. (For complete county-by-county totals, go to the Boston Globe or Dave Leip's Atlas of US Presidential Elections.)

As seen below, Mitt Romney did considerably better at keeping anti-McCain votes from 2000 (which went to George W. Bush), especially in metropolitan Detroit. Overall, he got about 212,000 fewer votes than Bush did, but that was only a little more than half of McCain's loss.

The result is that McCain lost ground everywhere except a handful of counties outside the Detroit orbit.

Michigan primary: Top vote-getters by county

I'll be adding more maps interpreting the Michigan primary over the next day or two, but here's a simple one to start with, showing which candidate got the most votes from the combined Democratic and Republican contests in each county. (In Ann Arbor's Washtenaw County, the "uncommitted" vote on the Democratic side came out on top.) The five counties that cast the most votes in the 2004 general election are labeled by name.

If John McCain does not get the Republican nomination, those green counties could be important in November. But Macomb and Oakland counties, in suburban Detroit, are almost always crucial in close presidential elections: In 2004, George W. Bush won the former by only 6,000 votes and lost the latter by 2,000 votes.

The Michigan results and the independent voter's dilemma

When a demographic group gets bigger, it usually becomes more powerful politically, but there is one major exception in the United States: voters who don't identify with either major party. The results of yesterday's presidential primary in Michigan seem to confirm that idea, as independents were on the wrong side of both the Democratic and Republican contests. According to CNN exit polls, 51 percent of independents voting on the Democratic side chose "uncommitted" over Hillary Clinton (Barack Obama wasn't on the ballot), but 60 percent of self-identified Democrats went for Clinton. On the Republican side, independents voted for John McCain over Mitt Romney, 35 percent to 29 percent, but GOP regulars went 41-24 for Romney.

The pattern is becoming clear. Also according to CNN, in the Iowa caucuses Obama beat Clinton handily among independents but had a statistically insignificant edge among Democrats, while Mike Huckabee carried registered Republicans but lost independents to Ron Paul. In New Hampshire, Obama and McCain won independents, but Clinton and Romney won party regulars.

That means the smart money is against Obama and McCain in the long run. They may win a few more primaries in which independents are allowed to vote, but Clinton and Romney (or, less likely, Huckabee) can probably pull ahead in the delegate race thanks to primaries and caucuses that are open only to registered party members. (See a list at CQ.com.) They include Colorado, New Jersey, New York, and Oklahoma on February 5 ("Super Tuesday") and Pennsylvania on April 22 (in case the nominations aren't settled by then).

So how would the growing bloc of independent voters react if they're repeatedly trumped by loyalist Democrats and Republicans? I can think of several scenarios. (1) Independents could turn to a third candidate, such as Michael Bloomberg, in November. (2) They could lobby state legislatures to open all presidential primaries so that independents can vote in them in the future. (3) They could form a unified bloc and concentrate their vote in either the Democratic or Republican primaries, depending on the candidates. (4) They could give up the independent option and drift back into the two major parties, trying to change them from within.

Of course, there's also scenario (5): Independents simply don't vote. 

The subprime virus

Writing for the Atlantic, Matthew Yglesias points out that the subprime mortgage crisis is beginning to affect people who have the misfortune to live near people who made unfortunate decisions:

...the crisis is harming the neighbors of people in foreclosure, even those who aren’t having trouble making loan payments. According to one academic study, every foreclosure reduces the value of all other houses within an eighth of a mile by about 1 percent, as the sight of vacant property scares off potential buyers. Combine that with a market already in decline, and neighborhoods that begin to have troubles can go off the cliff. On the street pictured [see link], three houses not in foreclosure have been languishing on the market for 72, 97, and 149 days; asking prices along the cul-de-sac vary widely, but average about $40,000 less than the comparable prices in the first two quarters of the year.

This phenomenon seems to be strongest in fast-growing, middle-class areas with new housing, such as parts of Florida and Nevada. Yglesias includes a map of the hotspots, along with a map of one hard-hit street in Three Lakes, Florida.

Presidential primaries in our 10 political regions

For those interested in our 10-region political map, I have added statistics, in a downloadable Word file, on how each region voted in the 2000 Democratic and 2004 Republican primaries. These aren't as definitive as general election data, since I only included results from early primaries (before the runner-up dropped out of the race). It's quite possible that this year will see many more competitive primaries, and thus a national map of primary results with some value.

Lay of the Land: South Carolina GOP primary

John McCain can go a long way toward nailing down the Republican presidential nomination by winning Saturday's primary in South Carolina, the state in which he suffered his most serious loss to George W. Bush in 2000. Eight years ago, McCain got 42 percent of the vote in South Carolina's GOP primary (which is not restricted to registered Republicans, as in some states) to Bush's 49 percent. But with more credible candidates running this time, 42 percent is probably enough for a victory.

The map below is pegged to that 42 percent figure. Green counties are where McCain ran ahead of his statewide average in 2000, and purple counties are where he did worse than his statewide average. McCain did best in the fast-growing coastal counties, including Charleston and Beaufort (which includes the resort area of Hilton Head), perhaps because this area has a lot of ex-Northerners who have relatively moderate views on social issues. Though the Navy and Air Force no longer maintain large military bases here, a large veterans' population probably also helped the Arizona senator. But McCain did poorly in blue-collar, religiously conservative Greenville and Spartanburg counties (once a major textile manufacturing area but now also the home of several auto-assembly plants) and in the suburbs of Columbia, the state's largest city. (Columbia's Richland County was something of a bellwether, giving McCain 44 percent of the vote.) These areas seem like a natural constituency for Mike Huckabee, who is likely to be McCain's chief rival in South Carolina.

If McCain can improve on his 2000 showing in Greenville and Spartanburg, he will probably win the primary and also do well in future Southern primaries. Conversely, if Huckabee can win on the coast, he probably can win in similar fast-growing parts of the South, such as in coastal Florida and in the parts of Virginia now within the orbit of Washington, DC.

Nifty Nutmeg State maps

Thanks to Walking the Berkshires, I've discovered the Connecticut Local Politics site, which has some great maps of past elections in the Nutmeg State -- as well as the cartograph shown below. There's also analysis and comments on all kinds of state and national topics. (Excitement is building over the prospect of presidential primaries that may matter this year.)

Lay of the Land: Michigan GOP primary

After winning the New Hampshire primary for the second time, next week John McCain will try to repeat his 2000 win in Michigan. The map below gives some idea of his geographic base. Green shaded counties are where McCain got at least 50 percent of the vote in 2000 (when he beat George W. Bush by a 49-41 margin); purple counties are where he got less than half of the vote.

McCain's biggest margins came in Washtenaw County (including the college city of Ann Arbor), Ingham County (including the state capital of Lansing), and Kalamazoo County (home of Pharmacia-Upjohn). These are relatively liberal and Democratic counties, and McCain's large vote totals came largely from independents voting in the Republican primary. But McCain also won most of the more sparsely populated counties in the north, including those on the Upper Peninsula. This coalition of rural areas and smaller white-collar cities is similar to McCain's winning coalition in New Hampshire. It may help him eke out a win here next Tuesday, but not too many primaries after Michigan have such advantages for him (many are restricted to Republican Party registrants).

McCain's weakest areas, where opponents Mike Huckabee and Mitt Romney will presumably be concentrating, were in the southwest and in the Detroit suburbs. He fell far short of a majority in Kent County (including Grand Rapids) and Ottawa County. In Oakland County, which includes the Detroit suburbs of Farmington Hills and Pontiac, he got 48 percent of the vote, but this is usually the second-biggest source of Republican primary votes in the state, so a drop of a single percentage vote can cost thousands of votes. (In Detroit's Wayne County, the biggest county in the state, McCain got almost exactly 50 percent.)

Some questions for Tuesday: Will McCain keep his base in Ann Arbor and Lansing, or are voters there so committed to the Democratic candidates that they won't show up? (There is a Democratic race on Tuesday, but Hillary Clinton is the only active candidate on the ballot.) Will Huckabee peel socially conservative voters away from McCain in the rural north? And can Romney bring out voters in his natural base of suburban Detroit? Or have too many high-education, high-income voters in that area drifted into the Democratic Party -- which may have been the case in southern New Hampshire?

UPDATE: Newspapers in Grand Rapids and Oakland County have just endorsed Romney, underscoring that these areas are McCain's weakest in the state. However, the two daily newspapers in Detroit have endorsed McCain. My prediction: If Wayne County again produces the biggest number of votes in the Republican primary, McCain wins. If more votes in the primary come from Oakland County, Romney wins.

Hillary Rodham Gore?

A few days ago I wondered whether Hillary Clinton could replicate the geographical pattern that gave Al Gore a narrow margin over Bill Bradley in the New Hampshire primary eight years ago. Turns out the answer was "yes," as the maps below indicate. Gore won in 2000 by 6,395 votes; with a larger turnout, Clinton upped that figure to 7,667. Her largest margins among individual cities and towns were in Manchester, Nashua, Salem, Rochester, and Berlin, all carried by Gore in 2000. In Manchester, the state's biggest city, her margin of 3,110 was almost identical to Gore's margin of 3,151. But Nashua gave her an extra boost: a margin of 2,116, up from 1,047. Obama's biggest margins were in Hanover, Keene, Durham, Concord, and Portsmouth. Eight years ago, Bradley carried only the two college towns (Hanover and Durham) in this group, so Obama certainly made progress outside of the establishment-Democrat base in southeastern New Hampshire. But Clinton had even better luck in getting more votes out of the communities that put Gore over the top, so she took first place.

 

The disappearance of Mitt Romney's New Hampshire

As I noted last night, Hillary Clinton's suprising win in the New Hampshire primary may be linked to Mitt Romney's surprisingly weak (by historical standards) showing in the state's most populous region, which comprises the cities and bedroom communities in a triangle between Manchester, Nashua, and the coast. The maps below show which candidate has won the most votes in each city and town, regardless of party affiliation, in the last five elections when both parties had contested primaries. In each case, dark blue is used for the more liberal or reformist Democratic candidate (Barack Obama this year), with light blue for the more centrist or establishment Democrat (Clinton this year), light red for the more centrist Republican (John McCain this year), and dark red for the more conservative Republican (Romney this year).

The most striking change in 2008 is that the top two vote-getters were Democrats, even though the top vote-getter was a Republican from 1980 through 2000. Now most of the state is blue, and even though Obama lost, he outpolled McCain in dozens of smaller communities where the Republican had come out on top in 2000. More important, in terms of the number of votes, Clinton outpolled everyone else on the ballot in larger southeastern communities that had been solidly for Ronald Reagan in 1980. During the 1970s and 1980s, southern New Hampshire was almost a bit of the American West in New England, with strong libertarian and anti-tax policies. Now it resembles Long Island and Westchester County in New York: more fiscally conservative and socially cautious than the nearby big city (in this case, Boston) but increasingly supportive of Democratic candidates. That was bad news for Romney, who needed to win big in former Reagan strongholds like the town of Derry -- where he beat McCain by a margin of 2,093 to 1,760 but fell short of Clinton's 2,387. (For town-by-town results, go to Boston.com.)

Did Romney cost Obama the New Hampshire primary?

Hillary Clinton seems to have narrowly upset Barack Obama in the New Hampshire Democratic primary, while John McCain beat Mitt Romney by a comfortable margin on the Republican side. Interestingly, McCain seems to be a distant third, behind Clinton and Obama, in the total number of votes cast today. (He was first by this measure in 2000, the last time both parties had competitive primaries here.)

Clinton's win is attributable to her strong showing in the southeastern part of the state, which includes lots of people who used to live in Massachusetts. This area has traditionally been very Republican, very conservative, and very anti-tax. It should have been big for Romney, but my suspicion is that the area has been moving toward the Democratic Party and toward the political center over the past few years. It's quite possible that these new Democratic primary voters (many of them independents) broke for Clinton. Perhaps if Romney had run for president as he had run for governor in Massachusetts, as a social and fiscal moderate, he might have kept enough of those voters from Clinton and given Obama a victory on the Democratic side.

The California test

Watch for dozens of polls in Super Tuesday states to come out a week or so after the New Hampshire primary results come in tonight. The biggest signal of how competitive things are going to be on the Democratic side may be the Super Tuesday state of California, where Hillary Clinton has been leading Barack Obama by double digits for a year (see a roundup of polls on Dave Leip's site). If Obama wins big in New Hampshire and Clinton decides that Obama has the South Carolina primary locked up, her internal polls in California may be the deciding factor in whether she continues her campaign.

Will Hillary play in Gore's New Hampshire strongholds?

As we wait for the New Hampshire results, we can ponder the map from the last tight Democratic primary here, when Al Gore defeated Bill Bradley by about 6,000 votes (76,897 to 70,502). Gore, like Hillary Clinton now, was the quasi-incumbent fighting off a challenge from the reformist left. Most of his margin came from three cities in the south: Manchester, Nashua, and Rochester. History suggests that Clinton will need to come out of each city with a comfortable margin in order to prevail statewide.

Bradley, by contrast, nearly pulled off an upset by winning most of the small towns to the north and west of Manchester, plus some college towns and seacoast communities. His biggest margins were in Hanover, Durham, and Exeter, but none gave him more than a 713-vote edge. If Barack Obama wins any of these by four digits, he may be on his way to an Iowa-size victory.

The mid-sized cities of Concord and Portsmouth, by the way, mirrored the state pretty closely that year, giving narrow margins to Gore. Will they be bellwethers again in 2008?