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Are We A Red State Or Not?

By Kleinheider Posted on January 28, 2009 at 10:35 pm

Yet another analysis:

Tennessee moved only slightly less to the Democratic column between 2002 and 2008 than did the “new blue” Southern states of Virginia and North Carolina. Note that many of those old-school Dixiecrats moved to the GOP between 1993 and 2002 - it’s unlikely that people moved TOWARD the Democratic Party in the last few years just to vote Republican.

Keep this data in mind when you think about elections going forward. We are not a hopelessly red state. Our state’s political leaning is NOT reflected in the new State Senate or State Legislature. Nor was it reflected in the Presidential election of 2008.

Democrats lost in Tennessee for other reasons - failure to mobilize for this election, poor messaging, weak GOTV, etc. We can debate all those things with the new TNDP chair.

But remember this: Tennessee does not have a shortage of Democratic-identifying adults.

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One Responses to “Are We A Red State Or Not?”

  1. Begala-Carville writes
    January 29th, 2009 7:32 am

    Whoa, Nellie! There are all sorts of problems with using Gallup as a predictor of elections. Gallup polls everyone - not just people registered to vote and definitely not likely voters - and Republicans are more likely to vote. Gallup also counts leaners, which, by their own admission, skews the results by a couple of points to the Democratic column. Also, this is a statewide poll. The results don’t necessarily hold for any given area. For example, 48 percent of Tennesseans statewide might self identify as Democrats, but that doesn’t mean that 48 of people in Murfreesboro self identify as Democrats.

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