| An analysis of the 2008 election results reveals a stark truth for Republican candidates looking for Obama states to flip in 2012: Minnesota won't be one of them, even if Tim Pawlenty is the Republican nominee.
Other news from the analysis: corn fields don't vote.
I took the county-by-county results and sorted them by size -- that is, the counties that produced the highest vote totals at the top, and those with the lowest totals at the bottom. Hennepin, Ramsey, Dakota, and Anoka county came out at the top, and way down at the bottom were Lake of the Woods, Red Lake, and Traverse counties.
I then produced what I'm calling "10-County-iles" -- groups of 10 counties each along the axis of this ranking, and calculated how many votes of the 2.9 million cast came from each "C-ile". The results are intuitive: the top C-ile, containing the aforementioned four counties plus Washington, St. Louis, Stearns, Olmstead, Scott, and Wright counties, produced a staggering 65% of the statewide vote -- and in those areas, President Obama beat John McCain with 57.5% of the vote.
That is what we can safely call an insurmountable advantage.
In the other 35% of the electorate, Obama held his own, getting between 45% and 50% in all remaining C-iles. For John McCain to have beaten Obama's advantage in the most populous counties, he would have had to won in all other areas with more than 63% of the vote -- which is darned near impossible.
The analysis continues after the break. |
Let's put it another way: here's a range of Democratic base advantages across Minnesota. In the following chart, we see the following figures:
| D 10-C-ile %: | Hypothetical Dem percentage in the first 10-County-ile |
| 10-C-ile D votes: | Approximate Democratic votes produced by this advantage |
| D Votes to go: | Votes from outside the first 10-County-ile the Democratic candidate needs to get to 50.5% statewide |
| 10-C-ile R: | Approximate Republican votes produced in the first 10-County-ile |
| R votes to go: | Votes from outside the first 10-County-ile the Republican candidate needs to get to 50.5% |
| R 35P Win %: | Percentage by which the Republican candidate would need to win outside the first 10-County-ile in order to overcome the Democratic candidate's advantage. |
Did I make up the terminology? Sure. But this is exactly the kind of analysis national campaign managers and field directors have to do when deciding where to focus their resources. The next step would be to apply some kind of probability matrix containing estimated turnout, base percentages, poll results, etc, to figure out which of these hypothetical First 10-C-ile models is most likely to occur. In any of these cases, the math is pretty bleak for the Republican -- in all of what have to be the most likely scenarios, the Republican has to win an absolutely insane number of rural votes to win in a squeaker.
No wonder Tim Pawlenty was telling conservative groups this week that the Republican Party needs to reach out to inner cities. Without changing the math in a dramatic way in the most populous areas, even he -- who, it's worth noting, has never gotten especially close to 50% statewide -- couldn't flip his own state.
This analysis may reveal something about the discussions that led to Sarah Palin's selection as John McCain's running mate. Although we've heard the anecdotes about the process, there was certainly math behind it -- and here it is. Tim Pawlenty would not have been the game-changing selection McCain needed -- in Minnesota, like other states, his presence on the ticket simply would not make enough voters sit up and take notice long enough to consider voting for McCain over now-President Obama.
This analysis also tells us some things we already knew: corn fields don't vote, and no matter how much Republican leaders like to denigrate urban citizens, those votes are worth just as much as rural votes. The difference is, there are a lot more people in urban and suburban areas.
The full spreadsheet can be found here. |
