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Post-Election Hangover
by Mountain Girl ~ November 6th, 2008. Filed under: Election.
I’m in a post-election stupor. Is anyone else feeling the same? I’m still scouring the internet for polls and tracking results per state and per county and I noticed something. Despite the fact that the Philadelphia suburbs by-and-large voted for Obama, folks in Pittsburgh’s suburban oasis did not. Robinson Township, Fox Chapel, most of Sewickley and Kennedy and Moon Townships overwhelmingly went for McCain. In contrast, Obama dominated every Ward in Pittsburgh.It seems too simple to attribute it to race. Or maybe I just don’t want to acknowledge the fact that family and friends living in suburban areas heard racial slurs while waiting in line to vote. Or is it a class divide?
Thoughts?
November 6th, 2008 at 10:30 pm
I think it has more to do with taxation than racism.
November 6th, 2008 at 11:34 pm
Fox Chapel is hugely Republican to begin with — Teresa Heinz Kerry might be the only Dem living there. Moon, Robinson, at the outlying counties like Westmoreland and Beaver have been trending Republican for three presidential cycles, even as the Philly suburbs have been doing the exact opposite.
Where was race / racism a factor? One way to gauge this is to look at which counties McCain did substantially better than Bush did 5 years ago. That is, if McCain outperformed Bush by 3 or even 5 percent, it might be a statistical anomally. If he outperformed Bush by 10, 15, 20 percent, there’s probaby something else at play, and it suggests that people who voted for Kerry last time voted for McCain this time. Here’s a map that illustrates where that happened:
http://www.politico.com/blogs/bensmith/1108/The_footnote.html?showall
Whaddya know, the crescent runs through Texas, Arkansas, and right up through Appalachia, and into Southwestern Pennsylvania. Pay particular attention to the dark pinks and reds.
Apart from race — and apart from the Catholic vote, the labor vote, the Hispanic vote, the women’s vote, and any other voting bloc you could think of — this was an election that truly belongs to the young voters. Without the people aged 18-29 breaking for Obama by a 2-1 margin, he loses Florida, and probably loses Ohio and Indiana, all older states, and may have lost close states like Virginia or North Carolina.
Kerry carried the same bloc by +9; Obama carried it by +34.
That swing in the 18-29 group, from +9 (Kerry) to +34 (Obama), accounts for as much as 4.3 percent of Obama’s popular vote margin. The pop. vote percentage was 52.4 - 46.3, Obama. If Obama had received Kerry’s level of support among 18-29 year-olds, which was about 54-45, that means Obama’s national share would have dropped to 50.3, and McCain’s would have risen to 48.5. Instead of being +6.1, Obama is +1.8. That’s a 4.3 percent swing, attributable solely to the change in youth vote from Kerry to Obama.
That’s supposing the youth share of the total electorate remains constant, at 17 percent. If the youth vote is closer to 18 percent, that means the youth vote was that much more important — the result would have been 50.2, to 49.0, everything else remaining equal, and that 1.2 percent gap surely would have cost Obama in some of the older states (Indiana, Florida) and swing states. I’d have to review the state-by-state exit numbers to see what might have happened if Obama had merely received Kerry’s support in the 18-29 group, but if nothing else, the national tally would have been much closer.
What I’m saying is, young America ought to be proud of itself.
November 7th, 2008 at 9:42 am
I’m 22 years old and I can tell you that most of the people around my age that I know were voting for obama, with the exception of about 20% voting for mccain
November 7th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Interesting post Bleek - Question for you. How does the fact that most younger voters supported Obama explain the different results we see in the suburbs of Pittsburgh vs. the suburbs of Philly? I would guess that a significant portion of young voters in the Pittsburgh area actually live outside the city limits - in red (McCain) territory.
November 7th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
maybe your guess is just that. a guess. Bleeker seems to have stats to back up his comments…???
November 7th, 2008 at 6:27 pm
>>>> Interesting post Bleek - Question for you. How does the fact that most younger voters supported Obama explain the different results we see in the suburbs of Pittsburgh vs. the suburbs of Philly? I would guess that a significant portion of young voters in the Pittsburgh area actually live outside the city limits - in red (McCain) territory.
I don’t know why you would guess that. Pittsburgh is younger than its suburbs. It is younger than Allegheny County as a whole (Pittsburgh’s median age is about 37, to Allegheny County’s 42, I think. Check the 2006 Census estimates for confirmation.) Pittsburgh is younger than all of the suburban counties (Beaver, Butler, Westmoreland, Armstrong, Washington, all of which have median ages between 41 and 45.) Pittsburgh has natural youth vote deposits (Oakland, with its universities and post-grad students, plus rental markets like the South Side, Lawrenceville, even Mount Washington). I don’t think there is a significant portion of the 18-31 vote lying in the red suburbs, and even if there is, it’s certainly not enough to overcome the far-more-significant over-55 vote in these counties, which are some of the oldest counties in the U.S.
>>> How does the fact that most younger voters supported Obama explain the different results we see in the suburbs of Pittsburgh vs. the suburbs of Philly?
As to your first point, the diverging political preferences separating Philly’s suburbs and Pittsburgh’s, that’s an ongoing shift. Philly has been trending D for three presidential cycles. Pittsburgh’s suburbs have been trending R, at least in presidential elections, for years. Beaver, Westmoreland, Cambria have all been voting on social issues in greater numbers since the 1980s brought us the Reagan Democrat phenomenon. This election was the continuation of that trend.
I’m not sure what age has to do with it, but if you were trying to imply, in a round-about way, that Philly’s suburban counties are younger than Pittsburgh’s, you are right. Bucks, Berks, Delaware, Montgomery and Chester County all have median ages below 38.
November 7th, 2008 at 7:04 pm
I think this website has a policy against links or something. I just wrote a post with links to back up my “guess” and it has disappeared into cyberspace.
I’m not going to type it out again. Anyways, Bleek said…
I don’t know why you would guess that. Pittsburgh is younger than its suburbs.
While you are correct that the percentage of the population 20-34 years old in Pittsburgh is higher in the city vs. Allegheny county. (by about 5%). There are three times as many young (20-34) voters outside the city limits. (approximately 80k vs. 250)
I think it is simple to say that one factor like age, race, or even income would explain our voting pattern in Western Pennsylvania. That would be dismissing many other factors that shape the way the people of Western Pennsylvania think (and vote).
November 7th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
That Dude. We do have a policy against comments with more than one link as do 99.9% of all blogs. We kinda have to because it stops spam. On average we get hit with about 20 spam comments a day.
November 9th, 2008 at 11:47 am
>>> I think it is simple to say that one factor like age, race, or even income would explain our voting pattern in Western Pennsylvania. That would be dismissing many other factors that shape the way the people of Western Pennsylvania think (and vote).
Well, I certainly agree with that. We’re an awfully weird place.
But I do not agree that the presence of 250,000 “youth” voters in the suburbs somehow makes those places young, because by every possible metric, those places are older than Pittsburgh — both the suburban Allegheny County communities, and the rest of the suburban counties (Beaver, Westmoreland, etc). 250,000 is a meaningless number until it’s compared the rest of the electorate — merely demonstrating that there are numerically more 18-31-year-olds in the suburbs than in the city does not prove that those suburban youth numbers are substantial within their own communities, and it definitely doesn’t mean that these places are comparably young to Philly’s suburban counties. Those places are younger, and their 18-31 voting bloc is a larger, both numerically and as a share of the overall suburban Philly electorate.
Your original post seemed to present this connection — Pittsburgh’s suburbs / suburban counties went R while Philly’s suburban counties went D; Pittsburgh’s suburbs have “substantial” numbers of young voters; ergo, our young voters seem to have voted for McCain in numbers disporoprtionate to the rest of the youth electorate. That’s a fallacy and there’s no evidence to support it, absent county by county exit polling. Now, it COULD be true — but it’s more likely to be true that those youth voters were overwhelmed by disproportionately large number of 31-and-up voters around them. I’m not saying that the youth vote here couldn’t be different than the youth vote there; all I’m saying is you can’t use the county-by-county suburban Philly election results as evidence of that.
You’d have to actually ask them.
November 9th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
Gee is it just me, or are we analyzing this election to death. I personally don’t care what age group voted for who, or what percentage of counties did this or that. Its over, Obama won. Lets move on….
November 11th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
The areas that voted for McCain could be areas where there is wealth to spread around, and perhaps they think they should be able to keep the same percentage of their income as other Americans. And no one has mentioned the increase in Capitol Gain Tax from 12% to 28% and the Death Tax.
Bleek, you seem to have a handle on getting statistics…is there more wealth in the areas that supported McCain?
November 11th, 2008 at 5:34 pm
Depends on the community, but by and large in Western Pennsylvania, wealth / income is not the best indicator of macro voting preferences.
I’d agree that isolated “rich” places like Fox Chapel, Sewickley Heights and Upper St. Clair are going to tend to vote Republican, but in this neck of the woods, we also vote on social issues to a great extent — plus there simply aren’t enough wealthy areas (or wealthy people) around here to explain all of the suburban counties voting for McCain. There is more than money at play.
The outlying counties like Beaver County, Westmoreland County, Greene, Fayette, what have you, all have median incomes lower than Allegheny County — that is, less wealth, not more, yet Allegheny went for Obama, while everybody else went for McCain. Fayette County might as well be in high Appalachia, with a median household income of $31,637, a full $11,000 less than Allegheny County (making it one of the poorest counties in the state), and yet they went for McCain. I can’t imagine it was because othe people of Fayette County were worried about their wealth being spread around.
Westmoreland’s median income is below Washington County’s, but while Washington County (median income $45,789) went for McCain by a 52-47 score, Westmoreland ($43,617) went for McCain 58-41, a 17-point margin.
Philadelphia’s suburbs are much wealthier than Pittsburgh’s (I’d add that the cost of living is higher there, too, neccessitating the higher incomes / double-income households), but they all voted Democrat, by rather large margins.
November 13th, 2008 at 11:32 am
Bleek
You are pretty amazing with those Stats. Is there a sports team that needs your expertise?
Thank you for the info.
Who knows why people vote the way they do. The media and Hollywood seemed to like Obama, I kind of liked the War Hero and the Hockey Mom.
Time will tell.
Jamie Lynn
November 13th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
People don’t vote in their own self-interest a lot of the time, which blows my mind every election. Emotion factors in a lot more than it should—how a certain candidate makes us feel about ourselves and reinforces our world view instead of how they fall on the issues.
I think labeling people (“Hollywood Elite” or “War Hero”) is what got us into this mess in the first place. Remember the infamous “He’s someone I can sit down and have a beer with” as a reason to vote for our current president?
We need to choose people that are inherently curious and willing to look at alternate viewpoints. And acknowledge the fact that they will make mistakes and that they are imperfect (as we all are). Some past presidents have been unwilling to do this and have dragged their personal issues (addiction, narcissism, various insecurities) that they’ve never dealt with into the White House and it’s adversely affected our country.
Peace out,
MG
November 13th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I have been following very closely Mr. Obama and Mr. McCain promises for change. They both sound convincing. I have listen to radio stations that carry live conversations with voters and announcers, news-paper articles from different cities, and I have come to my personal conclusion that freedom of speech, is a great gift from our Constitution. It amazes me at times how sad it is that we as a Nation still argue and debate about how this country should be. Every community has a individual who hads the answers to everything on this Earth and a lot of people listen to what they say. That is truth. This election was very important for what direction we are going. Economy,Jobs, Social Security benifits,Two wars and Iran and other Nations that hate America. These are only a few of the problems as we all know. It is time to stop wondering how Mr. Obama won or who voted for him. At present he is only the President Elected.
If Mr. McCain would have won he would have the same problems that Mr. Obama will face in January. Remember these words, If Mr. Obama fails, We as a Nation will feel the effect,We as caretakers of this earth will feel the effects and other countries on this planet will also. One candidate brings hope because with the staff he surrounds himself with will influunce his decisions for us all. maybe there will be hope for, ONE NATION UNDER GOD WITH LIBERTY AND JUSTICE FOR ALL in America. This journey for us citizens and government is not going to be easy at all. It’s sad to say that a lot of people would love to see failure, instead of hope, and Mr. Obama knows and understand this. Failure is not a option any of us can affort from this election. Next year at this time we all will know what direction we are going. Have patience, It’ will work out.
Common Sense signing off.