The Electoral Map: A Quadrant Analysis

This is Karl Rove's electoral map from Wednesday, Oct. 29. It has Obama with 311 electoral votes and leading in states with another 56 electoral votes. That would be 367 electoral votes if Wednesday's trends held. Rove views McCain as having 157 electoral votes and leading in Montana with another 3 for 160 if trends hold.

It's hard to tell what the trends are going to be. Obama is up by 5 today in Rasmussen and 10 in Gallup. Given that Obama's been gaining in Gallup, it may be that the map will look even better for Obama on Tuesday. In particular, Arizona and Georgia might be joining the ranks of the toss-ups by then.

And this brings me to my point. Even if Obama should lose, this map looks very promising for the Democratic Party and I think it looks promising for the future of the country as well. It looks like the Republican Party is going to have to leave the 19th century if it wants to be competitive in presidential elections. And that would be very good for the whole country.

For the purpose of this analysis, I'd like to divide the country into quadrants. The east/west line is easy because it would run from North Dakota's eastern boundary to the Texas/Louisiana line. The North north/south line is less regular but it would begin at Pennsylvania's southern border, bisect Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois, and continue through the northern borders of Missouri, Kansas, and Colorado through to the Pacific.

The Northeast and Midwest are blue. Obama's domination of the northeastern quadrant bounded by New Jersey, Maine, Minnesota, and Missouri is striking. Famously traditional Republican states like Maine, Vermont, and New Hampshire are solidly blue. Obama's also ahead in Ohio while Indiana has become a complete toss-up. The only two states where McCain is clearly ahead are Kentucky and West Virginia.

A blue region is also coalescing in the Southeastern quadrant of former Confederate states. The inroads that the Obama campaign is making in the formerly Solid Republican South are almost as striking as Obama's northern domination. Maryland is a solid blue state because it's becoming more northeastern in character. But the key is that Obama has leads in Virginia, North Carolina and Florida while he's making inroads into Georgia (which most maps have as a "lean McCain" rather than a solid McCain). Virginia and North Carolina are more heavily influenced by Northeastern style population patterns in the DC suburbs and Research Triangle while Georgia and Florida have burgeoning metro areas that trend Democratic. The ultimate prospect is that the Old Confederacy could split into an "Atlantic South" that is Democratic and a Traditional Gulf/Mississippi/Appalachian South of Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Arkansas, Tennessee, and South Carolina.

If that happened, the Civil War would be almost over.

It's also useful to view the Southwest as a single quadrant although Texas has many Southern characteristics and California is more Pacific than Southwestern. But the Democrats are gaining steadily in the western part of the quadrant other than Utah and only leaving the Texas, Oklahoma, and Kansas corridor to the GOP.

In this sense, Texas becomes the popular anchor point for the national Republican Party even though demographic trends are leading toward larger Democratic constituencies of hispanics and urban dwellers.

In other words, it's a relatively weak anchor.

The northwestern quadrant looks even weaker for the Republicans as Montana and North Dakota become swing states and the Republicans are left with isolated Wyoming, Idaho, and Alaska as well as the Plains states of Nebraska and South Dakota.

In this view, the Republicans would just have to change if they wanted to remain competetive in national elections. They would have to make a real appeal to the metro areas and retreat on social conservativism, hostility to science, and military belligerence.

Otherwise, the Republicans would face a real prospect of being outstripped by some sort of moderate, technocratic third party . . . and dying.

And its' not that far off. Michael Bloomberg already wants to be the presidential candidate of that party.