In 1960, Washington state voted for Richard Nixon for president. In 1968, Hubert Humphrey. In 1976, Gerald Ford. In 1988, Michael Dukakis. In 2000, Al Gore. In 2004, John Kerry. You may have noticed a pattern; all of those men lost. (Though Gore received a plurality of the popular vote in 2000, and Nixon probably did in 1960.)
In every close presidential election in the last half century, my home state voted for the loser. And in one not-so-close election, 1988.
Are voters here perverse? Do Washington voters automatically prefer the candidate less liked by the rest of the country? Or is there another explanation?
I think that there is another explanation, though I will admit that there is some evidence that voters here are perverse. (For example, our senior senator, Patty Murray. But the state has been sensible enough to reject Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott for statewide office, so the voters here are not hopeless.) Specifically, I think that those Washington votes from 1960 to 2004 may show regional prejudice.
Washingtonians tend to feel contempt for the South, to dislike the Northeast, and to feel neutral toward the Midwest. To me, that suggests that Washington voters would prefer candidates by region in this order: West, Midwest, Northeast, and South. That rule would explain every close election in my list, except 1968*. And the rule helps explain one of the odder results, 1988. George H. W. Bush was, on the whole, more moderate than Ronald Reagan, but he lost Washington, which Reagan had carried twice, easily. I think that one reason that Bush lost here in 1988 is that he was seen as the candidate of both the Northeast and the South. (Interestingly, Bush carried most of the Northeast states that year, as well as all of the South.)
Some will think of an apparently different explanation for those election results: While the nation as a whole has been becoming more Republican in presidential elections, Washington state has been becoming more Democratic. And so Republicans lost close elections here early in the period and Democrats since then. But that doesn't explain why there have been those two trends, while regional prejudice does. As the Republican party gained in the South, it became less attractive to voters outside the South, especially in the Northeast, and places settled mainly from the Northeast.
If this idea of regional prejudice — I hesitate to call it a theory — is correct, then we can expect that John McCain, who adopted the West for his home, after living all over, and Sarah Palin, who was born in Idaho and lived almost all her life in Alaska, will do well in Washington state this year, better than George W. Bush did in 2004.
Cross posted at Jim Miller on Politics.
(*In 1968, Nixon was living in New York, so Washington voters may have seen him as less of a Westerner than in 1960.
Washington state did vote for the winner in one close presidential election, 1916.
If you want to look at the election results yourself, I suggest Dave Leip's atlas)
Posted by Jim Miller at September 15, 2008 01:51 PM | Email ThisI think your regional prejudice correlates the voting with the time frame WA started changing, i.e. the influx of Californians in the mid-late 80's.
The influx led to a reputation that our low key lifestyle meant "anything goes", hence the explosion of homeless population, the explosion of the homosexual community. One could even argue that the grunge music pioneered here also contributed to it.
No one lives in a vacuum and HUMANS tend to want to congregate with those that share their beliefs and lifestyle. Seattle and therefore WA is a petri dish that confirms that, as are Utah (Mormons), Alabama (Baptists) Forida (retired folks), etc
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on September 15, 2008 02:15 PMI do think its true that those living in the more rural parts of Washington may tend to turn out more heavily for a McCain/Palin ticket that represent the values of what I call the "old West".
The closing poll numbers are very interesting. It would seem to me to indicate that there is a lot of the "old West" existing outside of Seattle.
Posted by: Bill Cruchon on September 15, 2008 05:33 PMPeople here do not know what self-interest is. Yes, it's great and good to worry about a million things that don't affect your life, however, in the mean time, the Puget Sound has slid into being an ecological hell hole, with terrible traffic, air and water pollution, substandard schools, weekly gun shootings in Rainier Beach...
The typical loony guy living in what he thinks is an insulated neighborhood sits in coffee shops grousing about Mugabe, as if he had more to do with the price of cappuccino then the kid at the counter!
Posted by: John Bailo on September 15, 2008 07:45 PMI'dl definately open up Washington for Alaskans, and there is no need to close Washington to the califorians, as the ones that moved up here are a bit maverick and hence we are closing in on the 2 to 4% supposed lead from the blue state mentality.
I say we spawn off Olympia and Seattle into their own state, they would be dead broke within a year and we could easily pass a tax to give them all one way bus tickets to California.
Posted by: gs on September 15, 2008 07:46 PMWhy this should hold only in "close" Presidential elections -- save one -- must remain a mystery. Perhaps Jim merely wants to exclude 1964 from his list, where Washington sided with the vast majority of Americans. This state elevated Texan LBJ over Arizonan Goldwater, putting rather a large hole in Jim's thesis. Hence his dumping of a huge election into an (even larger) memory hole.
"I think that there is another explanation, though I will admit that there is some evidence that voters here are perverse. (For example, our senior senator, Patty Murray. But the state has been sensible enough to reject Seattle Congressman Jim McDermott for statewide office, so the voters here are not hopeless.) Specifically, I think that those Washington votes from 1960 to 2004 may show regional prejudice."
Ellen Craswell and John Carlson would make better examples, especially as the former had succeeded (for awhile) at the local level. Both managed to make dry, wonky Gary Locke look like William Jennings Bryan.
"Washingtonians tend to feel contempt for the South, to dislike the Northeast, and to feel neutral toward the Midwest."
Such a sweeping generalization will, of course, receive ample factual citations (snort!), especially one explaining how LBJ carried Washington (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHA....).
"If this idea of regional prejudice -- I hesitate to call it a theory ..."
I don't hesitate to call it bigoted garbage.
"...then we can expect that John McCain, who adopted the West for his home, after living all over, and Sarah Palin, who was born in Idaho and lived almost all her life in Alaska, will do well in Washington state this year, better than George W. Bush did in 2004."
Oh, so this was all just absurdist fantasy. Carry on, then!
Posted by: tensor on September 15, 2008 09:02 PMYou liberals always tout something for nothing programs but never stop to wonder where the money for them come from: you mortgaged the future and now it has come back to bite us in the ass.
The mortgage crisis is a prime example: they created it with stuopid onerous 'regulations' that forced banks to act outside of the best interest of their shareholders, now as they are paying the price with predictable failure they are interfering AGAIN.
And why? Because they short sighted looking out only for protection of their power int the immediate.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on September 15, 2008 10:33 PMYou are both right. The republicans are to blame and the democrats are to blame and neither have yet got it. They are both proposing more of the same (government bailouts and regulation along with a flawed federal reserve system of fiat money.
Anyone ready to admit Paul has been right on the economy all this time?
Join the campaign for liberty if you recognize McCain and Obama are not the answer.
Posted by: Lysander on September 15, 2008 10:47 PMIt will be completely unsustainable and will be the end of the American economic system as we know it and as we have enjoyed it since our inception... and an ugly legacy for your hero.
Posted by: Ragnar Danneskjold on September 15, 2008 11:31 PMhttp://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/election_20082/2008_presidential_election/pennsylvania/election_2008_pennsylvania_presidential_election2
Posted by: Crusader on September 15, 2008 11:47 PMWA voters have proven themselves to lean conservative/libertarian many times. Most of Eyman's inits pass, including I-200 (affirmative action ban). The I676 gun control init failed by 71-29. The teachers sales tax init failed.
On the other hand, I've always heard that we are 'the least churched state' of all fifty. I-694 (the 'partial-birth' abortion ban) was trounced.
Maybe the state is not as blue as we think, but just has a problem w/ the Dobsons and Craswells in the Republican party.
Posted by: russell garrard on September 16, 2008 08:53 AMMaybe the state is not as blue as we think, but just has a problem w/ the Dobsons and Craswells in the Republican party.
As someone who could probably be described as an Evangelical (when I lived in Seattle, I attended the dreaded Mars Hill Church. I didn't agree with everything they believed, but I agreed with most of it, and their views were never what the idiots in the PI said they were anyway), I agree with you with this caveat: "Evangelicals" does not necessarily equal Dobson, and they CERTAINLY don't necessarily equal Craswell.
That said, you are 100% right that the religious conservatives, myself included, with our image distorted by the secular left, are a big reason that Republicans lose. As Chris Vance once explained quite correctly, "They like our ideas. They don't like us."
I do think that divide has a lot to do with the secular/religious divide.
Posted by: Cliff on September 16, 2008 11:58 AMWhen it comes to the two issues of abortion rights and gay rights, there is a case to be made. But with everything else, the left is the bigger threat.
Posted by: russell garrard on September 16, 2008 01:33 PMDave Leip's Atlas is great, check it out. Also notice that he makes the Democrats red (how appropriate considering their ideology) and the GOP blue.
According to Wikipedia it was coined by Tim Russert, but no reason for the blue/red colors. Does anyone know?
Posted by: russell garrard on September 16, 2008 07:52 PMI Will not vote for a lesser of two evils and calling him the lesser at this point is even in question. Evil is still evil and I will not support it.
Posted by: Lysander on September 16, 2008 07:55 PM