Obama and His Big Blue Paintbrush

Last night, Barack Obama won an election of tremendous historical and political significance. As an Obama supporter, I'm certainly very pleased with the victory as well as the positive reception his election has received around the world.

But my celebratory exterior belies the nerd within. I must have spent 18 out of the last 24 hours staring at that electoral map, trying to uncover the secrets behind Obama's lopsided drubbing of John McCain. Certainly, if you are one to believe the pre-election polling, this kind of performance was expected of Obama. In spite of these polling data, McCain's claims of a comeback and the so-called "Bradley Effect" left many on both sides of the aisle uncertain about what would happen on November 4th. As it turns out, the election went almost exactly according to the pre-election polling. Obama even stands to add icing to the cake if he wins either of the two remaining undecided races in Missouri and North Carolina.

So how did he do it? I'll save the hard analysis for another day, but studying the electoral map and comparing it to the 2004 election geography, some very telling facts arise that help tell the story of Obama's victory:

• If you give North Carolina to Obama and Missouri to McCain (as it appears it will go), Obama will end up winning 364 electoral votes, 94 more than is needed to win and 78 more than Bush's 286 electoral votes won in 2004. It is also 26 more than Karl Rove predicted.



• In addition to holding every blue state from 2004, Obama won nine states in 2008 that John Kerry lost: Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico, North Carolina, Ohio and Virginia.



• In addition to the newly acquired blue states, Obama pushed McCain in other traditionally red states. Obama got within ten percentage points of McCain in seven states carried by Bush in 2004: Missouri (-1 point), Montana (-3 points), Georgia (-5 points), North Dakota (-8 points), South Dakota (-8 points), Arizona (-9 points) and South Carolina (-9 points). Bush carried these states by an average of 16.3 points.



• In the 2004 "Bush States," Bush beat Kerry by an average margin of victory of 18.2 percent. In these same states in 2008, McCain beat Obama by an average of only 9.5 percent.



• Obama won his home state of Illinois by 25 points, while McCain won Arizona by only 9 points. (Obama also won his former home state of Hawaii by 45 points.)



• In 2004 Kerry won six states by 3 or fewer points: Michigan, Minnesota, New Hampshire, Oregon, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Obama won these same six states by an average of 12.3 points.



• Compared to Bush in 2004, McCain performed better in only two states, Louisiana and Arkansas. McCain did roughly the same in Alaska and Tennessee, and worse than Bush in the remaining 46 states.