Soccer Dad

Red, blue, purple

The Washington Post, last week, explored the subject of Sen. Obama's appeal in Red States and how it might work in November.

"We aren't going to have 47 percent on one side, 47 percent on the other side, 5 percent in the middle, and they all live in Ohio and Florida and you only campaign in two states," Obama often tells audiences.

His talk of exploding the map has been helped by McCain's emergence as the likely GOP nominee, since McCain has received relatively weak support in many of the red states in which Obama hopes to do well, in the South and Plains. But while Obama has shown an ability to reshape voting patterns, his record in the primaries suggests that he still has a ways to go in making significant inroads in Republican states.

The red states where he has won have tended to be in the Deep South, where victories were based on overwhelming support from African Americans, or in mostly white states in the Midwest and West, where he relied on a core of ardent backers to carry him in caucuses, which favor candidates with enthusiastic supporters. He has not fared as well in areas that fall in between, with populations that are racially diverse but lack a black population large enough to boost Obama to victory.

Some political scientists say this suggests that Obama will have an easier time with white voters in more racially homogeneous GOP-leaning states than in states where a mixed population has introduced a more difficult racial dynamic. The University of Kansas's Burdett Loomis points to Interstate 70, which cuts across Kansas, Missouri and southern Illinois, as a sort of dividing line between the red-state areas to the north, where Obama has done well and those areas where he has struggled.

"You get below I-70, and race may play a role," he said. "You get to southern Missouri, and you're really moving south. And Oklahoma has some of those elements, too."

One aspect of Sen. Obama's support that the Post leaves out is that he appeals to a higher income segment of the population.

On the other hand Don Surber looks at some of the early polling data and sees that John McCain is surprisingly strong in Blue States.

The Powerline guys look at different polling and see McCain as the fusion candidate (at least for now.) (via memeorandum)

Obama's numbers are virtually indistinguishable from Hillary Clinton's. Thirty-four percent of respondents say they will definitely vote for him, but 43 percent say they will definitely vote against him, a net -9 (not -7 as the Rasmussen chart indicates). It is John McCain who breaks the mold: the same number, 34 percent, say they definitely will vote for him, but only 33 percent are committed to voting against McCain. So far, at least, it is McCain, not Obama, who shows the potential to unite Americans across a broad ideological spectrum.

Despite the hype, others have observed that Sen. Obama has an unwaveringly liberal voting record. Unlike Sen. McCain who has legislation to his name that shows cross-aisle cooperation and was a member of the bi-partisan "gang of 14" Sen. Obama has voted and acted along universally liberal lines in the Senate. The record, in this case - if bi-partisanship is valued by the electorate - clearly favors Sen. McCain.

john mccain, barack obama.