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How Obama won the West and what it means

Dante Chinni

Posted: 11.06.2008 / 8:46 AM PST

Even before Election Day, and definitely since, there has been talk of Sen. Barack Obama’s changing the electoral map – with good reason. The Illinois senator took nine states from President Bush’s 2004 column and put them in his.

Many of the Democrats’ hopes for lasting change hinge on the Mountain West, where the party feels that Senator Obama’s new map – which includes Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico – could be the sign of something bigger.

Maybe, but maybe not.

A primary point of Patchwork Nation is that the American electorate is not a collection of states or regions, but of communities. We use counties as our measure. We will be going through the 2008 election results more closely in the coming days, but a quick look at our map shows that Obama’s Mountain West wins may be more about changes in a few key community types in this election than a broad regional shift.

Of the three states that Obama won there, Colorado is arguably the most significant. The state had not gone with the Democrats since 1992.

The deciding factor for Obama in that state may well turn out to be the eight populous, wealthier “Monied ’Burb” counties around Denver. Obama won five of them. In 2004, Sen. John Kerry won only two of them.

Yet there is nothing particularly “Western” about Obama winning those counties. That is, he did well with the important “Monied ’Burb” counties around the United States. He swept them in Philadelphia and scored big with them around Detroit and Cleveland.

Toward the end of the race, our reporting showed that voters in those “Monied ’Burbs” began tilting toward Obama for two big reasons: First, they are more heavily invested in the stock market than other community types and were shaken by the financial crisis. Sen. John McCain’s response to the crisis didn’t impress them, and they wanted change. Second, as a group, they were not particularly fond of Senator McCain’s running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin.

In Nevada, Obama’s win can largely be attributed to Clark County, the growing and diversifying “Boom Town” community that is home of Las Vegas. The Illinois senator netted about 123,000 votes from that county alone. Four years ago, Senator Kerry won Clark by far fewer votes, only about 26,000.

Driving much of the vote in America’s “Boom Towns” was one thing: the housing crunch. Many of these places had seen the most rapid population growth in the US in the early 21st century, and they also took the biggest hit when the subprime mortgage crisis led to foreclosures.

Again, this was not just a Western issue. Foreclosures also played a large role in the “Boom Town” counties in Florida and helped Obama capture that state.

Then there’s New Mexico. The state is a classic bellwether, swinging between Democrats and Republicans by a few thousand votes in the past few presidential elections. So Obama’s 15 percent edge over McCain is impressive.

A few things have worked in Obama’s favor there that are more associated with the region. It has the highest percentage of Hispanic citizens of any state, and Hispanics went heavily for Obama.

But looking at the Patchwork Nation community types, a few other factors also stand out. The state’s most populous county, Bernalillo – a “Boom Town” that holds Albuquerque – has seen a fare number of foreclosures this year (about 2,000 through September), and it gave Obama a net of 58,000 votes. Kerry netted only 9,000 votes from the county.

Obama also won 10 of the state’s 11 small-town “Service Worker Center” counties. Those counties had been particularly hard hit in the economic downturn this year – on things like gasoline and food prices. In our Economic Hardship Index, that community type often ranked near the top.

None of this is to take away from Obama’s accomplishment Tuesday night. His win in those three states did break an established trend in the region and may well be an opening for Democrats there in future elections.

Demographic shifts are clearly going on in some of these states – the rise of suburban and exurban counties, the increasing Latino vote.

But Obama’s victories in Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico may be less about “how the West was won” than they are about a year where the effects of a slumping economy cascaded through many places – and many types of places – around the US.