Slog
News & ArtsWednesday, December 3, 2008
2008 Oklahoma!
Posted by Eli Sanders on Wed, Dec 3, 2008 at 10:59 AM
There's only one state in the nation in which John McCain won every single county. How to celebrate such uniqueness? With a singing internet Christmas card from the state GOP, of course.
Via Ben Smith.
4
Oooooooooooooooooooklahoma, where the... something about windfalls and McCain?
I swear you have to be flamboyantly gay to write musicals.
I swear you have to be flamboyantly gay to write musicals.
13
I wouldn't get too worked up over those dustbowl counties. Most of them have just a few thousand people in them. Oklahoma, like the Texas Panhandle, and indeed all of the Great Plains, were susceptible to county fever back in the teens and twenties, when evangelists persuaded the few struggling farmers that splitting up into hundreds of tiny counties was the right way forward. They all expected to be rich and bustling in a few years then; "rain follows the plow", you know. Except that it doesn't.
Cimarron County, OK -- the very tip of the panhandle -- had 3,148 people in 2000, and probably fewer today. Loving County, TX has 67 people in it, 0.0% per square kilometer. McCain Country.
Loving County, TX
Cimarron County, OK -- the very tip of the panhandle -- had 3,148 people in 2000, and probably fewer today. Loving County, TX has 67 people in it, 0.0% per square kilometer. McCain Country.
Loving County, TX
15
What a boring map. It's not even shaded based on the margin of the win in each county.
Anyway, I guess even the cities in Oklahoma aren't worth visiting. Even Texas has Austin.
Anyway, I guess even the cities in Oklahoma aren't worth visiting. Even Texas has Austin.
18
Of course, it's never as simple as it looks:
-- McCain did almost exactly as well as Dubya did in 2004; it's just that Obama did much better in other traditional red states this time around that makes OK stand out
-- Obama improved on Kerry's numbers in Tulsa and Oklahoma Counties, the two most urban in the state. He also did better than Kerry in Comanche County, home to Ft Sill and to Lawton, with the largest black population in the state (23%).
-- Most of the lost Democratic votes came from southeastern Oklahoma, aka Little Dixie, where a lot of older conservative Democrats have died off (OK-3 used to be Carl Albert's seat)
-- Obama campaigned in Oklahoma exactly once -- in 2007. He did not set foot in Oklahoma in 2008. (It never was a 50 State Strategy for Obama.)
-- Since WWII, Oklahoma has voted for one Democrat for president: LBJ. This despite the Democrats having control of the governor's mansion from statehood until 1962 and holding at least one of the houses of the legislature every year until this one.
-- Despite the GOP taking the House and Senate, there's still a Democratic governor (Henry) and one Dem house member (Dan Boren in OK-2).
So yes, it's a very red state. But with Tulsa and OKC growing, there's reasons to believe both the urban-rural tide and the robust economy there will make the state more purple in the near future.
-- McCain did almost exactly as well as Dubya did in 2004; it's just that Obama did much better in other traditional red states this time around that makes OK stand out
-- Obama improved on Kerry's numbers in Tulsa and Oklahoma Counties, the two most urban in the state. He also did better than Kerry in Comanche County, home to Ft Sill and to Lawton, with the largest black population in the state (23%).
-- Most of the lost Democratic votes came from southeastern Oklahoma, aka Little Dixie, where a lot of older conservative Democrats have died off (OK-3 used to be Carl Albert's seat)
-- Obama campaigned in Oklahoma exactly once -- in 2007. He did not set foot in Oklahoma in 2008. (It never was a 50 State Strategy for Obama.)
-- Since WWII, Oklahoma has voted for one Democrat for president: LBJ. This despite the Democrats having control of the governor's mansion from statehood until 1962 and holding at least one of the houses of the legislature every year until this one.
-- Despite the GOP taking the House and Senate, there's still a Democratic governor (Henry) and one Dem house member (Dan Boren in OK-2).
So yes, it's a very red state. But with Tulsa and OKC growing, there's reasons to believe both the urban-rural tide and the robust economy there will make the state more purple in the near future.
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