Do the Democrats need the South?Matthew Yglesias thinks that the Democratic presidential candidate doesn't need to win any states in the South to win the election: Consider the case of the 2000 election. Gore would've won if he'd won just one more state. Clearly, this could have been a southern state, especially seeing as how he won exactly zero states in the south, but it could just as well have been a northern state like, say, New Hampshire, where the combined Gore-Nader vote was higher than the Bush-Buchanan vote.Some points in response: 1. This is possible only by assuming that the Democrat wins every state that Gore won in 2000. Bush was within 5% or so of Gore in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin in 2000. 2. The Democrat might not need to win, but he still must be competitve. Otherwise, Bush would be able to shift most of his resources away from the South and to competitive states. 3. Bush will have a much bigger money advantage this time, both because he is an incumbent and because he, unlike the Democratic candidate, will not have to spend any money in the primaries. 4. Bush has an outside chance of winning New York. If he does then the election is pretty much over, but the Democrat still need to cover his bases with the Southern states. 5. Reapportionment gives Bush a few more electoral votes if everything stays the same, which means that the Democrat will need to win another state. |
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