Electoral Map Changed, Officially

A look at the 2008 Electoral Map, which last Friday included a 1 district call for Barack Obama in Nebraska (the first time since 1968 that the Cornhusker State did not also go the way of winner-take-all) indicates that what political scientists call a critical election occurred this year.

Aren't all elections, critical? But for the sake political science discussion a critical election or a realigning election occures when the coaltions supporting the parties become disrupted and voters realign their allegiances, with a new party becoming the hegemonic party for decades at the presidency and congressional levels.

There’s a long line of research on this, but the most compelling account of partisan realigment is found in the notion of a “critical election.” In an election contest whereby the political system is facing a fundamental national crisis of catastrophic proportions, voters choose the party out of power and elevate a new, enduring partisan coalition at the levels of the presidency and Congress. The elections of 1860 and 1932 are the key examples. The Republican Party was the dominant party in American politics following Abraham Lincoln’s election at the moment of national crisis precipitating the Civil War; and in 1932, Franklin D. Roosevelt was elected in a New Deal realignment that emerged out of the calamity of the Great Depression.

The Wikipedia page on realignments (which features an excellent review of the scholarship) singles out 1932 as classic case of partisan realigment:

Of all the realigning elections, this one musters the most agreement from political scientists and historians; it is the archetypal realigning election. FDR’s admirers have argued that New Deal policies, developed in response to the crash of 1929 and the miseries of the Great Depression under Herbert Hoover, represented an entirely new phenomenon in American politics.

With the highest young voter turnout in history (numbers, wise) that went big for Obama; With a democratic 50 state strategy expanding the blue on the electoral map; a with the possibility of a New New Deal (Time magazine cover story) ushering in what conservatives claim will be a more soicalistic America, the 2008 could very well go down in history as more than a Change Election. It would qualify as a Critical, or Realigning election.

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And the Winner Is.....

Our Electoral Pool Champ is Jim Z. who missed the electoral count by just one vote, 364-174. Jim also called Obama's final popular vote pretty darn close, 54%. Way to go Jim! We'll award you your major award next week.

At this point, the final Obama popular vote is 53%-46% (CNN). According to fivethirtyeight.com (the best prognosticator of this year's election) the Obama vitory may have more symbolic than Bill Clinton's 370 EC tally in 1992, because of the geographic color change of the electoral map. Also, an 18% third-party popular vote pull of Ross Perot kept Clinton's victory as a plurality of the electoral, not a majority.

//www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/11/obama-wins-omaha-ne-electoral-vote.html