How the West was lost (by the Republicans)

Take a look at this electoral map from 1976:













You can see that the Republican base was much different than it is today. Of course, the South was Democratic then - we all know about that big shift. But notice that the West was solid red.

What happened to turn California, Washington, and Oregon (and now Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada, and probably Arizona) blue? It wasn't just Hispanic immigration, because Democrats now typically win the white vote on the Pacific coast. Was it a culture change? Did Republican extremism alienate the practical West Coast types? Was it the rise of the tech economy?

In any case, the huge Republican mega-blowouts of 1980, 1984, and 1988 obscured the slow change that was taking place out West. But the Pacific coast has now gone blue in 5 straight presidential contests, and it looks like the Southwest and the non-Mormon half of the Mountain West is headed the same direction. As population increases - white, Hispanic, or Asian - the Western states are all blue-ifying.

Which leaves the Republicans with what? Here's Bush's 2004 victory (remember, the one that was supposed to herald the dawn of an era of conservative dominance?):













The Republican area looks huge, and it is huge...in area. But in terms of electoral votes, this one was pretty damn close. With the Pacific coast and the Northeast now reliably blue bastions, the Republicans' only hope for victory seems to be to hold the whole South and Plains and pick off a few states from the Upper Midwest - and that's assuming that Mountain West states like Colorado and Eastern Seaboard South states like Virginia and North Carolina stay in the red column. And even in that optimistic scenario, it's a squeaker every time.

The upshot is, barring massive landslides a la Reagan, the Republicans have very little room for error now. They seem to have decided that their best bet was to go all-out to convince Upper Midwestern white people that their cultural allegiance lies with the South - in other words, getting Ohioans and Pennsylvanians to put race above region and economics. That didn't work this time, but something tells me they'll try it again. They just have nowhere else to go.