A Democratic landscape

The state-by-state polls this fall make it clear: The 2008 presidential election was no anomaly. The Upper South and interior West are now competitive terrain and will be in future White House races. That means Democrats have more margin for error than Republicans when it comes to cobbling together 270 electoral votes.

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“The map has changed to give any Democrat the better grip on the electorate,” said van Lohuizen.

As more voters, both transients from other states and immigrants, have poured into states like Nevada, Colorado, Virginia and North Carolina, political demographics in these places have been transformed. It’s the new Democratic coalition there and in traditional swing states that is bolstering Obama.

“Despite a high unemployment rate, anemic economy, and upside-down right track/wrong track, Obama is being kept afloat by a solid base of support among African-Americans, Hispanics, liberals, single and college-educated women, and union households,” said longtime Christian conservative strategist Ralph Reed. “Those groups alone add up to about 46 percent of the electorate.”

Plus, Republicans have their own firm conservative base that doesn’t move based on exterior conditions. So in this polarized era, there are just more entrenched voters — individuals who don’t split their tickets and move from their party loyalties as they did in the past.

“The number of people we’re trying to win over is very small,” said longtime Republican Don Fierce. “That’s what’s different from 1980 or other campaigns in the past — there’s such a small number that are there to move.”

What helps Democrats is that the country’s changing face has let them play offense on traditionally Republican turf without having to worry about liberal bulwarks. The population-heavy coastal states Democrats have had a lock on for two decades remain out of reach for Republicans.

Former Democratic Florida governor and Sen. Bob Graham, who held statewide office for 26 years, recalled that in 1980, the number of electoral votes that were considered solidly Democratic and Republican were about equal.

“Now, that number is noticeably tilted toward Democrats,” Graham said.

The problem for the right is that what Democrats have steadily lost with lower middle-class whites over the years, they’ve made up for with middle-class and wealthy women — creating a yawning gender gap that puts Republicans at a disadvantage in the very states that now make up the presidential battlegrounds.

“We lost Bubba a long time ago; he’s done,” said Democrat James Carville of working-class white males. “But what we didn’t realize at the time is that we picked up all the post-college white women by the same amount. You walk into any grad school class today, the women are all our voters.”

And, Carville added, it’s both racial minorities and such working women who are uneasy about some of the nostalgic language Republicans use when it comes to taking back the White House.

“They keep saying they want to restore America — but to a vast number of Americans, they weren’t part of that America,” he said.

What frustrates Republicans the most, and will surely be Topic A for many in the party if Romney loses, is the party’s apparent structural problem with Hispanics — something that is hampering the nominee in Florida and the West.

“Republicans, including Romney, hurt themselves among Hispanic votes in the primary this year,” said former Mississippi governor and Republican National Committee Chairman Haley Barbour, alluding to the hard line GOP candidates took on immigration. “And you add to that Obama has totally politicized the issue of immigration to the point that he preferred having the issue to having a bill.”

Looking past November, Barbour added: “In the future, and not distant future, Republicans have to come to grips with the right policy on immigration.”

The incumbent’s staying power

In 2008, Obama marketed himself as a global phenomenon, and his political skills were widely described as something almost unworldly in origin. Hardly anyone — not even hard-core Obama loyalists — believes this any longer, after a first term of repeated setbacks and dwindling popularity.