by BruinKid
Thu Dec 27, 2007 at 08:31:13 AM PST
So one refrain I've seen bandied about in the last couple months has been that Edwards is a weak candidate because he couldn't even win his home state of North Carolina in 2004. Now, the primary rebuttal is that it was John Kerry's campaign, not Edwards'. But in looking at the numbers, I discovered something quite interesting.
Did you know that Bush got a
higher percentage of the vote in 2004, when compared to 2000, in EVERY southern state...
EXCEPT for North Carolina? In fact, Bush
improved his percentage of the vote in
47 of our 50 states, and even in D.C. Yes, even in states that Bush lost by wide margins, he improved on his vote percentage in those states. He barely got 35% of the vote in New York in 2000, but got over 40% of the vote there in 2004. Think about that. , Bush even improved in
Massachusetts, John Kerry's home state. Think about that.
The full numbers after the fold....
Here are my sources for the
2000 and
2004 data. I've listed the percent of the vote Bush got in every single state (and D.C.) in 2000 and 2004, and the percent change going from 2000 to 2004 it represented.
2000 % 2004 % %Change
Alabama 56.5 62.5 +6.0
Alaska 58.6 61.1 +2.5
Arizona 51.0 54.9 +3.9
Arkansas 51.3 54.3 +3.0
California 41.7 44.4 +2.7
Colorado 50.8 51.7 +0.9
Connecticut 38.4 43.9 +5.5
Delaware 41.9 45.8 +3.9
D.C. 9.0 9.3 +0.3
Florida 48.8 52.1 +3.3
Georgia 54.7 58.0 +3.3
Hawaii 37.5 45.3 +7.8
Idaho 67.2 68.4 +1.2
Illinois 42.6 44.5 +1.9
Indiana 56.6 59.9 +3.3
Iowa 48.2 49.9 +1.7
Kansas 58.0 62.0 +4.0
Kentucky 56.5 59.6 +3.1
Louisiana 52.6 56.7 +4.1
Maine 44.0 44.6 +0.6
Maryland 40.2 42.9 +2.7
Massachusetts 32.5 36.8 +4.3
Michigan 46.1 47.8 +1.7
Minnesota 45.5 47.6 +2.1
Mississippi 57.6 59.4 +1.8
Missouri 50.4 53.3 +2.9
Montana 58.4 59.1 +0.7
Nebraska 62.2 65.9 +3.7
Nevada 49.5 50.5 +1.0
New Hampshire 48.1 48.9 +0.8
New Jersey 40.3 46.2 +5.9
New Mexico 47.8 49.8 +2.0
New York 35.2 40.1 +4.9
North Carolina 56.0 56.0 +0.0
North Dakota 60.7 62.9 +2.2
Ohio 50.0 50.8 +0.8
Oklahoma 60.3 65.6 +5.3
Oregon 46.5 47.2 +0.7
Pennsylvania 46.4 48.4 +2.0
Rhode Island 31.9 38.7 +6.8
South Carolina 56.8 58.0 +1.2
South Dakota 60.3 59.9 -0.4
Tennessee 51.1 56.8 +5.7
Texas 59.3 61.1 +1.8
Utah 66.8 71.5 +4.7
Vermont 40.7 38.8 -1.9
Virginia 52.5 53.7 +1.2
Washington 44.6 45.6 +1.0
West Virginia 51.9 56.1 +4.2
Wisconsin 47.6 49.3 +1.7
Wyoming 67.8 68.9 +1.1
Huzzah to Vermont and South Dakota for breaking the national trend.
While Gore received 43.2% of the vote in 2000 in North Carolina, Kerry got 43.6%. Yeah, it's not much of an increase, but considering that Bush
improved in almost every other state in the country, it speaks volumes that North Carolina didn't go the same way.
Think about this, folks. In 48 states and D.C., Bush did
better in 2004 than he did in 2000. Think about that. The ONLY states where that did not occur were South Dakota, Vermont, and
North Carolina. I'd have to say that that was because of John Edwards. Notice that in Tennessee, without native Al Gore, their percent of the Bush vote jumped up from 51.1% to 56.8%.
And even with native John Kerry, Massachusetts gave Bush 36.8% of the vote in 2004, when they only gave him 32.5% in 2000. How the could Bush improve by 4.3% in Kerry's home state?? Given that, did you seriously expect John Edwards, as the Vice Presidential nominee, to FLIP North Carolina for the Democrats??
When you see the chart like this, it's amazing to think we picked off ANY state that went for Bush in 2000. And the only one was New Hampshire. Gore only got 46.8% of the vote there to Bush's 48.1%, but Ralph Nader pulled in 3.9% of the vote. In 2004, Kerry squeaked by with 50.2% of the vote. But still, Bush got 48.9% of the vote that time around. In Iowa, both parties did better in 2004 than they did in 2000 percentage-wise, but Bush still flipped that state red.
So the argument that we should brush off Edwards because he couldn't
WIN North Carolina for John Kerry and the Democrats in 2004 is simply disregarding what actually happened across the
entire country in that election (SD & VT excepted). To ask the Vice Presidential nominee to flip a state for the Democrats that Bill Clinton couldn't even win either time, and that hadn't voted Democratic since 1976 (when California was still a "red" state), is asking the impossible, IMO. Of course, come 2008, the latest polling shows
Edwards could turn North Carolina blue if he's at the top of the ticket. Hillary and Obama would still keep North Carolina in the red column in that poll.
Now, there may be some valid arguments as to why John Edwards should not be our nominee. But bringing up his "failure" to win North Carolina in 2004 is a very faulty and misleading argument that ignores a mul ude of factors in that 2004 election. I hope I don't have to read any more of this "Edwards couldn't win North Carolina in 2004" strawman being bandied about.
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