Pittsburgh and Philly

By Fester:

I was just checking the Pennsylvania Secretary of State website for county by county breakdowns of the vote and something surprised me.  Philadelphia and Pittsburgh proportionally underperformed for Obama compared to John Kerry's coalition to win Pennsylvania in 2004. Below is a simple chart of Pennsylvania's state wide performance in 2004 and 2008, as well as Philadelphia County and Allegheny County's performances.

 

As you can see in 2004, John Kerry ran up his margins in Philadelphia and Allegheny Counties while losing the rest of the state.  This is a traditional Democratic strategy and GOTV system of flushing the base precincts and hoping that you don't get crushed in the "T."

Obama's coalition and map is significantly different.  He actually lost votes in Allegheny County while minimally adding margin there.  Fewer people voted in Allegheny County in 2008 than 2004.  He gained margin and votes in Philadelphia but at a slower rate than he gained across the state.  This is a significantly different map, and I need to think about what this means going forward.    

Comments

[Mark]

I can't speak about Allegheny County, but I do know quite a bit about Philly and specifically about what happened there. Let's just say that there is a certain segment of voters in Philadelphia that is none-too-shy about their thoughts on race behind closed-doors. These are, I might add, lifelong Dem voters in all other respects. They won't say that this is why they voted for McCain; instead, they'll simply say something along the lines of "we think he's more experienced." But if you know their actual policy views, you will find this rather difficult to believe. It's no coincidence that the PUMA lawsuit accusing Obama of not being a citizen of the US was filed in the Eastern District of Pennsylvania (aka, Philadelphia's Federal District Court).