Alaska: Future Swing State? From Nate Silver [View all]

[Blue_In_AK]

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/05/alaska-future-swing-state/

Nate makes some good points here. Of course, there are all kinds of countervailing opinions, but Mr. Silver is not often wrong. If our current asshat governor continues on with his quest to give the state away to the oil companies and big resource extractors (see, Pebble Mine), he may push more and more concerned Alaskans into the D column.

The state where Barack Obama most improved his performance from 2008 was Alaska. He lost it by “only” 14 percentage points this year, considerably less than his 22-point margin of defeat in 2008.

Part of the reason is that the former governor of Alaska, Sarah Palin, was on the Republican ticket in 2008 but was not this year. That probably doesn’t explain all of the shift, however.

Consider that in 2000 — also without Ms. Palin on the ballot — the Democratic nominee, Al Gore, lost Alaska by 31 points.

There are reasons to think that Alaska could continue to become more competitive in the coming years.

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I've been saying for some time that Alaska is more purple than most people realize. While recent statewide elections have consolidated Republican power, everyone agrees that it was due to extreme gerrymandering of legislative districts, the legality of which is still before the court.