'Blue' Intelligence

[CobaltBlue]

Since either 1988 or 1992, there have been 18 states which have voted Democratic and not once for any one Republican. They are: California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Washington, and Wisconsin. Add to them the 18th state, Minnesota, for which no Republican has carried since the 49-state re-election, in 1972, of Richard Nixon. With District of Columbia, having had the vote since 1964, it is the most overwhelmingly Democratic-voting area in the United States. No Republican has ever won there.

You add their electoral votes, and they represent around 90 percent of the required 270 to win the presidency of the United States.

Factor in New Hampshire. Its only Republican vote came in 2000.

Consider Iowa and New Mexico. Their only Republican carriage was in 2004.

You consider N.H., Ia., and N.M. … and they build this up to 95 percent of the required 270 electoral votes for winning the presidency.

Ron Brownstein, from National Journal, labels them the Blue Firewall. For Democrats.



I have a question: When it comes to these "blue states," which ones do you think are politically the smartest in their being so blue?

I'm referring not just to the presidency, but in how the states' electorates handle their voting in down-ticket races and ballot issues? (To be frank, I don't think every one of these states is shrewd. But I won't say which ones either way. Not yet.)

[flying-skeleton]

1. In the words of the Beach Boys ...... I wish they all could be CALIFORNIAN States !!

In the words of the Beach Boys ...... I wish they all could be CALIFORNIAN States !!

[Filibuster Harry]

2. I would hope my state of CT but we elected the Rs Rowland and Rell and are now

paying for it? Maybe we have learned our lesson? I doubt it.

[xtraxritical]

3. I suppose you mean in Presidential elections because

all these states have RepubliCON Representatives.

[CobaltBlue]

4. Dear xtraxritical . . .

I'm referring to discussing these blue states and how intelligent their respective electorates are, some times, with their voting in down-ticket races. Yes, you can talk about the House of Representatives. But they are not voted statewide. So, it's really having to do not so much with the presidency but also the governors, their Senators, but also ballot issues.

I'm asking for whether you think one particular state is really terrific in their blueness. And whether there are others which happened to color blue, for president, but are not particularly bright when it comes to down-ticket results.



For example…

I can praise Maryland for voting in support of same-sex marriage. I can also praise them for electing and re-electing Martin O'Malley as their governor and particularly Barbara Mikulski, the longest-tenured woman in all of Congress, since 1986. That state carried 25/26 percentage points more for Barack Obama (over John McCain in 2008 and Mitt Romney in 2012). It should have been expected that the deeply blue Maryland voters would back the LGBT community with support. And in 2012, they lived up to it.

I can also say that Michigan wasn't particularly bright for not backing the unions to have collective bargaining rights and not signing on to steer their state's energy toward more modern operation. (That would be ballot proposals #02 and #03; Obama won the state in 2008 by over 16 percentage points and won it again in 2012 by about 9.5 percentage points.) Going back to 2004, Mich. (and Oregon, which this year said no to legalizing marijuana while formerly deep red and now rising bellwether Colorado said yes) voted against the LGBT community with approving a state constitutional ban against their possibly legally getting married. (Ore. also did that in 2004.)