Regarding the Philadelphia suburbs...

[AX10]

Montgomery, Bucks, Delaware, and Chester Counties. Each of the counties has more registered Republicans than Democrats, however Clinton won them twice. Gore and Kerry also won them too. Kerry won Montgomery and Delaware by decisive margins. In every case, Republicans still control the county level governments. The local governments are split in their control though.
Will these counties vote for the Democratic candidate next year?
:shrug:

[bluestateguy]

1. I believe so

Giuliani as the nominee might complicate that, but I'm still optimistic. Even Chester County went 47% for Kerry in '04, which was better than Clinton and Gore.

Party registration is a lagging indicator. That is, people may not change their party registration until after several election cycles of voting for the other party: there are still a lot of white conservatives registered as Democrats in North Carolina and the Florida panhandle, but they probably haven't actually voted for a Democrat for president since Carter or LBJ.

[AX10]

2. True. Delaware County has 52% of voters registered as Republicans...

even though Kerry won 57%+ of the vote.

[KharmaTrain]

3. My Evening In Bucks County

I visted some friends last August...one was a "lifelong Repugnican turned Independent" (or so he claims). His big issue is Israel...all Israel all the time and voted for booooshie boy twice cause he saw him as "Israel's best friend" (I laughed at his ass about that one...one of many laughs I had that night).

When we got into the '08 elections he told me with no hestitation "Hillary has too many negatives to win" (sound familiar???) and how Ghouliani was not only the best choice but would beat her ass. I told him Rudy doesn't stand a chance with the bible belters and outside the Northeast and he claimed "there are plenty of us Rudy supporters out here, we just don't make noise like Hillary's people do". But when I pressed him about how solid his supoort was...say if there was a different nominee, what would he do? He then went into a Ralph Kramden "hamnina hamina" routine. No matter what, he told me, just just wouldn't vote for Hillary (sip kool-aid, rinse and repeat). I then asked his wife who she supports and she said "don't mind him, he'll be lucky to get his ass to the polling place unless I take him...and I'll vote for Hillary or any Democrat over any Republican". I then asked that on election day, she just let her husband sleep...she gave me a smilin' nod.

Atrios, who knows Philly, pointed out the other day how the collapse of the housing market has hurt Repugnicans as people blame them for a lot of the financial hijinks that have gone on. Also, and I've seen this happen in my own suburban area...more and more city Democrats have moved to the burbs in the past decade, changing many formerly red suburbs purple or blue.

If the Repugnicans keep imploding, I don't see them doing very well in Pennsylvania...in fact I see them getting blown out of virtually every Northeast state and every Midwest one outside of Indiana.

[AX10]

4. I know about the Chicago suburbs.

They moved into the blue column in the last two elections.

It seems that the Philadelphia suburbs vote Republican on the local level, and for Democrats for everything else, at least these days they do.

[KharmaTrain]

5. The Real Change Will Be After The Next Census

I can't push enough for those involved in elections to take an interest in the local races, cause this will have some big implications. Should Democrats control or win more state houses, this will help in redrawing districts following the 2010 census. Many of these "purple" (not gonna quite call them blue yet) districts were drawn by a former GOOP legislator that has long vanished and I suspect that Rahm Emanuel will have a strong hand in rewriting boundries should Democrats continue to dominate the state houses here...thus consolidating the changes and helping even more districts go "purple" and blue".

I would imagine the same scenario holds true for Pennsylvania. Is Rendell up for re-election? And a couple other states where this shift could mean more Democrats in the House in years to come would be in Ohio, New York (Petaki) and California. In many places, the state Repugnican parties are collapsing...not a bad thing either.

Cheers...

[JohnnyBoots]

6. I hope Delco remains Blue. That's where I'm from. n/t

[PRETZEL]

7. My take on Montgomery County

First off, only 2 incumbants were running, Matthews and Damsker. Unfortunately Ruth Damsker lost. But the Dems did pick up some important Row Offices which indicates to me that the Dems did indeed come out to vote.

But the unfortunate reality is that with respects to the commissioners they decided to split their votes and it looks like Castor and Hoeffel were the beneficiaries of that split. Truth be told, name recognition is a huge factor in local elections. People know who Bruce Castor and Joe Hoeffel are, they didn't necessarily know who Ruth Damsker was or the fact that she's been the Democratic Commissioner for the last few years. Also, she was listed second on the Democratic ballot which probably didn't help either.

[AX10]

8. What are "row offices"?

[PRETZEL]

9. row offices are

Clerk of Courts, Prothonotary, Register of Wills, etc.

Not necessarily high profile, but important non the less.