koganbot | The West is the best?

Interesting stuff from Andy Gelman, saying basically that the whole country tended to shift in the same amount towards the Democratic presidential candidate in comparison to 2004, though of course in a place like Wyoming, for instance, such a shift might pass your attention by, since the state still went heavily for the Republican. (Arkansas and Louisiana were the two major exceptions, they actually shifting to the Republican, while Alaska, Kentucky, Arizona, Alabama, Oklahoma, and Massachusetts stayed about the same as 2004, all but the last of those being strong Republican states in presidential contests.) But looking more precisely, I see that the states where percentages tended to jump a bit more to Obama were Hawaii (by a lot), Indiana, Utah, Delaware, North Dakota, Nevada, Montana, Nebraska, Vermont, and Idaho. And of those ten, six of them are from what I'm calling the West (the plains and mountains and west of the mountains): Utah, North Dakota, Nevada, Montana, Nebraska, and Idaho. Three of these - Utah, Nebraska, and Idaho - got lost in the analytical shuffle because they were going from overwhelmingly Republican to merely very strongly Republican. But still, the West is shifting more.

(Also, Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight thinks the final tally, once all the late returns and early voting and absentee ballots are added up, will show Obama winning by about 6.5%, not 5%.)