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Putting Obama’s crossover appeal to the test
A closer look at how the Democratic contender performs on Republican turf
 | Sen. Barack Obama greets supporters at a rally Monday in Beloit, Wis., the day before voters in Wisconsin cast their ballots in the state's primary. |
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So, is it right or wrong? Or perhaps, like many things in politics, it's a theory that's not provable until Election Day?
Sen. Hillary Clinton’s advisor Harold Ickes has ridiculed the notion that Obama could carry Idaho, Nebraska and other Republican strongholds in November if he were the nominee.
Neither Idaho nor Nebraska nor Kansas has gone Democratic in a presidential election since Lyndon Johnson’s 1964 landslide.
Obama “may have won the Democratic vote in Idaho, Nebraska, Kansas, he might even win it in Wyoming, I’m not predicting that,” Ickes said Saturday, adding sardonically to NBC News correspondent Andrea Mitchell, “They’re all going to be lining up in the Democratic column, aren’t they? I’ll bet over at your TV network they’re just putting them right over in the Democratic column in November.”
He added, “Those states are simply are not going to vote this year for a Democratic president.”
Idaho, Nebraska sideshows
In one sense, Idaho and Nebraska are sideshows: if Democrats carry those states in November, they’ll likely carry 45 others and it will be a landslide comparable to Johnson’s '64 victory.
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But, more likely, the decisive battlegrounds will be states that are evenly balanced between the parties, such as Virginia, Missouri and Wisconsin, which holds its Democratic primary Tuesday.
If the Republican presidential candidate were to lose Virginia and Missouri in November, it would probably be fatal.
In making the case that Obama can win independents and Republicans, Obama’s best friend has been exit poll data from states where primaries and caucus have been held.
In Missouri, for example, according to exit poll interviews, 22 percent of those who voted in the Feb. 5 Democratic primary said they were independents.
Among those voters, two-thirds of them told exit poll interviewers they voted for Obama.
But exit poll data is based on interviews with a sample of voters who agree to talk about their vote.
When pressed on how they have voted in past elections, self-described independents often turn out to be people who habitually vote for candidates of one party, even if they still think of themselves as not affiliated with that party.
Actual votes in GOP counties
Fortunately, there is hard evidence of actual votes.
Let’s take Missouri, for instance. Obama won the Missouri primary with 49 percent of the vote.
Even though Obama won statewide, in the most Republican congressional district in the state, the Seventh, he fared poorly.
This is a district where President Bush beat 2004 Democratic nominee John Kerry by better than two to one. The voters in this congressional district are more conservative than Obama’s voting record indicates that he is.
The man who represents this district is House Republican Whip Roy Blunt, who has a 100 percent rating from the leading anti-abortion group, the National Right to Life Committee. In contrast, based on votes in the Senate since he took office in 2005, Obama has a National Right to Life rating of zero. Blunt’s American Conservative Union rating is 88 out of 100; Obama’s ACU score is 8.
In the eight counties that are entirely within Blunt’s district, Obama got 34 percent of the Democratic vote, losing every county to Clinton.
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But expecting Obama to do well in the most conservative part of Missouri may be unrealistic.
So how about his performance in a mostly rural district which Bush carried in 2004 but where voters have long shown willingness to vote for a Democrat?
Where Ike Skelton wins
Look at Missouri’s Fourth Congressional District, which Democrat Rep. Ike Skelton has represented for 30 years. Skelton voted for a constitutional amendment to outlaw same-sex marriage and for a ban on the procedure known as partial birth abortion.
In the counties entirely within Skelton’s district, Obama won 9,584 votes, about 7,200 fewer than Clinton. He got about 35 percent of the Democratic vote in these counties.
Many of these same counties in Skelton’s district voted for Bill Clinton in the 1996 election, so they are not out of reach for a Democratic presidential candidate.
Obama’s victory in Missouri was due to the tried-and-true formula for Democratic candidates in the state: big turnout and massive margins in Saint Louis and Kansas City and their suburbs, plus Boone County, home of the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Cole County, home to state employees at the state capitol in Jefferson City.
Those cities and counties supplied 70 percent of all his votes in the state.
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