Last week, Stephen Green did an update on where he sees the electoral college playing out. In the post, he notes:
OK, here’s the thing. Current polls — and the primary votes already held — show Obama does best in states he has virtually no shot at winning in November. (Maybe the red states are so red because the local blue voters are even further to the left than blue state voters. Just a thought; I’ve got nothing to back that up.)
Coming from Michigan - Red west, Blue southeast, I can't speak to the question of how whole states work out. But the local Democrats in the decidedly red area where I lived wore their leftism as a badge of honor and probably went further left for fear of showing any weakness at all on the part of the county Democratic party. In college, where I roomed with the chair of the Campus Democrats, I saw much the same thing (while the campus was leftish, the general area was the home turf of Republican Governor John Engler). Coming from the other side, in both the Bay Area and during my time at Michigan State, I saw many Republicans - at least those who openly acknowledged themselves as Republicans, sitting further to the right than the Republicans from my old hometown where being a Republican put you in the mainstream, as opposed to differentiating you from the larger community.
One of the tricky elements in this is that I don't know how many moderate Democrats lived in my hometown and kept their mouths shut about politics, nor how many people I know in the Bay Area who are Republicans but, being moderate, keep quiet since it doesn't seem worth the effort to proselytize. This puts me in mind of a Volokh post about preference falsification that ran earlier today. But can this take place in a microcosm too? That is, can Obama's strong showing at caucuses relate not just to a reverse Bradley effect - fear of appearing racist causes Obama support in public - but also a preference falsification effect - with all those people trying not to appear racist, still others go along because that's where things seem to be headed anyway? If the reverse Bradley effect and the leftish tendencies of the caucuses converged, you'd have a great setup for people who prefer Hillary in private but not that much to go along to get along because nobody else they know is speaking up for Hillary so why should they be the party pooper. This is especially relevant today because with Hillary starting to come back and Obama stumbling both in the polls and because his foot is in his mouth, the Democrats may have already created too many barriers for Hillary to overcome even as it looks like she's their better candidate in the general.
One thing about it: This is definitely a funny election season. Most Republicans I know have gone from saying "Anybody but McCain" to crossing their fingers that he can pull off winning the election. The Democrats, meanwhile, have lined things up so that it looks increasingly like Hillary Clinton is their most qualified candidate for president. God help us all.
