Atlas of the 2012 Elections by unknow

Author:unknow
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 1812827
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Unlimited Model

While the county-level results in 2008 were significantly different from those of 2004, there was little change in the county-level results in the Southeast between the 2012 and 2008 elections. What change there was served to reinforce patterns first seen in 2008. As was noted in the previous section on Appalachia, from 2008 to 2012, Republicans significantly increased their level of support throughout West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, and southwestern Virginia. Republicans also significantly increased their level of support in western Kentucky and central Tennessee.

As shown in Figure 6.4, increases in Obama support between 2008 and 2012 also reinforced the 2008 map. The largest percentage of counties that increased their Democratic support between 2008 and 2012 is found in the rural Black Belt region, already a Democratic stronghold. One county that should be mentioned that saw an increase in Democratic support between 2008 and 2012 is Osceola County, Florida. Located just south of Orlando, Osceola County is home to a fast-growing Latino population, primarily migrants from the island of Puerto Rico (Sanchez 2009). The migration of Puerto Ricans to Osceola County has helped to swing the county toward the Democrats in presidential elections. Indeed, the growth of Latino populations in key southern swing states, such as Florida, North Carolina, and Virginia, may give a boost to Democratic candidates in presidential elections in the near future. As well, the growth of Latino populations in Georgia, combined with the in-migration of foreign immigrants and northerners to metro Atlanta, has the potential to swing Georgia toward the Democrats in future elections.

One question that arose in the 2008 elections was to what extent white voters would vote for the first major-party African American presidential candidate. While the percentage of white voters casting ballots for Obama in 2008 varied widely around the South, no state saw a percentage of its white vote equal to that of the national average. Such an assessment about the 2012 election is made more difficult as statewide exit polling was not conducted in every state. However, the five states in the region for which exit polls were conducted show a similar result to that of 2008.

Nationally, exit-polling data found that Obama won 39 percent of the white vote. Five states in the South had statewide exit polls (Alabama, Florida, Mississippi, North Carolina, and Virginia). None of these five southeastern states had a statewide white Obama vote percentage as high as the national level. However, there was great variation across the South. The white Obama vote percentage was highest in those states at the margins of the region (Virginia and Florida, each at 37 percent), whereas white voter support for Obama was virtually nonexistent in the Deep South (Alabama at 15 percent and Mississippi at 11 percent). At the same time, 2012 exit-poll data showed that the percentage of white voters in the electorate has dropped in these five southeastern states between 2004 and 2012, from a decline of one percentage point in North Carolina (71 percent in 2004, 70 percent in 2012) to five percentage points in Alabama and Mississippi.

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