So, Georgia's race is turning competitive. North Carolina. West Virginia! Even the Kentucky Senate race!
And yet poor South Carolina has been relegated to the forgotten, hopeless dark red, not even a hint of lightening to "leaning Republican" just that dark "Safe Republican" territory.
At least in theory.
Well, I don't buy it. And I think I'm right. The Georgia, West Virginia and Kentucky races all turned competitive within the last two weeks. We saw huge number swings.
But nobody is talking about South Carolina. Know why? Because no one's polled South Carolina since Sept. 23!
My first piece of evidence, the 2004 results:
Georgia - 58-41, Shrub
North Carolina - 56-44, Shrub
South Carolina - 58-41, Shrub
Note the three states tended to vote in very similar margins for Shrubster. Hmm. Could we take from that...well, that the three states tended to vote in similar ways? At least four years ago? I think we can.
My second reason for not being crazy, polling from two weeks ago from fivethirtyeight.com:
Georgia, a 9-20 poll has McCain +18
This week: McCain by +9 or +7
Nate at fivethirtyeight.com says it's now a toss-up, looking at the
high number of new voters who are African American and the
beautifully high numbers of African Americans who have already
voted early in Georgia.
South Carolina, polls on 9-22 and 9-23 have McCain +18 and +15
This week? There are no polls from this week. Or last week.
Nothing since the economy went to hell.
Do we really think the people in South Carolina are immune to the fact that the economy is going to hell? Or that unlike other voters, we don't vote our pocketbooks?
My third point: We're excited here, too. Voter registration for the election ended on Saturday and the state estimates we have 240,000 new voters, bringing the total in the state to 2.5 million registered voters. And those aren't final numbers. It's a preliminary number. They're still counting and processing registrations.
Georgia, similarly, has about 500,000 new voters (not final numbers, still counting, may have gotten another 300,000 to add to that) out of 5.5 million voters total.
My fourth point: Georgia and South Carolina have similar percentages of African American voters, about 30 percent.
To poll South Carolina and get Obama at only 38 percent (last poll), you'd have to believe he gets nearly all the African American vote but only a tad more than 1 in 7 of us white people, and I know we have the reputation of being racists in South Carolina. But I've lived here for 20 years now, and I really don't think 6 out of 7 South Carolinaians are too racist to vote for Obama.
Even cooler, with a base of 30 percent African American voters, all Obama needs is about 2 out of every 7 white voters to be dead-even with McCain!
I have trouble believing I couldn't find 2 out of every 7 white people who are ready to abandon what's left of the Republican Party right now.
Fifth: African American voters are fired up. In Georgia, AAs are 30 percent of the electorate, but make up 40 percent of the Georgians who've voted early. I'm betting South Carolina AAs are similarly fired up and ready to vote in extraordinary numbers. (We don't have early voting.)
Sixth: SC Dems are alive and well and fired up. For the first time in decades, we outvoted Republicans in our Primary. And remember, the SC Primary was Jan. 19, early on and everything still up in the air. Highly competitive. The results, a startling beautiful:
532,000 votes for Dems
445,000 for Repugs
Seventh: We love Obama! He won the South Carolina primary with 55 percent of the vote! And we really don't like McCain that much. He only got 33 percent of the Republican vote, barely beating Huckabee. So, Primary results in SC:
295,000 vote for Obama
148,000 votes for McNasty
There it is, my Seven Reasons Why I want people to at least believe it's possible South Carolina will be competitive for Obama this year!
Someone please tell me I have reason to hope!