Some of the charts don't show up well, so you might check the original here:
http://electionate.com/...
The New York Times reported that the Obama campaign is embarking on a crash voter registration effort to determine whether Obama can win Arizona, a state that McCain won by 9% in 2008. While many are likely to dismiss Obama’s chances of winning a traditionally Republican state, the demographics point toward a genuinely competitive race, and the Romney campaign would be unwise to dismiss the threat of an upset in Arizona, even in a close national election.
McCain’s victory obscured profound GOP vulnerabilities in Arizona. McCain’s margin depended on holding Obama to just 56% of the Latino vote; if Obama had won Arizona Latinos by the same margin as he did in neighboring Nevada, McCain’s 9% margin is reduced to just 1%. Obama didn’t contest McCain’s home-state, and consequently did not invest in voter registration or GOTV operations.
McCain’s home-state advantage and Obama’s absence clearly contributed to McCain’s large margin of victory. The more interesting question, however, is whether Obama would have won Arizona if McCain had hailed from another state, say Massachusetts? The answer is yes. There are a number of ways to consider the issue, and all point toward an Obama victory.
One simple way is to estimate Obama’s expected result in Arizona is to imagine that Obama exceeded Kerry by the same amount in Arizona as he did nationally. If Obama swung Arizona by the amount he did nationally, Obama would have eeked out a narrow 1.25% victory. But perhaps a more accurate method would consider the amount that Obama swung Colorado, New Mexico, and Nevada (14.87%), and particularly Colorado and Nevada (14.35%), two similar states with fast growing Latino populations and metropolitan areas. These gains were conspicuously absent in Arizona.
Swing (D-08 margin -D-04 margin)
Colorado 13.62%
New Mexico 15.92%
Nevada 15.08%
Arizona 1.99%
Even a cursory look at the map reveals that the difference correlates entirely with the arbitrary and artificial Arizona border, and nothing more. It’s important to note that this map relies on a different definition of shift – while the chart above is a shift in margin (08 margin – 04 margin), the below map is a shift in absolute support (08 D% – 04D%), or half of the shift in margin.
If Obama made gains in Arizona commensurate with gains elsewhere in the southwest, he would have won Arizona by 6.39% or 5.87%, depending on whether one included New Mexico. Arizona would have been the closest of the four competitive southwestern states, but a 6.39% margin of victory would have been comparable to Virginia, and better than Obama’s performance in more traditional swing states, like Florida and Ohio.
Given these figures, there should be little question that Obama would have prevailed. But the difference between Obama winning Arizona by 1% or 6% is the difference between a competitive state in 2012, and a likely GOP-hold. Thus, a more specific assessment is necessary to estimate Obama’s expected share of the 2008 Arizona vote.
This can be accomplished by, first, adjusting the white vote. In 2004, Kerry received comparable shares of the white vote in Arizona, Colorado, and Nevada (41, 42, 43%, respectively). In 2008, McCain’s home-state advantage actually reduced Obama’s share of the white vote to 40% in Arizona, while Obama made big gains in Colorado and Nevada (to 50% and 45%, respectively).
Arizona Colorado Nevada
2004 White Vote 41% 42% 43%
2008 White Vote 40% 50% 45%
Obama’s improvement among white voters was larger in Colorado than Nevada because of a larger number of socially moderate, educated, and wealthy voters. Since Arizona’s white electorate is somewhat more comparable to Nevada, but wealthier, this model assumes that the white vote moves 2.5% toward Obama from Kerry giving Obama 43.5% of the white vote.
Second, the non-white vote. In Arizona, Latino’s only offered 56% of their support to Obama, compared to 76% in Nevada, 61% in Colorado, and 69% in New Mexico. If we use Obama’s 67% of the national Latino vote (which is relatively close to an unweighted average of the three southwestern states), as well Obama’s national figures among other non-white groups, and then assume that each component of the non-white vote turns out in the same proportion as 2008, then Obama would have won 72.4% of the non-white vote, much higher than the 60% of the non-white vote that Obama actually won in 2008.
Third, composition of the electorate. There’s a relatively big margin for error here, but one way to estimate how Obama registration and GOTV efforts might have influenced non-white turnout is to assume that minorities would have turned out in the same proportion to their share of the overall population as they did in Colorado and Nevada, two other states with fast growing, largely Latino populations. In 2008, minorities were 31% and 19% of the Nevada and Colorado electorates, compared to 45.9% and 26.7% of the overall population in the 2010 census, or a ratio of .675 and .633, respectively. In comparison, non-white voters were 25% of the Arizona electorate and 42.2% of the overall population in the 2010 census, or a lesser, .592 ratio.
Non-White Share of 2008 Vote Non-White % of Population (2010 Census) Non-White Turnout WRT Population
Arizona 25% 42.2% 0.592417
Nevada 31% 45.9% 0.675381
Colorado 19% 30% 0.633333
If the non-white population in Arizona turned out at the same rate as Nevada or Colorado, then the non-white share of the electorate would have increased from 25% to 28.5% or 26.7%, respectively.
If Obama received 72% of the non-white vote and 43.5% of the white vote, then Obama would have secured between 51.22 and 51.73% of the statewide popular vote, depending on whether one relies on the Colorado or Nevada non-white turnout ratio. If 1.7% of the electorate voted for third party candidates, as did in 2008, then Obama would have won Arizona by between 4.14% and 5.17%.
In this light, Obama’s chances look quite reasonable, at least if we think of Arizona as a state that voted for Obama by 4% in 2008. But Obama didn’t win Arizona by 4%, and the Obama campaign must take measures to make Arizona meet the three conditions of the above model: 1) increase non-white turnout by registering non-white voters to the same extent as Obama did in 2008; 2) win Arizona Latinos by a far greater margin than 2008; 3) invest in Arizona as much as the other swing states.
Reasoned analysts can disagree on whether Obama can succeed. Diminished enthusiasm for Obama’s candidacy among young voters hampers registration efforts in a number of ways, both by reducing expected turnout rates and by reducing the pool of available volunteers for registration drives. New laws restricting voter participation will hamper Democratic efforts to register voters, let alone turn them out. On the other hand, compared to 2008, Obama has four additional years of disproportionately non-white young voters to work with, as well as four additional years of Latino citizens who may be ready to engage in the political process. Similarly, Arizona has been ground zero in recent immigration debates, and high levels of Latino politicization and turnout for Democrats could follow. Even if Latino turnout doesn’t increase as much as it would have in 2008, one might expect Obama to at least receive far more support, since home-state, moderate McCain has been replaced by an anti-comprehensive immigration reform and DREAM Act candidate. On the other hand, white support for Obama is likely to fall substantially in a competitive national election. Heavy Mormon support might compound these national-level trends, although it’s unclear whether there were many Democratic or non-voting Mormons in 2008. If so, then the number of non-white voters necessary for Obama to win Arizona increase further.
If McCain wasn’t from Arizona and Obama had competed in 2008, Obama probably would have won the state by a meaningful margin. The Obama campaign would have registered thousands of new non-white and young voters, and Arizona would probably be widely regarded as a critical swing state in 2012. But Obama didn’t compete in Arizona, and now the Obama campaign is attempting to recreate the increased non-white registration and turnout necessary to sway the state. Whether the Obama campaign can do so is unclear, but given their success in 2008, and the number of unregistered young and non-white voters, it would not be wise to dismiss their chances. Depending on one’s confidence in the Obama campaign’s ability to register voters, it may even be likely. At the very least, it is not surprising that the Obama campaign is assessing whether it’s possible. The underlying demographics are quite favorable to Obama, and if the Obama campaign can make Arizona behave like a state that voted for Obama by 4-5% in 2008, it would be extremely competitive in 2012.
