2008 Voting Trends

This post comes from my son Patrick who is a very astute observer of the political scene. I hope his prediction about Texas is right.

This map breaks down the voting trends of counties in the 2008 election. Blue means the county voted more Democrat than in 2004, and red means more Republican than 2004.

There is a lot of blue on this map. The democrats did an amazing job of making inroads into traditional Republican strongholds this year.

If you look at Texas on this map, you'll see the southwest part of the state is a lovely shade of blue. I believe that this represents a real problem for Republicans in future elections. The hispanic population continues to grow, and they continue to break for Democrats (67% to 31%, an increase of 14 points from 2004). I predict that in a few election cycles, Texas will no longer be considered a Republican stronghold, and could very well go blue.