That’s something we should all aspire to, but you won’t be helped by Katherine Seelye’s front-page artice in The New York Times today, “Shifts in States May Give Bush Electoral Edge”. Here’s the basic idea of the article: because of population growth patterns that favor “red states”, those states will have seven more electoral votes in 2004 than in 2000, and “blue states” will have seven less.

True enough, as far as it goes–but we’ve know this to be true for a couple of years, ever since the initial results of the 2000 Census were released. So what’s the excuse for putting this very old news on the front page of the Times? Perhaps because Seelye presents this shift as unambiguously beneficial to the GOP, thereby making--or trying to make--old news into big news.

But the shift in electoral vote totals by state is only one part of the story, as accurately pointed out today in The New Republic’s blog, &c. That’s because the very same factors that may be making a red state grow relatively fast (and gain electoral votes) may also be factors that are making it more accessible to Democrats over time. In other words, a GOP state may be gaining electoral votes even as its probability of going Republican is declining. That means that you can’t assume that, simply because a red state is gaining electoral votes, the overall political effects of population change are unambiguously good for Republicans.

Take Arizona, which gains two electoral votes in 2004. The Democrats in Arizona have done particularly well in the growing Tucson metro area and have been benefitting from the rising Hispanic population, which went from 19 to 25 percent of the state in the 1990s. In addition, the Democrats have been bolstered by a continuing pro-Democratic trend in Maricopa county, the largest county in Arizona and the county with the largest growth in the nation. In 1988, Bush senior carried Maricopa by a 65 to 34 percent margin; in ‘00, his son’s margin was down to just 53-43, a swing of 21 points toward the Democrats.

These trends continued in the 2002 gubernatorial election with Democrat Janet Napolitano carrying Pima county, around Tuscon, by 14 points and only losing Maricopa narrowly to Republican Matt Salmon by 2 points.

So, Arizona gets two more electoral votes in ‘04, even as it is becoming more accessible to the Democrats with every passing year. How does this net out politically for the upcoming election and thereafter? That’s the interesting question for Arizona and most other states Seelye mentions in her article. Maybe she’s saving that analysis for her next article on this topic. But somehow DR doubts it.