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November 24, 2004
Another Note on Those Fast-Growing Counties
Last night, I wrote a post suggesting that Bush's gains in fast-growing counties in 2004 were less impressive than indicated in the Brownstein/Rainey article in the LA Times. But I forgot to mention what is perhaps the least impressive number mentioned in the article.
The article makes a bid deal about the fact that Dole in 1996 only carried the 100 fastest-growing counties by 450,000 votes, whereas Bush carried them this year by 1.7 million votes, a "dramatic" change.
Oh really? Well, let's see here. Dole lost to Clinton by 8.2 million votes. Bush beat Kerry this year by about 3.4 million votes. That’s a net shift of 11.6 million votes to the GOP between the two elections. The Brownstein/Rainey data say that the fastest-growing counties contributed 1.25 million votes (1.7 million-450,000) to that shift or about 11 percent of total Republican gains.
I guess drama's in the eye of the beholder.
Posted by Ruy Teixeira at 10:45 AM | link
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