Democratic Presidents and the Old Confederacy

There is this guy named David Leip who runs a website devoted to American elections, particularly presidential elections. He has the breakdown of every presidential race since the adoption of the Constitution with maps showing which states each candidate won. It is a very interesting site.

If you examine the election results for the 20th century, you will find that counting the election of 1900 there were 25 presidential elections between 1900 and 1996. Republicans won 13 of them and Democrats won 12. In the 12 that Democrats won, they carried at least four states of the 11 states of the Old Confederacy, and in most cases, they carried more than four. Indeed in the elections of 1912, 1916, 1932, 1936, 1940, 1944, and 1976, the Democratic candidate carried all 11 of them.

Although carrying all 11 of them, was no guarantee of victory, (see for example the elections of 1900, 1904, 1908, 1920, and 1924), no Democrat has won without carrying at least four "Confederate" states. The quesiton is, however, could that dynamic be changed in 2008?

At Leip's website, he has predictions based on polls of how Democrats could win in 2008 and lose every "Confederate" state. The calculations involve carrying Ohio, Missouri, New Mexico, Colorado, Iowa, and Nevada. These are all states that Bush carried in 2004. Those states would mean a pick-up of 57 electoral votes, as compared to Kerry in 2004. The two most important states in those six are Ohio and Missouri, which give you 31 electoral votes, which is more than Florida. Alternatively, if a Democrat could carry Florida and Ohio, he or she would pick up an additional 47 votes, again as compared to Kerry in 2004.

The 2008 election could be historic in many ways. We could see the election of the first woman president, or the first Afro-American president, and the first election of a Democrat who didn't carry a single state of the Old Confederacy since the end of the Civil War.