Wasted gains

I've heard some pundits notice that a significant component of Obama's gains have been in irrelevant strongly red states. To some extent, I believe this is correct. To measure whether this is correct, I calculated the correlation (weighted by electoral vote) between 1) Obama's improvement by state, measure as (2008Obama-2008McCain)-(2004Kerry-2004Bush), and 2) the 2004 typicality of states, measured as (2004Kerry-2004Bush)-(2004KerryNatl-2004BushNatl). The result is a 25% correlation, which is medium-low, but enough to indicate that Obama tends to waste more votes than Kerry did.

This doesn't mean that McCain has an electoral college advantage yet though. Remember that Kerry had a significant electoral college in 2004, losing nationally by 2.5%, but electorally by only 2.1% in OH. By adding some wasted votes, Obama has made the electoral college almost perfectly neutral this year. That is to say, I estimate that if the popular vote moves to 50-50, both candidates have an equal probability of electoral victory. Obama is also helped a little bit because Democrats have captured a solid majority of state delegations in the House, meaning that a tie now goes to the Democratic nominee.

This is really a second-order thing, though. The Big Deal is that Obama has improved across the board by 5%. He hasn't posted 15-20% gains in swing states the way he has in deeply red western states, but he has gains 9% in IA and 7% in WI to put those former swing states out of reach, 8% in CO to turn that into a legitimate swing state, and major gains in VA, MT, and IN to put those states in play. Not to mention, he's had modest but significant 2-5% gains in swing states NH, PA, OH, FL, MO, NM, and NV. (Alone of swing states, MI has been flat.) Meanwhile, the race has improved for Republicans only in five states: 2% in AZ (McCain's home state), 2% in NY, 2% in RI, 4% in AR (the only former swing state where McCain has gained), and 13% in MA (Kerry's home state).