New England stays blue

news@dailylobo.com

With the 2012 election’s latest electoral college results, New England once again has voted Democrat, shifting its historical political party alignment.

In the six elections since 1992, all New England’s votes have gone to Democratic candidates, with the exception of New Hampshire, which was carried by Republican George W. Bush in 2000.
This trend lies in contrast to New England’s history as a solidly Republican region. The pattern dated back to the 1856 election, which was the first to feature the Republican Party on the presidential scene.

By contrast, with a few salient exceptions, including Virginia and Colorado voting for Obama, the rest of the country largely performed as expected in this election. For example, New Mexico followed its long-standing tradition of re-electing the incumbent, and states like Pennsylvania have solidified their electoral shift to voting Democrat.

Though New England’s voting for a Democrat six elections in a row is an electoral shift, its voting for a Democrat isn’t without precedent. Democratic switches happened twice in the 136 years between 1856 and 1992.

The first such switch was in the 1912 election, when all the New England states, except Vermont, voted for Democrat Woodrow Wilson. Connecticut had been the lone Democrat-voting dissenter in the 1876, 1884, 1888 and 1892 elections.

The other switch was in the 1964 election, when the entire region went for Democrat Lyndon Johnson.

Over the past century, New England has returned to its solidly Republican status five times, in 1920, 1924, 1952, 1956 and 1984. But Republicans carried three or more of the region’s six states in 15 of the 19 elections between 1916 and 1988.

The exceptions were in 1936, 1940 and 1944, when Vermont and Maine voted Republican and were the only states to vote against Franklin Delano Roosevelt in all four of his elections, and in 1968, when the Republican-voting New England states were Vermont and New Hampshire.

This electoral shift to a Democratic New England mirrors the electoral shift of the Solid South. The region was a Democrat stronghold for nearly 90 years from 1877 until 1964, when it voted against Democrat Lyndon Johnson. The Republican-leaning trend in that region continued in this year’s election.