The New Electoral Map

One of the things Barack Obama spoke about early in the Primary Season was his desire to change the Blue & Red status of the Electoral Map over the last few elections. Not only did he change some longtime Reds to Blues, but he even made one state Purple!

There were some states that had been Blue states at some point in the last 4 Presidential Elections, but the Dems had not garnered 50% of the vote which Obama took at least 50%:

New Mexico
Colorado
Nevada
Ohio
Florida

Some states the Obama didn't win, but still received a higher percentage of the vote than any Democratic candidate in the previous 4 Presidential elections:

Montana
North Dakota
South Dakota
Georgia
South Carolina
Nebraska

Perhaps most amazingly, won 3 states in which Democrats had not been particularly competitive recently and would not have been thought of as anything but solid red states until last Tuesday:

Virginia
North Carolina
Indiana

Last but not least, the first truly PURPLE state:

Nebraska

as Barack Obama has most probably won the 1st Congressional District surrounding Omaha in a state that he lost by 16% (but did win a higher percentage of the vote than any of the last 4 Democratic Presidential nominees).

Obama won 95% of the African American vote, 67% of the Latino and Asian vote. He took only 43% of the White vote, but that is less of a concern in a country that is becoming even more racially diverse than ever before. Estimates are that Whites will make up less than 50% of the Adult population in the United States by 2016. As people who are more likely to vote Democratic (non-whites, youth, etc.) are moving into urban and suburban centers of battleground states and people who are more likely to vote Republicans concentrate themselves into a dozen or so states that have already been solidly Red States for a long time, Republicans may be painting themselves into a corner that becomes very difficult to overcome.

It is going to take a whole lot more people to move into Kansas and Wyoming thereby increasing the Electoral Vote counts for those states before they can create the foundation of a winning electoral strategy.