November 07, 2004

The blue bubble in Oregon. This Sunday's Portland Oregonian describes how the state's demographics have been changing, how they affected the election, and how the trends in Oregon are similar to the ones across the country.

If you're sick of hearing about the election, then don't read further. But I think it's a worthwhile link, because the specific focus on one state provides some interesting concrete examples of nationwide trends. Another goodie: Four voters in Oregon describe why they voted for Bush, even when some had consistently voted Democratic in the past. Lastly, the Portland Mercury has an article about why voters passed Proposition 36, banning gay marriage, called How the Right outsmarted the Left. Basically, the leader of the "yes" coalition wisely didn't overreach himself, and only put a marriage ban in the proposition. Civil unions are still possible in Oregon.

posted by A dead Quaker 20 years ago
  • Could y'all possibly refrain from calling discrimination a 'moral issue'?
  • Huh? Where does it say that?
  • in the first article, it said the people who voted for the gay marriage ban were voting on 'moral issues'. Which, I suppose they were, but they weren't on the side of morality.
  • Alpine County is lovely, btw.
  • Got it.
  • i'm somewhat bemused that same-sex marriage/union is in the "moral" issue category to these people but killing people in iraq is in some other category...
  • Cognitive dissonance... Nuremberg Laws...
  • At least in my part of rural California, things have been very conservative for years, at a national level. The Anglo voters include farmers and business owners (mostly conservative), with a few liberal college professors and leftist freaks like me, and mostly fundamentalist, rightist Christian workers. (Broad brush, but pretty accurate.) The Anglos are fast becoming a minority. (In my town, third behind Hispanics and Asians.) The Hispanic population is interesting. Most of the ones I know are immigrants who speak little, if any English, aren't citizens, and can't vote. The second generation ones I know are either much more liberal or pretty much don't give a damn. Later generations have become business owners to some extent, and are more interested in voting, and probably more conservative. My town is where the grape strike of the 1960s began, and there's is still a good sized pocket of "la Raza" here, but many Hispanics are Catholics, or converting to fundamentalist Protestant ministries, so the "moral issues" weigh in. So, the county went for Bush, but major state offices to Democrats who are Hispanic. Very complicated demographic.
  • Like lots of states, Oregon has an urban/rural split, with Portland, Eugene, and Corvallis going Kerry, but what's the matter with Salem (Marion County)?
  • Since we're talking about Oregon elections, perhaps someone can answer me this. Oregon has 100% voting by mail, right? How is it, then, that there are "exit poll" results from Oregon?
  • The Willamette (River) Valley, which starts at Eugene and goes north to Portland, where the Willamette meets the Columbia, consists of: (1) Eugene and Corvallis, and (2) Farmer communities. (Old-school; non-hippy.) Salem is right in the middle of this. Having the state capital there probably helped Kerry some, but for all intents and purposes that part of the state might as well be east of the Cascades. For instance, Bush got 60% of the vote in Linn county. Linn County is directly south of Marion, and its western border is 10 miles from Corvallis. But I see what you're saying, and I honestly don't know. I haven't seen much of Salem, but my impression is that it is a fairly small, conservative town despite the state government being there. aaronetc, there are drop-off sites for ballots sprinkled around most towns, so that people don't have to buy a stamp for their ballot. (Yes, they have to buy a stamp to mail in their ballot.) My guess is that exit pollers were hanging out around the drop points, although maybe that doesn't result in accurate exit polls.
  • Quebec was that way back in the 40s and 50s. The convervative Union Nationale, headed by bonhomme-sept-heure Maurice Duplessis ruled the Province with an iron (catholic) fist. They drew their power from the rural counties, which where overrepresented (much less population/county in rural my county than the ones in Montreal). That and plain old electioneering and corruption. But, yeah, the point is that the back country was blue (conservative), and Montreal was red (liberal). And Duplessis ran "the only Catholic government in the World" (his words).