Breaking down Obama's NJ victory

by: Scott Weingart

Sun Nov 09, 2008 at 01:49:05 PM EST

"Swing" is a measurement used by handicappers and political scientists to measure political movement of a constituency from one election to another. In this map and subsequent discussion, the swing for a county equals ((% Obama '08 - % Mccain '08) - (% Kerry '04 - % Bush '04))/2.

Below the fold, I examine Obama's performance region by region.

Scott Weingart :: Breaking down Obama's NJ victory

As the map shows, Obama performed exceptionally well in the two large, urban Democratic base counties of Essex and Hudson. He carried both with at least 70% of the vote, widening Kerry's 2004 margin by at least ten points. Together, they provided 45% of his winning margin statewide.

Obama broke 60% in the three urban/suburban counties along the Route 1 corridor. In Mercer County, he ran an astonishing six points stronger than Kerry, winning better than 2:1. Union County also swung nearly five points to Obama. Obama outperformed Kerry by four points in more heavily blue-collar Middlesex County, garnering just over 60% of the vote. This very ethnically and socioeconomically diverse region showed in this election that it is also one of the state's most progressive.

Obama's performance in the two northeastern counties was more mixed. He ran up the score in Passaic, nearly doubling Kerry's margin of victory and becoming the first Democratic presidential candidate to break 60% there since Johnson in '64. Bergen County, on the other hand, swung just 2% towards the Democrats from '04 to '08. A weak Bergen County Democratic party may have contributed to the relatively poor performance of the state's largest county.

Obama made remarkable gains in the five heavily Republican northwestern counties. He became the first Democrat since Lyndon Johnson to carry Somerset County, and held McCain under 60% in Warren, Hunterdon, Morris and Sussex. We are seeing the same trend here that we see in other growing, highly educated suburban-to-exurban counties across the United States, such as Loudoun and Prince William in Virginia, Chester and Lancaster in Pennsylvania, and Collin and Denton in Texas. However, the trend is slower in Northwest Jersey than in these other regions, in part because growth in population and housing here has slowed over the past ten years.

McCain held both of the big Republican stronghold counties along the shore. Obama became the first Democratic presidential to perform worse here than in the exurban northwest; in 2000 Gore actually carried this region. Ocean swung only 1.3 points from Kerry to Obama, by far the least of any county in the state. This years election returns seem to suggest that this region-and not the exurban northwest-is the most culturally conservative in the state.

Obama exceeded expectations in the seven New Jersey counties in the Philadelphia media market. He fell just short of 60% in Cumberland County, more than tripling John Kerry's margin of victory in 2004. He destroyed McCain 59-40 in Burlington County, where Kerry won just 53-46 four years ago. He carried Salem County, which Kerry lost in 2004, and even closed the gap by about five points in Cape May. In Camden, he carried more than 2/3 of the vote. Biden probably boosted Obama here just as he did in the Scranton, PA area, and Obama's presence on television and radio also helped him in this region.