ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ERROR–PURPLE STATES.

ACKNOWLEDGMENT OF ERROR–PURPLE STATES. After the 2004 election, I had some e mail exchanges with Dick Weisfelder in which I argued that there were–or could be– purple states. My position was that whether a state was Republican (red) or Democratic (blue) depended partly on the where the Presidential candidates came from. (I was deeply impressed by what happened in 1960 when the Massacusetts Democrat Kennedy carried most of the states that the Eastern Republican Dewey had carried in 1948, and the California Republican Nixon carried most of the states that the Midwestern Democrat Truman had carried twelve years earlier). Now, the Democratic candidate comes from a Midwestern state, and yet the electoral map seems not to have changed very much. Larry Sabato says here that: “We now are fairly certain that a minimum of 42 states will keep the same partisan color that they chose in 2004. We would not be shocked if this number topped 45. That’s right: After expenditures in the hundreds of millions, all the controversial events of the past four years, and the marathon two-year campaign of 2008, the map may not be radically altered.” There are some weeks to go, and a decisive victory for one candidate might change the colors of some states, but I acknowledge that I was wrong.