Although it doesn't settle the election Bush holding Nevada and picking up New Mexico and Iowa is good news as it expands his margin of victory. It also makes IL and the upper midwest look like blue islands in a sea of red. I had thought Bush would take Minnesota and Wisconsin and perhaps even PA and MI but it didn't happen.

As for NH perhaps it is on its way to becoming like the other NE states (solid blue except for governors). And then OJ will know the frustration of being a conservative in a liberal state (like those of us in MA)

Don't count your Republican governors before they hatch, Orrin. In WA, Rossi's down by 18,000 votes at the moment. Now they'll count the non-Seattle votes, though, and we'll see how things go.

Washington does not have a Republican governor and may not even after this election. But VT and CT do.

AWW:

The legislature and our whole congressional delegation stayed Red while the Pres and an unpopular governor lost by under two points. We're Red.

FWIW, I used the Census's September 2003 population estimates to do a Congressional reapportionment last night. Results: Texas and Utah each pick up one seat, while Ohio and Iowa each lose one.

PA, MO, NY, and MN all look almost certain to lose a seat by 2010, with those seats going to FL, CA, TX (a second one), and AZ. MA looks to lose one too, probably to CA, although it's hard to predict with the very fast NV and AZ growth.

In December of this year, the Census will release their September 2004 population estimates. I'll probably run the numbers with those, too.

In any case, the upshot is that the 2010 Census numbers will be such that Bush could've lost Ohio and still won, so long as he carried the others.

The Midwest, the Northeast (outside of NH), and the Central Plains are growing slowly or not at all. Luckily for Bush, the Dakotas are already at only one representative, so that can't hurt. The Pacfic Coast, Coastal South, and Mountain states are all growing very quickly. The fastest growing by percentage are Arizona and Nevada.

There are still 600,000 votes to be counted in WA. More than one-third of the votes counted yesterday came from heavily Dem King County. Expect Rossi to eak out a Republican win even as the Dems take over the state senate giving them control of both houses. In my industry it is necessary to lobby in Olympia every winter. Our association had great hopes of the Republicans holding the senate and taking over the house, but it isn't gonna' happen. If Gregoire does beat Rossi giving Dems control of the entire government, expect WA to become the most business unfriendly state in the union. They will implement their ridiculous ergonomic laws (if you saw the explaination of what workers would and would not be allowed do you would die laughing, unless you have 130 employees like I do, then you would die crying), fail to stop the insane minimum wage rules (it moves to over $7.30hr in January and goes up every year - no tip credit provision)and and let the budget explode out of control.

OJ,

I have 4 years to work on IL. I'll get right on it.

A married and pro-life Rudy wins 50 states in 2008.

Not Hawaii.

Orrin kept saying that if the stock market numbers were a little higher, Bush would get 50. But Hawaii has the lowest unemployment in the nation; we're as prosperous as we ever get, and despite being the world's biggest military base in the midst of a war, and despite fantasy (or faked) polls, Kerry won 55-45.

The Republican governor made a big push to elect more state legislators, so her program (which presumably a majority elected her to advance) could get past obstructionists Democrats.

The Republicans got slaughtered, losing 5 seats in the House. No Senate seats changed hands, but in rematches where the Republican was close last time, the same Republican lost big this time.

I'll buy 49-1, maybe, but until the atom bomb goes off in New York City, no Republican wins 50 again.

(The only times Republicans have won Hawaii was when an overwhelmingly popular Republican was running for a second term, '72 and '84.)

If Rudy makes friendly with the conservative base, and keeps his charm in doing so, he will win PA, NJ, NH, WI, and probably MI without breathing hard. ME and MN will be more Red as well.

The Upper Midwest is moving away from its WWI-induced isolationism, which is good news for the GOP because the region's social conservatism will increasingly matter.

I lived in Iowa for 11 years, and I didn't detect any residual isolationism. Just about all the Democrats I knew there were still smarting from Coolidge prosperity.

When they're gone, Iowa will be Republican like it was in the '20s. All my kids went to schools named for Hoover and Harding.

Samuel Lubell and others have described this pretty well and I've seen it in deepest, darkest Wisconsin among friends of my mother's family. This region has been referred to as Germano-America. In fact, Wisconsin is majority ethnic German, and Germans make up the largest ethnic group in Iowa, the Dakotas, and Minnesota.

All the nonsense which surrounded America's wrongful entry into WWI really affected the politics of the region. Germans went from being the 'model minority' to being the baby-bayoneting Hun. The teaching of German was barred, etc. Even though all that nonsense ended after the armistice, the politics of the region remained forever changed. One aspect of this is the predilection for dovish candidates like McGovern, Burdick, Proxmire, Nelson, Mondale,Harkin, Hughes and so forth. Even the Republicans tend to be more dovish than their counterparts elsewhere.

Michael Barone explains this a lot better than I do.

Bart:

Apparently the current Archbishop of St.Louis, who's been one of the main guys driving the anti-Kerry Catholics used to hasve Western WI and Eastern IA for his turf.

He was the Archbishop or Bishop of LaCrosse, Wisconsin, in a region heavily populated by German Catholics. His concern as I pointed out was social conservatism, and he didn't have a whole lot to say about the WOT, which is fine.

If we go by measures of things like abortions, divorces, marriages, children, church attendance, the Upper Midwest is a hotbed of cultural conservatism, even more than much of the South. If the isolationism dies down, the GOP can be as solid there as it is in the Deep South.

I don't claim to know anything about Wisconsin, etc.

And I'm well aware of the Lindbergh syndrome of power worship in the Upper Midwest. I'm just saying that by the time I got to Iowa in 1976, I never detected a hint of it. The Democrats were the heirs of the armed dairy farmers who forced milk to be dumped in the ditches of Sioux City, not of the Nye Committee.