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Wash. Post: America Has Moved Right Under Obama
Friday, February 6, 2015 07:40 PM
By: Sean Piccoli
Polling by the Gallup organization since President Barack Obama took office shows a steady march to the right by voters in both Democratic and Republican states, The Washington Post reports.
After Gallup in January declared Obama the most polarizing president in history, Post political blogger Philip Bump writes, "Since the dawn of the Obama era, the whole country has shifted to the right.
"Literally every state but one is now more Republican it was than six years ago," Bump writes, identifying Alaska as the exception in his survey of Gallup polls on voter party affiliation dating to 2008.
Otherwise, red states have gotten redder under Obama, and so have blue states, Bump writes.
Even Rhode Island, the most reliably Democratic state of the entire Obama era according to Gallup, tacked right from 2008 to 2014, with the differential between self-identified Democrats and Republicans shrinking by several percentage points.
Moreover, the two bluest states of 2014 — Maryland and Massachusetts — just elected Republican governors, Bump writes.
The state making the single biggest move right is Montana, Bump writes. Montana went from a slight majority of its residents identifying or leaning Democrat in 2008 to a majority leaning or identifying Republican in 2009, and has continued rightward ever since.
Bump attributed the oddity of Alaska edging left — but still remaining mostly Republican — to Sarah Palin, arguing that her presence on the 2008 Republican presidential ticket naturally produced an extra burst of in-state identification with the party, which has since tapered off.
