Interesting study at Gallup:

State of the States: Political Party Affiliation

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'If you drive God out of the world then you create a howling wilderness' --Peter Hitchens

The 2008 exit polls (example: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25383811) shows the following:
* 32 states and the District of Columbia in which more respondants claimed to be Democrats than Republicans. Obama won all of these states except for Arkansas, Georgia, Kentucky, Louisiana, Missouri, and West Virginia, which McCain won.

* 17 states in which more respondants claimed to be Republicans than Democrats. McCain won all of these states except for Colorado and Indiana, which Obama won.

* 1 state in which the percentage of respondants who claimed to be Democrats and those who claimed to be Republicans were equal. McCain very narrowly won this state, Montana, by about two percentage points.

* There are thirteen states in which the percentage of exit poll respondants who claimed to be Democrats and those who claimed to be Republicans are within five percentage points of each other. Obama won five of them.

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The Values Voter
http://thevaluesvoter.spaces.live.com

Michael Steele has his work cut out for him as RNC chair. He needs our prayers.

Also, I would encourage many more of you to begin now to make a "grass-roots" change for the 2010 elections and beyond. Steele rightly concludes that what is needed for the future of the Republican Party is less business as usual and more restructuring of the Party from the ground up.

I would like to see many of you go to HuckPac and sign up to host a "house party." You can get together with friends and neighbors who like and support Gov. Huckabee and other conservatives for office. This should not be so hard. If your house is small, sign up anyway and see if you can pack it with like-minded people. With the anti-life and anti-family executive orders Obama has already signed, as well as the disastrous trillion dollar bailout and so called economic stimulus package, and the government take-over of the banking system, our country is in danger of becoming a socialist state, very soon.

But there is great power in local politics if we can learn to tap it and excite the base. America still leans conservative but votes more liberal. But with the Obama administration, we can already see how quickly and how far the liberal Democrats are willing to take our country. Let's have a mighty army of conservative activists who love country and long to preserve our freedoms! And let's learn more of Gov. Huckabee's ideas for "vertical politics." There is such a need in our country right now for great leadership and great activism of the conservative base. These "house parties" are an exciting way to spread the word.

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I think it is one thing to register, or otherwise "identify" as a Republican, and another to vote for Republicans usually, or almost always.

Notice in the map that there are no solid "Republican" states in the old confederacy. But, yet Republicans enjoy the vast majority of statewide elected officials in Dixie.

Its because, I think, that what WE think of as Red States are conservative states, whereas surveys of this sort seem to think of Red States as Republican states.

Evidently, there is a difference.

This survey only mentioned self-identified registered party members and independents who lean toward a party. They may have missed those who are registered with one party and usually support the other.

I suspect there are 100s of thousands (millions?) of registered Democrats in the South who haven't voted for a Democrat in years (with the exception of mayor or sheriff). They hold out hope against hope that the Dems will once again go back to a populist conservative orientation.

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'If you drive God out of the world then you create a howling wilderness' --Peter Hitchens