08 Presidential Election

Report: 21 Mountain West Counties Flip Democrat

By Courtney Lowery, 11-14-08

	Map: Tim Murphy, for the Daily Yonder

A new report from the Center for Rural Strategies and our friends over at the online journal the Daily Yonder released a report this week that details who flipped where in last week’s presidential election.

In all, 372 counties “flipped” parties from 2004, a majority of them going from Republican to Democrat. The data shows the Midwest played a huge role in the tip for Sen. Barack Obama and overall, rural counties provided a big boost.

In the Rocky Mountain West 21 counties flipped, all of them to Democrat. Of those 21 counties, 16 are considered “rural,” including:

Colorado: Alamosa, Huerfano and Ouray counties.

Idaho: Teton (Driggs) and Latah (Moscow).

Montana: Blaine (Chinook, Fort Belknap Reservation), Hill (Havre and Rocky Boy’s Reservation), Lake (Polson and Flathead Indian Reservation), Lewis and Clark (Helena) and Rosebud (Forsyth and Northern Cheyenne Reservation)

New Mexico: Colfax (Raton), Hidalgo (Lordsburg), Los Alamos (Los Alamos) and Luna (Deming)

Utah: Grand (Moab)

Wyoming: Albany (Laramie)

Click here for a full list of rural counties and more data.

The three “urban” counties that flipped in the Rocky Mountains were:

Montana: Cascade (Great Falls) and Gallatin (Bozeman)

New Mexico: Sandoval (Bernallillo) and Valencia (Los Lunas)

Click here for a full list of the urban counties that flipped and for more data.

There was one “exurban” county (click here for a list of those counties) in the Rockies that also flipped and that was Summit County in Utah, which went Democratic for the first time since 2000.

Overall, authors Bill Bishop and Tim Murphy came up with several key findings, including:

• The Midwest was the hotspot for flips this year, accounting for 173 or nearly half of all counties that changed allegiance in this election.
• Counties that changed their majority vote to Democratic this year had average per capita income of $25,587. Counties flipping Republican had average per capita income of only $18,555.
• Of the 211 rural counties that switched, 177 went Democratic while 34 went Republican.
• Of the 112 urban counties that flipped, all but one went Democratic.
• Of the 49 exurban counties that flipped, 39 went Democratic.

You can read more from the Daily Yonder and crunch your own numbers with the data here.

Correction: This story has been corrected to add Gallatin County in Montana as one of the counties that voted for one party in 2004 and switched to another in 2008.

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