What's the matter with everyone, part 2?

As discussed in my last post, the Southern states have moved towards the Republicans over the last century.  But there has been a lot of movement even when you set that aside.  After taking out the shifts associated with the South, I followed the same strategy of estimating an election score and a state score.  The product of those two predicts Democratic share of the two-party vote (relative to the national average), for each state in each election.  The five highest state scores are Utah, Idaho, Wyoming, Arizona and Nebraska.  The five lowest (ie most negative) are Vermont, Alabama, Massachusetts, Maine, and Rhode Island.  The complete rankings appear at the end of this post.  These scores can be understood in conjunction with the election scores shown in this figure:

Basically, positive scores mean states that have moved towards the Republicans, negative ones mean states that have moved towards the Democrats.  The general identity of the states at the extremes isn't surprising (the negative score for Alabama occurs because it had a pretty substantial Republican vote in the 1920s and 1930s, unlike other deep South states--in effect,  it hasn't moved as far towards the Republicans because it didn't have as far to move).  What did surprise me is how steady the shift has been.  In fact, the method was not designed to produce a trend, just to show variation.  Only one election stands out as unusual (1948), and it seems to have been simply an exception rather than the beginning of something.  Aside from 1948, there hasn't been much election-to-election variation.  That suggests that the roots of the change are "sociological" (ie related to long term social or economic trends) than "political" (ie related to party ideologies or election issues).



UTAH         UT 2.69
IDAHO         ID 2.34
WYOMING         WY 1.66
ARIZONA   AZ 1.64
NEBRASKA NE 1.38
MONTANA         MT 1.18
NEVADA         NV 0.88
NORTH DAKOTA ND 0.77
*TEXAS         TX 0.73
INDIANA         IN 0.70
*SOUTH CAROLINA SC 0.60
*OKLAHOMA OK 0.56
KANSAS         KS 0.56
NEW MEXICO NM 0.53
*ARKANSAS AR 0.43
COLORADO CO 0.32
SOUTH DAKOTA SD 0.32
*KENTUCKY KY 0.29
*LOUISIANA LA 0.28
*MISSOURI MO 0.11
*NORTH CAROLINA NC 0.08
*WEST VIRGINIA WV 0.05
*TENNESSEE TN     -0.01
NEW HAMPSHIRE NH     -0.05
*MISSISSIPPI MS     -0.06
OHIO         OH     -0.06
*GEORGIA   GA     -0.09
*VIRGINIA VA     -0.13
*FLORIDA        FL     -0.23
OREGON    OR     -0.24
WASHINGTON WA     -0.37
WISCONSIN WI     -0.45
MARYLAND MD     -0.49
IOWA         IA     -0.56
DELAWARE DE     -0.56
MINNESOTA MN     -0.63
CONNECTICUT CT     -0.71
CALIFORNIA CA     -0.73 
ILLINOIS IL     -0.78
NEW JERSEY NJ     -0.79
PENNSYLVANIA PA     -0.85
MICHIGAN MI     -0.96
NEW YORK NY     -1.14
RHODE ISLAND RI     -1.16
MAINE         ME     -1.43
MASSACHUSETTS MA     -1.44
*ALABAMA        AL     -1.85
VERMONT         VT     -2.33