If you were following any of the Tuesday evening election coverage, you might have been wondering why Oklahoma was the first state west of the Mississippi to pop up on the map:
Oklahoma was the only place in the whole country where every single county voted for John McCain, making it the reddest of the red states.
Apparently voter patterns haven’t changed much in Oklahoma since the 1915 U.S. Supreme Court case Guinn vs. United States made our state constitution’s “grandfather clause” unconstitutional.
via Tulsa World
By saying Okla voting patterns were no different than the “Grandfather Clause,” it sounds like you’re saying the state went completely Republican because there was an African-American on the Democrat side? I think that’s a stretch considering the state has always been Republican (obviously in years where there hasn’t been a major party African-American candidate). At least for the last 40 years or so. You could just as easily say California went all Dem (assume is true) because they didn’t want a woman VP.
My brief research shows the state went 66/34% rep/dem… identical to the 2004 election (when all counties were also Republican).
True the state has voted overwhelmingly Republican in every presidential election since 1952 (the landslide victory by Lyndon Johnson in ’64 was the only exception). Contradictingly the Republicans won the state House this year for the first time in history (Dems blamed Obama’s lack of campaign support in a no contest state).
The purpose of my comment about Guinn vs. United States was only to draw attention to Oklahoma’s ignoble history of disenfranchising black voters against the backdrop of the first legitimate black presidential candidate. When you look at the election results of the states where grandfather clauses had been struck down after 1915 (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, North Carolina, and Virginia), you see that every urbanized county (i.e. those that demographically matter) voted Democrat. Good source here: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html
Hey! thanks for the post!!