One Utah

Sean Quinn writing on the excellent election site FiveThirtyEight.com:

SUNSET SANDSTONE RED, Utah projects as John McCain’s safest state in 2008. It was the number one Bush margin state in 2004, and set the baseline for the most conservative state in the Likert scale. 57 percent of voters identified as Republicans in 2004 (the most) and only 19 percent identified as Democrats (2d lowest). Though Democrats are making inroads all over the Mountain West, Utah is not going to yield any time soon…

Of course, as a former McCainiac who went out and campaigned for Senator McCain in the 2000 primary, it amazes me that so many Utahns now want to vote for him. Eight years ago, McCain came in third in Utah, behind George W. Bush and Alan Keyes, with only 14 percent of the Republican vote.

And McCain is arguably a less appealing candidate than he was last time around.

Here’s the FiveThirtyEight.com electoral map as of today. Obama leading with 330 electoral votes (270 needed to win):

This entry was posted Tuesday, September 30th, 2008 at 2:49 pm and is filed under 2008 Election, Barack Obama, John McCain, National Politics, This Blog, Utah Politics. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.