Win Your Conference, Win the White House
By: Patrick Ottenhoff, OpEd Contributor
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December 9, 2008
Did you catch the score of that recent Oklahoma-Texas Tech game? It was about as close as the Obama-McCain matchup in Oklahoma. If you missed the game, Oklahoma was up 42-7 at half and eventually won by a crushing 65-21 margin.
The presidential contest in the Sooner State wasn’t much closer — McCain swept all 77 counties and won 66% of the total vote there, making it his strongest state. He even outperformed George W. Bush in all but a handful of counties.
The neighboring states of Texas and Kansas, which also host Big 12 teams, weren’t far behind in supporting the GOP candidate. This got me thinking, “The Big 12 is a pretty red conference.”
I checked the map, and sure enough, McCain won five out of the seven Big 12 states: Texas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska and Missouri. He lost Iowa and Colorado (but you could argue that the University of Colorado at Boulder’s hippie culture doesn’t really fit in with the Big 12’s aggie lifestyle anyway).
But the Big 12 wasn’t even McCain’s strongest conference — the Southeastern Conference (SEC) was. He won eight out of the nine states in the SEC, taking Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, Kentucky, Tennessee and South Carolina.
His only SEC loss was Florida. This makes the SEC the reddest conference, which is no surprise, but it’s still strange that CBS — the network of Dan Rather — broadcasts its games.
Obama’s best conference is one that has its headquarters in Chicago: the Big 10. He swept all eight states in the conference, winning Minnesota, Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois, Michigan, Pennsylvania, Ohio and even the formerly Hoosier-red Indiana. It was an impressive sweep considering that Obama was expected to struggle with Big 10 fans like Joe the Plumber, who’s a Buckeyes diehard himself.
Obama also won 75% of the states in the Pac-10 and Big East. The Pac-10 is a little deceiving since it only has the three Pacific coast states plus Arizona. The Big East is kind of geographically scattered, representing schools from Tampa to Cincinnati to Storrs, Ct. Obama won six out of its eight states, loosing only Kentucky and West Virginia.
The most “purple” BCS conferences represent the states where we saw the most fundamental shifts in the electoral map, namely, the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the Mountain West Conference.
Although the ACC stretches from Chestnut Hill to Tallahassee, it’s heart is in the mid-Atlantic. Virginia and North Carolina represent half of the ACC’s dozen schools, and it’s in these two states where Obama posted some of his most impressive gains.
In 2004, Bush won five of the seven states in the ACC, but in 2008, Obama turned the tables and won five himself. He flipped Florida, North Carolina and Virginia — the kind of “New South” states embodied in the Research Triangle where UNC, NC State and Duke are located — and held onto Maryland and Massachusetts. He only lost Georgia and South Carolina.
The Mountain West Conference was just as decisive of a turn-around. In 2004, Bush won six out of seven states that have Mountain West schools, but in 2008, Obama won four. He turned Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada and held onto California; and he lost Utah, Texas and Wyoming.
The Mountain West would benefit mightily from the eight-team playoff system that Obama has proposed. Undefeated Utah will be locked out of the championship game this year.
But perhaps the two conferences that would benefit the most this year from a playoff system are the reddest of them all. The Big 12 had three powerhouses in Oklahoma, Texas and Texas Tech but only the Sooners have a ticket to the game. And the SEC has two Top 5 teams in Alabama and Florida but only the Gators have a shot at the championship.
Bill Clinton was a proud SEC fan and Dubya was a Big 12 guy — Both of them won their respective conferences by huge margins. Reagan swept the Pac-10, Carter dominated the SEC, Ford won the Big 10, Nixon owned the Pac-10, LBJ carried the Big 12 and JFK was victorious in the Ivy League.
Obama swept the Big 10 and the Pac-10. So what does this say about picking presidential candidates? You can’t win the title game without first winning your conference.
Patrick Ottenhoff is an online strategist a New Media Strategies and the author of TheElectoralMap.com. When he’s not analyzing red and blue states, he’s rooting for the burgundy and gold.”
