By ground or by air? Voter mobilization during the United States’ 2008 presidential campaign

MultiLevel Modeling of Space–Time Variations: Exploring Landslide Voting Patterns at United States Presidential Elections, 1992–2016

“…The growth of Republican predominance in much of rural America reflects the party's growing attraction-and particularly that of its Tea Party component-to many less affluent, white communities (McKee 2008) that have become increasingly alienated from "big government" with which they associate the Democratic Party (as revealed, for example, in sociological ethnographies such as Hochschild 2016). Classic neighborhood effects operating in those communities, where Republicans increasingly dominate local and state politics, will accentuate the party's attraction there, accompanied by a relative absence of campaigning by Democratic party candidates, who have focused their attention on the swing states and spent little effort mobilizing support in places where they think they will lose, as illustrated by the geography of their advertising and the location of their field offices (Niebler, Neiheisel, and Holleque 2018). Countering this, the greater attractiveness 3 73 33 67 61 12 Landslides 2008 Democratic 1 82 22 53 39 0 Republican 43 6 43 22 69 6 Neither 7 57 23 61 54 13 Landslides 2016 Democratic 0 71 18 53 36 0 Republican 49 11 64 26 78 19 Neither 2 63 6 57 48 0 of "big-government" programs to the more-educated, more-affluent populations-largely concentrated on the country's north-eastern and western seaboards, especially many of their metropolitan centers-and their rejection of the increasingly right-wing Republican attitudes and policies undoubtedly accounts for the greater prevalence of Democratic landslides there.…”