CQ Politics Presidential Race Rating: Safe Republican

Electoral Votes: 7

John McCain has many states to worry about holding for the Republicans this fall, but Oklahoma is not one of them. Its mainly white, culturally and fiscally conservative electorate has supported the GOP nominee for president in each election of the past 40 years. Four years ago President Bush won two-thirds of its popular vote. “It’s just not in play,” Keith Gaddie, political scientist at the University of Oklahoma, said of the state’s role in the presidential election.

The war in Iraq, started under the Bush administration and supported by McCain, is not as unpopular in the state as it is nationally. Oklahoma, with its numerous Army posts and Air Force bases, has long looked favorably on hawkish candidates, and McCain’s Navy pilot background and history as a former Vietnam prisoner of war benefit him in the state. The run-up in energy prices, which has hindered the national economy, has had a positive effects on Oklahoma’s oil-dominated economy, depriving the Democrats of another key issue there.

McCain was far less of a shoo-in during the campaign for Oklahoma’s “Super Tuesday” primary, when the GOP nomination was still up for grabs. He edged out Mike Huckabee, the former governor of neighboring Arkansas, by just 2 percentage points — boosted by the early support he received from staunchly conservative first-term Sen. Tom Coburn , who touted McCain to skeptical voters on the right, and Frank Keating, the governor from 1995 to 2003, who now heads a trade association for the life insurance industry.

Barack Obama ’s challenges are underscored in the 2nd Congressional District, which runs along the state’s eastern edge and takes in the region known as “Little Dixie.” Voters there went 59 percent for Bush in 2004 on the same day they sent one of the most conservative Democrats in the House, Dan Boren , to Washington for the first time. Boren said earlier this year that although he’ll vote for Obama because the nation needs change, he would not endorse him because he believes Obama is too liberal. Obama lost the Feb. 5 primary to Hillary Rodham Clinton by 24 percentage points.

Conservative Democrats have one other foothold in the state: Gov. Brad Henry was resoundingly re-elected in 2006.

But Republicans hold both Senate seats, four out of five House seats and a majority in the state House. The senior senator, James M. Inhofe , is seeking a third full term this fall, and Democrats have been touting their recruited challenger, state Sen. Andrew Rice. Rice argues that Inhofe is so far to the right that he’s too conservative even for Oklahoma — and that his blunt statements, most famously his description of global warming as “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” shows he’s out of touch. Inhofe’s long history in Oklahoma politics and his organizational and financial strength nonetheless make him the clear favorite. CQ Politics rates the race Republican Favored.