CQ TODAY ONLINE NEWS
Aug. 8, 2008 – 10:35 p.m.
2008 Election Forecast: Rhode Island, Small but Solidly Democratic
By Lauren Phillips, CQ Staff
CQ Presidential Race Rating: Safe Democrat
Electoral Votes: 4
Rhode Island is as certain to end up in Barack Obama ’s win column as any state. Go back to 1928, and you find Democrats won 16 of the 20 presidential elections in the state, and the party’s victory margins since 1988 have averaged almost 23 percentage points.
McCain easily won the GOP primary with 65 percent of the vote on March 4. He might trim the Democratic margins if he can maintain the image of an independent-minded Republican. Yet his overall record, including his support for the Iraq War, is quite conservative and thus doesn’t fit the mold of the few Republicans who have succeeded there.
As in most states, the minority party occasionally puts up candidates who win because they are deemed sufficiently moderate. Republicans have won four consecutive elections for governor. From 1999 through 2006, Republican Lincoln Chafee held the Senate seat previously occupied for more than two decades by his father, John H. Chafee. But even Chafee could not withstand the anti-Republican tide of 2006, when he lost to Democrat Sheldon Whitehouse . And since then he has declared himself and independent and endorsed Obama.
The state’s other senator, Jack Reed , a strong Obama ally who joined the candidate on his trip to Europe and the Middle East last month, is a shoo-in to win a third Senate term in November. Patrick J. Kennedy and Jim Langevin , who hold the state’s two House seats, are also overwhelming favorites for re-election.
Though Hillary Rodham Clinton won the Feb. 5 “Super Tuesday” primary by 18 percentage points, Obama hasn’t had a problem gaining supporters. Elected officials who supported Clinton quickly came out in support of Obama after he clinched the nomination in June, noted Jennifer Lawless, assistant professor of political science at Brown University, because “voting for a Republican for president is not really in the list of options.”
Comments
Rhode Island is the Louisiana of the Atlantic seaboard. Dominated by the descendants of Mediterranian peasants, it wallows in populist corruption while taxing jobs south. It deserves President Obama.
You must be a traditional WASP or Southern bigot. My family were not peasants, but hard working Italian immigrants, contributing to this nation. As a first generation Italian American, I hold three degrees and continue to contribute to the fabric of this nation. You deserve McCain as a president, unfortunately, you are not getting him. Senator Obama will be President Obama and you can crawl back to your hole with you ignorance.
Hey, "Observer" : Actually, one of the biggest ethnic minorities in RI are the Portuguese Americans. As I recall, Portugal's beaches are lapped by the Atlantic Ocean, not the Mediterranean Sea. Hence, our American Portuguese fellow citizens and resident aliens are Atlanteans, not Mediterraneans, as our distinguished Spanish Americans are; not that it matters where you come from in this country; only where you are, which is America, and what you do, which, as long as it is honest, hard-working, and helpful, is all that is required. The troglodites who despise our wonderful ethnic minorities ought to go back to where they themselves came came from - likely a slimy little hollow underneath some flat rock somewhere stinky and dirty.
When reading the opening pages of this report, learning of all of the different tax cuts on the different programs offered to the needy citizens of the state as well as the poor and need, I found myself becoming angry. Why is it that those in the most need are always affected first? Why can't the rich corporations be retaxed or the rich be given some type of ruling that so much of their income is to go to the poor. Appg
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