The 21st Century Coalition

Now, Obama is the President-elect. A black is going to claim the White House for the next four years. That is incredible for United States which until 1970s still enacted policy that discriminate the African Americans. In any case, many pundits are now very busy writing analysis on the voting pattern. And USAToday, the day after the election, rushed out to define the Obama supporters the "21st Century Coalition." They are:

A) Americans under 30, members of the huge Millennial generation that are moving into voting age.

B) Hispanic voters. Despite McCain's Southwest roots and work on immigration reform. Obama was carrying Hispanics by more than 2 to 1.

C) Women with children. The Democratic has also widened advantage among working women.

I believe politicians from now on shouldn't discount Latinos since they are the nation's fastest-growing ethnic group. And their stance towards the illegal immigrants would be closely scrutinized. The eight years of Bush administrator wasn't very friendly to the illegal immigrants despite his deep roots in Texas.

And that has taken a heavy toll in the 2008 election.

Despite McCain taking the electoral votes of Texas, McCain can only take 55.5% of all the popular votes of Texans. In 2004, Bush claimed 61.1% of all popular votes in Texas. The drop in the McCain's advantage could be explained by the surge of absolute number of voters supporting Obama. Approximately 3,521,164 voted Obama in 2008, a 24.3% increase, as only 2,832,704 registered voted the John Kerry Democratic ticket. The get-out-to-vote campaign kick-started by the Obama team seems to make an impact here. I suspect the Latinos also get out to vote to vent their anger against the Bush eight years of unfriendly policy against the illegal immigrants which is mostly from Mexico.

Digging further into the numbers, all four major cities of Texas including Austin, Dallas, San Antonio and Houston all fell into the Democratic camp. In 2004, only city of Austin, the Capital of Texas, voted John Kerry.

Below are the detail information on the four major counties' voting pattern:

Dallas County: 57.5% for Obama (2004: 50.3% for Bush)
Harris Country (Houston): 50.5% for Obama (2004: 54.8% for Bush)
Bexar County (San Antonio): 52.4% for Obama (2004: 54.8% for Bush)
Travis County (Austin): 64.1% for Obama (2004: 42.0% for Bush)

We are seeing a tectonic shift even in the lone star state!