Some readers doubtless already have seen Andrew Gelman's interpretation of the election results, but here's the link for those who haven't. Some key findings: (1) young voters made up about the same proportion of the electorate as in 2004, but they broke Democratic by a much larger margin than in 2004; (2) Obama's gains over Kerry, on a national basis, were most substantial among minority voting groups, but Obama also improved on Kerry's percentage among white voters (Obama got 44 percent, Kerry 41 percent of white voters); (3) the election did not fundamentally re-draw the red-blue map, as Gelman says; Obama outpaced Kerry's showing in the majority of states, but he underperformed Kerry in a few states, such as Louisiana and Arkansas.
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I'd be willing to go on the record to say that if Obama wanted to outperform Kerry in LA and AR, he could have. He just devoted his resources to states he knew he could win (IN, OH, FL, NC, VA, NV, NM, CO... every state he won that Kerry didn't.) In the 2012 election, I pity the Republican challenger that runs up against Obama's campaign machine.
That could be the explanation. It's also possible that the race factor/Bradley effect came into play in LA and AR and a couple of other places. I don't know.
Interestingly if slightly unrelated, toward the very end the campaign sent Biden to Charleston, West Virginia for a rally. Probably just a necessary nod to Sens. Rockefeller and Byrd and the Dem party in WV. I think Obama ended up running roughly even with Kerry's showing there. Would have to check the map again.
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