But the thing is, the growth in Democrats is heavily concentrated in eastern Kansas particularly northeast Kansas. Meanwhile, western Kansas gets redder. This confirms the thesis of Bill Bishop's book The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded American is Tearing Us Apart
Statewide, the Republican party still has 738,750 members, compared to 484,995 Independents, and 463,225 Democrats. So the largest group by far is Republicans, then Independents, and then Democrats.
These numbers come from an excellent article by Tim Hrenchir of the Topeka Capitol-Journal: "'Oddity' Party Gaining Members," May 22, 2010. Hrenchir's article is about the rise in the numbers of the Libertarian Party by 6.8%, from 9,152 to 9,777.
So what does all this mean? Kansas is very slowly moving toward a more moderate, Democratic/Independent path. Although Kansas is the number-two state in the nation in self-identified Republicans, Kansas doesn't even rank in the top fourteen states in self-identified conservatives. The thing is, nearly all this movement to the middle and left in Kansas is in northeast Kansas.
The coalition that Kathleen Sebelius' forged to win elections is very much available: combine Democrats, Independents and moderate Republicans, and you can get to 51%.
And the Third Congressional District in Kansas, which Barack Obama won, is full of Democrat-type voters: young people, college educated folks, suburbanites.
The 2008 election map provided in The Big Sort
From what I can tell, Obama won two of Kansas' 105 counties: Douglas and Wyandotte. And he was competitive - within twenty points of McCain in the following Kansas Counties: Sedgwick, Harvey, Labette, Crawford, Riley, Geary, Lyon, Shawnee, Johnson, Leavenworth, Jefferson, and Atchison.
Stated differently, Obama was competitive in only 14 of Kansas' 105 counties. 91 counties were McCain landslides. But the counties where Obama was competitive are clustered together: Sedgwick and Harvey in south central Kansas, Labette and Crawford in southeast Kansas, and the KSU to KU to KC area is the biggest cluster.
In short, Democrats have every reason to be optimistic about their future prospects in the fastest growing areas of the state. But western Kansas?
The Big Sort
This was an interesting post. I was just talking with a friend of mine about the fact that Kansas seems to be moderating. The fact that people are geographically separating is both disturbing and not surprising. Unfortunately it seems to be just another sign that this country (and now this state) is becoming more and more polarized