Political change has been gestating longer in the new swing states of the Southwest than in the emerging battlegrounds of the Southeast.
At the apex of their presidential strength, Republicans dominated the desert. From 1968 to 1988, the GOP presidential candidates swept Colorado, Nevada, and New Mexico all six times. Though New Mexico was sometimes competitive, the other two were not: over that six-election sequence, the GOP nominees averaged nearly 57 percent of the vote in Colorado and just over 59 percent in Nevada.
But starting with Bill Clinton’s first victory in 1992, Democratic fortunes in the region have improved–slowly at first, and then more rapidly. CONT.
Ronald Brownstein, National Journal