Progress Illinois

Of all the surprises to emerge from the 2008 electoral map, Barack Obama's victory in Indiana has to be the sweetest.  And most impressive.  Every single county in the state shifted towards the Democratic candidate on Tuesday (compared to 2004), leading him to a 26,000-vote margin of victory. 

Of all the red states won back by the Democrats on Tuesday, Indiana represented the steepest climb.  In 2004, George W. Bush had won the Hoosier State by over 510,000 votes -- a greater margin than in any of the other states turned blue by Obama this week:

So how did the Democrats knock off the Hoosier State? 

Marion County, home to Indianapolis, played a big role.  While John Kerry won the county by 6,000 votes in 2004, Obama ultimately achieved a 105,000-vote margin there.  That took a sizeable chunk out of the Republican advantage in the state.

The rest of the counties did their part as well, each giving more of their vote to the Democrat, as compared to in 2004.  The map below, courtesy of the New York Times, shows those shifts, with the darkest blue areas representing at least a 15-point move to the left:

As you can see on the national version of this map, no state swung more heavily towards the Democrat than Indiana:

In terms popular vote, the county with the second-highest swing towards the Democratic candidate was Lake County.  And a glance at the figures released by the county clerk suggests that early voters were the reason.

In 2004, 12,683 Lake Co. voters took advantage of early voting.  That number doubled to 24,378 this year, thanks in large part to the addition of early voting sites in Gary, Hammond, and East Chicago, all three of them highly populated and reliably Democratic.  As we reported last month, local GOP officials fought tooth-and-nail to keep this from happening.  Citing technicalities regarding the board of elections' approval of the extra early voting sites, the Republicans filed legal challenges to keep them from opening.  The sites did eventually open and a superior court judge threw out the GOP lawsuits, but not until six days of early voting in these areas had been lost.

Looking at the election results in the county, it's not difficult to see why the GOP was so scared of expanding access.  Of the 24,378 early voters, 20,757 cast their ballot for the Democratic candidate, while only 2,778 favored John McCain.  

Those 20,757 voters represent 80 percent of Obama's margin of victory in the state. 

Assuming that many of them wouldn't have been able to make it to the polls on Election Day -- due to work schedules, etc. -- it's plain to see why the fight to expand early voting was so crucial.  Credit goes to all those who waged it, particularly SEIU Illinois (which sponsors this site).  Several weeks ago, we chronicled their impressive work on the ground in Northwest Indiana.  It's clear that it paid off.