The Biden Bump Out West
Alaska and Utah are two of the nine states where Republican presidential nominees have won 14 consecutive elections since 1968. Joe Biden, however, scored the best showing in these two Western states since Lyndon Johnson’s landslide victory there in 1964. In Alaska, Biden won 42.8 percent – slightly besting Hubert Humphrey’s 42.7 percent in 1968 for the top spot among the last 14 failed Democratic bids in that state. In Utah, Biden won 37.7 percent which also bested Humphrey who won 37.1 percent. Biden’s tally was 8.4 percentage points higher than his party’s average in Alaska from 1968-2016 (34.4 percent) and 9.1 points higher in Utah (28.6 percent). Biden also turned in the highest marks for a Democratic nominee since 1964 in Arizona, Colorado, and Washington and since 1936 in California.
Anchorage and SLC bolstering Biden. UT is very noteworthy in that BHO failed to crack even 30% of the vote while prevailing nationally.
BHO did reach 30% of statewide vote of UT in 2008, just not four years later against a future resident of that state.
Perhaps the most noteworthy boost for Biden in the West is his victory in County Maricopa, albeit by a slender margin – a feat no D nominee for POTUS has achieved since Harry S Truman in 1948, when he had the benefit of incumbency and the county did not contain a 7-figure voting population.