Delaware “Literally” Featured in Nate Silver’s “538”

I guess we are going to have to get used to it.   Any reference to Delaware will be preceded or followed by a reference to Joe Biden.  He is Delaware now.   At least to the nation at large.   Much like the scene in Wayne’s World defined Delaware to the popular culture for much of the 90’s.  

“I am in Delaware.  Delaware.  Yeah.”  

Or recent Simpson’s references to Delaware as an obscure and uninteresting place. 

Homer: “The Simpsons are going to Delaware!”  Lisa: “I want to visit Wilmington!”  Bart: “I want to visit the screen door factory!”

Now Joe Biden defines Delaware.   You can already see it happening on ESPN whenever Chris Berman shows the results of one of ESPN.com’s sports-related polls.  He always points out “Delaware, with the esteemed Senator Joe Biden, votes Yes” to whatever question is asked.    You can see the transformation at work in Sean Quinn’s post about Delaware in the “Road to 270” series at Nate Silver’s “538” blog.    I guess Joe Biden says the word “literally” a lot.    Count how many times he uses the word in this post:

LITERALLY, Delaware, ladies and gentlemen, is a state whose three electoral votes are going to Barack Obama. Delaware has gone Democratic by between 8 and 15 points the last four years, so when it goes blue again this time, well, that’s not change, that’s more of the same!

….

What McCain Has Going For Him

Literally, not figuratively, literally John McCain’s demographic bright spots in Delaware are small elements, such as the the percentage of military vets resting in the top third, the percentage of voters under 30 not being especially high, and his fundraising in the state being marginally higher than the median. I mean, John’s a friend of mine, God love him. But folks, let’s get real. Seriously, to say that John McCain is going to win Delaware when his tax policies are the same as George Bush’s, when his foreign policy is the same as George Bush’s, when his approach to judges is the same as George Bush’s, well, folks, I gotta tell ya, that is literally not going to get the job done in this state.

What Obama Has Going For Him

Delaware has nearly everything shading in Barack Obama’s direction, but Delaware sports very few extremes. The percentage of female voters (5th highest) and the percentage of self-identifying Democrats (6th highest) are literally the closest categories to one end of the spectrum or the other. Delaware has a huge percentage of black voters for a non-southern state, at over 20%, and 8th on the list. Tenth in same-sex households and eleventh in least gun-owning states, Delaware has literally two Starbucks for every Walmart. That’s not change!

What To Watch For

Joe Biden is literally running for both Vice President and Senator, and folks, as my old schoolteacher Sister Mary Catherine McMurphy used to say, he’s going to win both races. Mike Castle, the incumbent Republican lone House member, is safe for re-election, and Tom Carper is up for Senate again in 2012. Rumor has it that Joe’s son Beau, who literally introduced his dad at the Pepsi Center in Denver for the elder Biden’s nomination acceptance speech, is a strong candidate to replace his father in the Senate. Democratic Governor Ruth Ann Minner would appoint someone to the seat for two years until a special election in 2010. Beau Biden, Delaware’s attorney general, is literally in Iraq. Literally — not figuratively — we’ve run this joke into the ground.

Ok, joke’s over.   Hey, Joey’s verbose.  He has a lot to say, and very few ways to say it I guess.   Anyway, the graphic with the story has a lot of interesting demographic information about our great First State, if I am reading that graph right.

Delaware is the 17th most Liberal state on the Likert scale, scoring a 51 on the 0 (Conservative) to 100 (Liberal) scale.   It is also the 6th most Democratic state, with 41% registered as Democrats.   Meanwhile, the state is the 14th least Republican state, with 33% of the population registed as Republicans.    Delaware does have high voter turnout, for 64.8% of registered voters voted in 2004, making us the 16th best state in terms of voting.

As Sean noted in the article, African Americans account for nearly 21% of Delaware’s population, while Hispanics account for nearly 5%.    Women outnumber men in Delaware 51.5% to 48.5%.    There are more young people aged 18 to 29 (22%) than seniors (17%) in Delaware.     Catholics account for 19% of the population, while white evangelicals are only 5%.   25% of Delawareans own guns.  Only 0.00000000001% thinks that gun ownership is the single most important issue facing the country, no the planet today.  20% of our population can be described as rural.     4.2% of Delawareans are unemployed as of June 2008, but that number will be skyrocketing soon, what with GM closing and many banks laying off people.