Could Katrina Tip the Electoral College?

Disasters are often a boon for incumbent office holders who do even a marginal job. In disasters, voters like stability-- much the same way voters rarely vote against incumbants in wartime. A major disaster like Katrina could mean an opportunity to hand out cash to a Republican friendly state.

While the money seems to be flowing out of Washington faster than the canals flowed into the New Orleans basin, George Bush II has taken the heat for what is an on going flop of disaster recovery. While we never hestitate to mention Bush II's faults, we don't often think the office of the president can be held responsible for disaster recovery. That being said, we do tend to think that executive offices both at the national level and the state level are responsible for pre-disaster preperation. In that sense, certainly Bush II can be held accountable for failing to direct FEMA to adaquately prepare for a disaster on the scale of Katrina.

However, determining who to blame is really a secondary matter to that of public perception, and at the moment, Bush II seems to be losing the battle.

So to start things off, Louisiana is not a perfect Red state anyway. Louisiana went for Clinton both times he was elected, so on average over the last two decades, Louisiana is pretty much a swing state. Without seeing much of the specific data, we're going out on a limb and are going to say that New Orleans accounted for most of Clinton's victory, because its largely urban, largely black, and in many places, poor-- perfect Democratic demographics.

Meanwhile, Bush II is recieving quite a bit of blame from Louisiana officials for the poor response to the disaster. Again, whether he is to blame or not is irrelevant if in fact people believe he was responsible. While his successor's election is still three years away, its hard to forget who your friends were or were not when your house was destroyed.

The nine electoral votes that Louisiana offers is more than enough to tip the balance of electoral victory if it were to flip in 2008. Indeed, if H. Clinton were to run for office as has largely been speculated, Louisiana may even be more likely to flip, considering B. Clinton won the state twice.

Meanwhile...

Bush II has every reason to take his time responding to the victims of Katrina. Perhaps 100,000 New Orleans residents have been displaced out of state-- to say nothing of the other roughly 400,000 people displaced but still in Louisiana.

If indeed New Orleans is to take weeks to dry out and months before people are allowed to return, its very likely many residents displaced to Texas will stay there. Texas has gone republican for decades, and by margins of much greater than 100,000. Even if 100% of displaced refugees were Democrats and stayed in Texas, the state would still be Republican.

Since most of the refugees in Texas came from heavily Democratic New Orleans, Louisiana has essentially lost a proportionally huge number of Democrats. The longer the recovery operation lasts, the more likely large numbers of refugees will stay in their new, adopted states. In essence, the longer the recover operation takes, the more Republican Louisiana becomes.

Since there are not enough refugees to change the outcome of elections in Texas, its to Bush II's advantage to prolong the cleanup as long as possible to ensure that Louisiana remains in the Red state column.