What Happened?

With North Dakota becoming a toss-up state in the last weeks before the election, it is interesting to see how they state stayed red.

A first look at the county by county break down shows an overwhelming number of counties favoring John McCain. However, a substantial amount of North Dakota's most populous and youthful counties favored Barack Obama. These include most of the counties along the North Dakota-Minnesota border including Grand Forks and Cass counties, home to the University of North Dakota and the state's capital respectively. Other counties that favored Obama were those heavily influenced by the Native American population like Sioux county in the southern region of the state. Despite Obama's win in these areas, his numbers fell short of the combination of middle and west North Dakota counties that strongly supported McCain.

A break down of exit poll numbers shows that while Obama carried the 18-29 age group with 51%, McCain was able to capture the majority of 30-44 (57%) and 45-64 (55%) voter pools. In addition, McCain received both the majority of male and female votes with 57% and 51% respectively.