The graphs on the evening news talk of red states, blue states and swing states. Even a casual glance at the scattered colors in barely discernible regions throughout the U.S. map will immediately focus on the bright outline of Indiana. It's a jutting rectangle in the top-middle of the country. And it's red, like always. \nDon't let the charts on the news fool you, though. \nThe depiction of Indiana as conservative in its ideologies by media and political analysts is not always correct, said Russell L. Hanson, IU political science professor. The real political Indiana, rather than staunchly conservative, is a state that is competitive ideologically in all levels of state and national government a place not always accurately described by a tunneled vision of political leanings, Hanson said.\n"Why do people identify Indiana as conservative? Because they are looking only at the results of presidential elections, which they interpret, not always correctly, as a contest between liberal Democratic candidates and conservative Republican standard-bearers," Hanson said. "The political pattern is more complex than that."\nHanson said he sees Indiana as a state where major parties are competitive and fiercely partisan, and that means that it's not necessarily conservative.
DON'T JUDGE A BOOK BY ITS ELECTORAL COLLEGE\nThis year's potential election results could end in scattered wins for both the Democratic and Republican parties in different levels of state government, Hanson said. President George W. Bush will be elected easily in Indiana on Nov. 2, while Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh will be re-elected to the Senate, Hanson predicted. Also, the governor's race -- an expensive and contentious duel between Democratic incumbent Gov. Joe Kernan and Republican challenger Mitch Daniels -- is extremely close. \nIndiana's congressional delegation, though currently populated with more Republicans than Democrats, has been even in party orientation of its members or Democrat-controlled in the past. At the state level, while the state Senate will remain under Republican control this election, the House of Representatives ,which is controlled by Democrats, might change hands, Hanson said. \n"In Indiana, the parties are pretty evenly matched, as this year's election shows," he said. \nA Democrat has been Indiana governor since 1988. Bayh, elected in 1988, served two terms as Indiana's governor until Frank O'Bannon won the open election in 1996. O'Bannon was re-elected to a second term in 2000, and served the better part of it until his death in 2003. Both re-elections were won by large margins (559,618, and 324,240, respectively), signs that show approval among Hoosiers of the Democratic leadership within the state's executive branch during the past 16 years, according to America Votes, an annual election statistics publication.\nDespite this in-state Democratic leadership, Indiana voters have earned their reputations as conservative in nearly every presidential election since World War II, only once electing a Democratic president -- Lyndon B. Johnson in 1964. Since 1964, Indiana has elected a Republican in every single presidential election -- a trend expected to continue this year, Hanson said. These Republican victories have included huge margins of re-election for President Richard Nixon (696,586 votes in 1972) and President Ronald Reagan (535,749 votes in 1984), according to America Votes. Indiana's voters also voted against Bill Clinton twice and helped achieve a wide victory for George W. Bush in 2000 (343,856 votes), an anomaly in an extraordinarily close race. To the eyes of the nation, perhaps, Indiana is pretty easy to read. \nA closer look at the history of Indiana congressional elections, however, showcases a split characteristic of the difference between Indiana's preferences for executive leadership. While Republicans have dominated the Senate delegation since 1976, Democrats dominated the delegation throughout the 1960s and early 1970s. Sen. Richard Lugar, a Republican, has been re-elected to the Senate four times, and he still holds the seat today. Democrat Bayh, the former governor-turned-Senator, will win his seat this year, as well, Hanson predicted. As historic and recent elections show, Indiana's voting constituency is split between the two parties. \nHanson said the reason for these complexities boils down to Indiana's existence as a politically moderate entity. \n"As a group, Democrats in Indiana are not as liberal as, say, Democrats in Massachusetts. Republicans in Indiana don't seem to be as conservative as their counterparts in some other states, like Georgia," he said. "Because neither party is 'extreme' in that sense, statewide elections produce interesting results."\nHanson related that to the upcoming election. \n"Sen. Lugar and (Sen.) Bayh are both political moderates, and some say that is true of Daniels and Kernan, too," he said.
CAMPUS POLITICAL VIEWS \nMIRROR states divisions \nDespite Indiana's seemingly moderate stances on most political issues and its voters' tendencies to choose moderate candidates, still a simple, pasteurized view of Indiana politics exists among IU students about Indiana's supposed political conservatism. Despite the stigma, students' ideas of Indiana are just as divided as most Indiana elections.\nTom Watermann, an sophomore from Illinois, said he understood this stigma before he came to IU, and to him, it was confirmed when he moved to Bloomington.\n"I had kind of heard of Indiana as being pretty far right politically," he said. "What I see now is what I would call the poster-child for the rural right-wing. Compared to my hometown of Prospect Heights, (Ill.), Indiana seems very conservative." \nBut Indiana native and sophomore Doug Martin doesn't believe that's true.\n"I think that, as a whole, we are a conservative state, but not extremely so. I feel like it's not quite as cut and dry as people make it out to be," he said. "Even in my hometown of New Salisbury in southern Indiana, there isn't really an overwhelming sense of right-wing community. There are many more complicated issues than just liberal or conservative."\n-- Contact staff writer Eamonn Brennan at eabrenna@indiana.edu.
