PORTLAND — Across the map, from rural to urban, conservative to liberal, every county in Oregon took on a bluer cast in the 2008 presidential race.

“Two words: George Bush,” said Portland pollster Tim Hibbitts. “The reality is, Bush and (strategist Karl) Rove wrecked the Republican brand across this state.”

Republican Sen. Gordon Smith, locked in a tight race with Democrat Jeff Merkley, maintained his support in conservative and rural counties, but in each one it was by a smaller margin than six years ago.

As unpopular as Bush was across the country, his approval rating was five points lower in Oregon, Hibbitts said.

Pacific University political science Professor Jim Moore agreed that Bush “made it harder to be a Republican in Oregon,” but he said other factors might be at work, as well.

“When you have that much change, clearly something else is going on,” he said. “It might be the national mood. It might be the economy. It might be the coattails of Barack Obama, which I don’t think it is.”

“The Republican tide has been receding since the peak in 1994-96,” when the party held both U.S. Senate seats and controlled both houses of the Legislature, Moore said.

Democratic state Senate President Peter Courtney noted that Republicans traditionally turn out more of their voters than Democrats, but not this time.

Both parties turned out about 88 percent of their respective registered voters. But the massive voter registration drive by the Obama campaign gave Democrats a lead in registrations of nearly 230,000.

Noting that scores of local tax measures passed across the state, Courtney said he feels the anti-government attitude of the past receding.

“There will always be a healthy suspicion of government,” Courtney said. “But rather than seeing government as the enemy, I think they see the government has a role and it really needs to function.”

In the presidential race, two Republican strongholds — Deschutes County in Central Oregon and Jackson County in Southern Oregon — almost evenly divided their votes between Obama and Republican John McCain.

Moore attributed the tight races to changing demographics — the influx of young people looking for an outdoor life in those areas. Many were stung when the housing bubble burst.

Cathy Shaw, a Democratic strategist and former Ashland mayor, said the city of Medford in particular has turned bluer.

Shaw said calls to voters around southern Oregon found many so turned off by the negative tone of the Smith-Merkley campaign that they didn’t vote for either one. That resulted in a marked “undervote,” or difference in the number of ballots cast in the Senate and presidential races, she said.

Whether this blue shift in Oregon represents a realignment of the electorate is not yet clear.

“If this is a product simply of the economy, this could last two or three election cycles,” said Moore. “If, however, it is a fundamental realignment, where people are saying the Republican Party doesn’t have answers and the Democratic Party does, then it will last a generation.”