Thomas Schaller says North Carolina is not yet really blue.

The author of "Whistling Past Dixie" tells Dome that he thinks Barack Obama's impressive ground game and the "atmospherics" of this election had more to do with his win here, a state he had urged the Democrat to ignore.

"It may stay for Obama again next cycle, but I don't think it's tipped permanently," he said. "Almost every advantage was for the Democrats, and it was still a very close win. If I were a North Carolina Democrat, I wouldn't rejoice too soon."

Schaller said Obama could win the "New South" — an area he defined as influenced by high-tech jobs in places such as the Research Triangle Park and high rates of non-native Southerners moving here. He said Obama's coalition was Northern transplants and black voters. 

"This wasn't a Nascar victory," he said. "It was a decidedly New South victory." 

Not surprisingly, Thomas Schaller was surprised he was wrong.

The author of "Whistling Past Dixie" wrote on Salon Monday that he was "somewhat surprised" that Barack Obama won North Carolina, a state he had earlier urged the Democrat to ignore. 

"It's clear that the 'new South' is arriving faster than I anticipated, or perhaps more accurately, that Obama was able to deliver it faster," he writes. 

He also noted that the three Southern states Obama won were among those with the highest median incomes for the region, except for Georgia. He also notes that the 22 counties where Obama did less well than John Kerry were in the rural and Appalachian South.

"It was a 'new South' victory won on the backs of votes cast by a lot of non-native Southern transplants," he writes. "It was not a rural Southern victory."

Next, we talk to Schaller directly. 

Thomas Schaller urged Barack Obama to write off North Carolina.

In a guest column in The New York Times on July 1, the author of "Whistling Past Dixie" argued that the then Democratic presidential nominee might find Virginia within reach, but not North Carolina and Georgia.

"Mr. Obama can write off Georgia and North Carolina for the same reasons that Mississippi is beyond his reach — although the math in those two states is slightly less daunting," he wrote.

He argued that black voters already cast their ballots at a relatively high rate, and said the "white vote" would serve as a "formidable counterbalance."

Schaller, a professor of politics at the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, was wrong about Obama's chances here, as it turned out.

Next, we'll see what he says now.