"While the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003 upheld the legality of some forms of affirmative action in college admissions, the justices didn't make it mandatory. And so [Ward] Connerly set out to replicate the successes he had with state ballot measures in California, Washington State and Michigan," Inside Higher Ed reports. "He identified five new target states and vowed to get affirmative action banned in each one, calling Election Day 2008 the Super Tuesday of his movement. Connerly may have had reason to be confident. Once his proposed bans on affirmative action have made it onto ballots, they have never lost. And he managed to defeat affirmative action in states that are, on the red-blue continuum, very much blue. This year's targets were a mix of red and purple. So far this year, however, defenders of affirmative action are the ones winning."