More Maps for Everyone!

Yet more maps of the electorate.

Comments

[Sarnath]

Disturbingly informative.

[Jason Ligon]

If you want to know who is popular in the nation and to what degree, just look at the popular vote. If you want to know what the electoral college does to an election, look at the electoral map and analyze the margin of victory in electoral votes vs. the margin of victory in popular vote.

Distorting a map of electoral votes to show popular voting trends seems to me to be missing the point.

[fyodor]

The cartograms, especially the last one, could stand some reference points, such as state lines or cities, to make much sense of.

[Warren]

WOW, that is way cool.
Thanks Jesse

[Mr. Nice Guy]

Map 1: straight

Map 2: map 1 after scoring some blue unicorns. Far out, man!

[Hydroman]

fyodor,
Yeah, it`s playing hell with my GPS.

[ramster]

those damn cartograms wreck the geography. Someone needs to take a normal, white colored map and place a circle in each county's center. The color of the circle would be a function of its vote split(i.e in the red-purple-blue spectrum) and the area of the circle would reflect the county's population. The colored areas would give you a sense of the real vote split (just like the purple, county level, cartogram) without distorting geography.

[Hydroman]

Wait a minute--- that last map resembles Santorum`s "frothy mixture" in living color.

[Bob]

What the maps suggest, but do not explain, is why urban areas tend to be so much more blue than rural areas. Does living in a high-density population area make one tend towards the left, or are liberal people more likely to move to urban areas?

[Warren]

Bob,
I think it's more just a matter of cultural indoctrination. Urban life is dominated by government. Waste, fraud, corruption, regulation, these are the facts of city life. You breathe them in with the air.

The success of Republicans like Giuliani and the rise of the neocons might change that down the road.

[Franklin Harris]

The elephant in the room is race. African Americans live in greater numbers in urban areas. Then you look at Alabama, for example, and there is a band of blue across the middle of the state, not in an urban area, but in a rural area that is majority black.

[DaveInBigD]

Yeah, that band exists in South Carolina, too, although it's not as prettily linear.

(Meanwhile, the Headline causes Kodos/Kang flashback)

MAPS FOR ALL!!!!
.....................................BOOOOO!!!

Ok, MAPS FOR NONE!!!!
BOOOOO!!!.....................................

Hmm. Ok, MAPS FOR SOME, TINY AMERICAN FLAGS FOR OTHERS!!!
YEAAAA!!!............................YEAAAA!!!

[Anon]

Jesse,

One more for your collection:
http://www.research.att.com/%7Esuresh/cartogram/

Anon

[Mo]

Bob,
Re Urban vs. Rural, here are my thoughts, broken down by major differences (Disclaimer: These are by definition generalizations, they don?t apply to individuals and allow for differences within groups, I am merely trying to give my explaination for the differences in group dynamics based ):
Nanny statism (Gun laws, pollution laws, smoking/health laws, etc) - urban dwellers live in tighter quarters, so what you do is far more likely to affect your neighbor. If you own a gun and it goes off in a city, you are more likely to hit someone than if you live 200 yards from your nearest neighbor. Re smoking, pollution, etc., because of the proximity to your neighbor, anti-pollution laws (noise, smoke, environmental) ?protect? urban dwellers more while rural dwellers get the negative end of the stick
Crime ? Even though there is more crime in urban areas than in rural/suburban areas, the news makes the city look like a free fire zone. Before I lived in NYC, when I visited, I was in fear of getting mugged, even in broad daylight. After I lived there, I walked alone in the wee hours with little fear. If it doesn?t look as bad as it sounds, you won?t care about being as tough as you were.
Religion/diversity issues ? In an urban environment, you are more likely to be around a lot of people that are different than you in most ways, race, religion, politics, sexual orientation, etc. People tend to accumulate in areas of people like them. They may not care if it?s 60-40 or 90-10 as long as they?re in the majority. In urban areas there are so many people in such a dense area, that self-segregation doesn?t have an effect on who you are exposed to, homosexuals, blacks, Asians, atheists or Wiccans. It?s harder to demonize or fear someone that you know unless they truly are worthy of those emotions. So people in urban areas tend to be more tolerant of differences in sexual orientation, race and religion. It?s a lot easier to demonize homosexuals if the only one is Steve, the weird pervert in town, as opposed to having coworkers, a doctor or lawyers and friends that are gay. If the only place you see Arabs is on the nightly news connected to a terrorism attack, you?re going to be bothered by them a lot more.
Economic issues ? Urban areas tend to have higher cost of living and wage levels. So what seems like an absurdly low number in a city for minimum wage is a king?s ransom in rural Mississippi. I don?t get why urban dwellers vote to redistribute their cash, since they don?t see it and rural dwellers vote against handouts, even though they receive them. Maybe urban dwellers want more because they?re not getting what they pay for and rural dwellers seem to think they don?t need them.
Terrorism ? Here?s what confuses me, let?s assume the CW, that Bush is stronger on terrorism. Urban dwellers are far more likely to be victims of terrorist attacks, yet they overwhelmingly repudiated Bush. Do they not believe the CW? Are other issues more important? Rural dwellers are somewhat more logical on this stance, since they are disproportionately join the military, they tend to be stronger for defense.

Smarter people than I have probably written more comprehensive and more accurate explanations of the phenomenon, but here is my $0.02. Add all the grains of salt that are necessary.

[E. Steven]

Actually, Mo, you raised an interesting point. Blue City types often wonder why Red Country types vote against their economic self-interest [they don't] so it's natural to wonder why city folks would vote against their own security interests. Having spent most of my life in the NYC area I can only say that since we actually lived through 9/11 perhaps we processed it more on a basic emotional level and, therefore, don't fear it as much. On the other hand, maybe just living in America's most expensive and toughest city gives you the kind of blase, equanimity much favored by our brethren in France.

[joe]

Those of us in urban areas (that is, on the front lines of terror attacks) don't like the loudmouths standing a mile behind us, yelling "bring it on" through a bullhorn. It's real easy for people in Missouri to support an imperialist foreign policy, because they're not the ones who are going to get hit by the blowback.

Quite frankly, they're spent the last 30 years making it perfectly clear how little they care about our well being. We drive the economy, we create the culture, now we're serve as their human shields, and their response is to bitch at us for insufficiently praising their moral superiority.

It's pathetic that half of American wouldn't even consider voting for a candidate who's accent doesn't sound like theirs, but exactly that prejudice has determined the outcome of the past two elections.

[Jason Ligon]

"Quite frankly, they're spent the last 30 years making it perfectly clear how little they care about our well being. We drive the economy, we create the culture, now we're serve as their human shields, and their response is to bitch at us for insufficiently praising their moral superiority.

It's pathetic that half of American wouldn't even consider voting for a candidate who's accent doesn't sound like theirs, but exactly that prejudice has determined the outcome of the past two elections."

May I say that I hope the DNC delivers this message exactly come next election? All that driving the economy and creating the culture must be hard work. Is that what 'working families' means?

[joe]

Don't worry, Jason, the EC and 2 Senate seats per state rule guarantees that the DNC will be kissing your ass for the conceivable future, regardless.

Keep sucking up our money, you big rugged individualist of the heartland!

[thoreau]

Those of us in urban areas (that is, on the front lines of terror attacks) don't like the loudmouths standing a mile behind us, yelling "bring it on" through a bullhorn. It's real easy for people in Missouri to support an imperialist foreign policy, because they're not the ones who are going to get hit by the blowback.

Although I see your point, military recruits supposedly come disproportionately from rural areas. Please correct me if I'm wrong. I'm not trying to deny the sacrifices of the many city dwellers (especially low-income city dwellers) who have served in our armed forces. I'm simply observing that there is a high military participation rate in the red states just as there is in the blue states (or at least in certain sectors of the blue states, e.g. low income areas), and so the red states also bear a significant part of the burden of our foreign policy.

So the "it doesn't affect them" rationale doesn't work quite as well. They're losing loved ones and making sacrifices as well.

I don't claim to know what the reason is for various voting patterns, but I think it may be a little more nuanced, joe.

[Dan]

Those of us in urban areas (that is, on the front lines of terror attacks) don't like the loudmouths standing a mile behind us, yelling "bring it on" through a bullhorn.

As a hawkish resident of a high-population coastal city in a heavily blue state, I'd just like to say "thank you" to you red state voters out there. Your preferred brand of politics is what keeps those of us on the coast safe. People like joe are simply too ignorant to realize how dangerous their beliefs are to them and those around them.

So thank you, red states, from preventing left-wing morons from getting me killed.

[Nobody Important]

Check out the map at http://www.kimdutoit.com/dr/weblog.php?id=P481