The Archipelego
It’s interesting that even when you break down to the granular county level the Republican parts of the country form a largely contiguous bloc while Obamaland is an incredibly fragment archipelego:
The non-contiguous McCain-voting counties are almost a trivial portion of the whole. And even Obama’s large contiguous blocs (greater New England, a big Great Lakes region, to belts on the Pacific Coast, several blocs of heavily black counties in the south) are scattered and there are tons and tons of little islands all across the country. The contiguousness or lack thereof has no real significance, of course, but it’s an interesting dramatization of the Democrats’ base in cities and inner suburbs. I wonder if anyone’s familiar with any good work on what accounts for the anomalously progressive views of rural New England. What’s the matter with Maine?
128 Responses to “The Archipelego”
Register
RSSLogin
Topic Cloud
ArchivesBlog RollAbout Matt YglesiasContact Me
Donate
November 11th, 2008 at 12:46 pm
i think the maine story is encapsulated in snowe and collins: the last home of moderate republicanism of the old school.
given the absence of a moderate republican of the old school, maineiacs voted for the closest approximation: a cerebral centrist democrat….
November 11th, 2008 at 12:49 pm
I’m not aware of any studies or books about it, but I’ve always seen them as libertarians of the “want to smoke pot, not pay taxes, and don’t care who you marry” variety. So right now, they are more aligned with liberal views than conservatives ones.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:52 pm
The contiguousness or lack thereof has no real significance, of course
Look out, Matt! I found another archipelago! There might be a trend!
November 11th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
This map hurts my eyes.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
You could generalize a lot of US politics to an axis with New England at one extreme and the South at the other. You saw that in the 1790s, you saw it throughout the 19th century, you see it today.
From the 1860s to the 1960s the South was the most reliably Democratic region and New England was the most Republican. Since 1960 the two have completely flipped — but both represent the most fervent core of support for their particular party.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
We need this data specified down to the census block group level in shades of purple so that we can truly see what geometric figures form.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:54 pm
Wow, that map looks mighty red. Are we sure Obama won?
The problem with that map is it doesn’t distinguish strong support v/s weak support. Red v/s pink, blue v/s light blue, etc. Careful, Matthew, conservatives are going to use that map to say that we are, of course a center right country.
November 11th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
Shh, if we point out to Matt that nobody lives in these vast republican swathes, how will he be able to spin his tales about how we are a hair’s breadth away from turning into a center-right nightmare?!
November 11th, 2008 at 1:01 pm
If we’re talking about anomalous views, don’t forget the Upper Midwest. Wisconsin is almost solidly blue and so are large parts of Minnesota and Iowa!
November 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
The map is so small I can’t be sure, but that looks like Pisataquis County in Maine, with less than 10,000 votes cast. I expect the upcoming mass gun confiscations made the difference.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:02 pm
It just shows where most people live, and where the huge empty swaths of land that we need to connect to the Internet are.
Come on, let’s get that broadband initiative going already, and get these people educated.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Oh, come on, Matthew, even the site where you pull that map from said that this map is misleading because of population etc. To quote the site:
Looking at this map it gives the impression that the Republicans won the election handily, since there is rather more red on the map than there is blue. In fact, however, the reverse is true – the Democrats won by a substantial margin. The explanation for this apparent paradox, as pointed out by many people, is that the map fails to take account of the population distribution. It fails to allow for the fact that the population of the red states is on average significantly lower than that of the blue ones. The blue may be small in area, but they represent a large number of voters, which is what matters in an election.
We can correct for this by making use of a cartogram, a map in which the sizes of states are rescaled according to their population. That is, states are drawn with size proportional not to their acreage but to the number of their inhabitants, states with more people appearing larger than states with fewer, regardless of their actual area on the ground. On such a map, for example, the state of Rhode Island, with its 1.1 million inhabitants, would appear about twice the size of Wyoming, which has half a million, even though Wyoming has 60 times the acreage of Rhode Island.
Where’s your intellectual honesty??
November 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
Look out, Matt! I found another archipelago! There might be a trend!
My God! It’s so obvious when you look at the chart! Artificial light causes people to vote for Obama!
The existence of streetlights has been a subtle plot by the Democratic Party! Smash the lights, I say! Let truthful darkness descend!
November 11th, 2008 at 1:03 pm
The GOP is getting absolutely killed in New England by its association with the southern wing of the party. After last Tuesday there’s not a single GOP representative from the region, and only three senators (out of 18). In Vermont, the GOP didn’t bother running anyone for Congress (so in a weird turn of events, some Democrats wrote in their own candidate in the GOP primary and he got both parties’ nominations).
It’s true that there are still a number of very moderate Repubs hanging on in the region (Snowe, Collins, VT gov. Jim Douglas, etc.) but the numbers get fewer every election. Chris Shays was one, Jim Jeffords was another, Lincoln Chaffee, etc etc etc. They’re all gone now.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
I wonder if anyone’s familiar with any good work on what accounts for the anomalously progressive views of rural New England. What’s the matter with Maine?
not sure of any good work, but that region was also the home to the most ardent abolitionists during the 19th century as well as other social reform movements (indeed, Boston was much more weakly tied to abolition due to a large Irish population that couldn’t give a rats ass). Perhaps its inertia from that.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:06 pm
Tim wants this map:
http://www.chapatimystery.com/archives/straw_polls/election_map.html
November 11th, 2008 at 1:07 pm
From the 1860s to the 1960s the South was the most reliably Democratic region and New England was the most Republican.
I’m fairly certain that New England from 1928-1960 was not particularly reliably Republican. Upper New England was very reliably Republican, but Massachusetts and Rhode Island voted for the Democrats in every election from 1928 to 1948, and again in 1960; Connecticut voted for FDR 4 times, and for Kennedy; and New Hampshire voted for FDR thrice. Maine and Vermont were the only reliably Republican states. Taking the region as a whole, I’d say the farm belt area was a much more reliably Republican region than New England during the New Deal era.
Tim – the problem with the map has nothing to do with strong support/weak support – showing that actually makes the situation worse, as a lot of those depopulated counties in the middle of the country voted 70 or 80% for McCain. The problem is that it doesn’t show relative populations. Manhattan is tiny geographically, but has more people than Wyoming and Montana put together.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:09 pm
Without correcting for population, this map is pretty misleading, and little better than Tom Brokaw asserting that McCain won more land mass than Obama.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
I wonder if anyone’s familiar with any good work on what accounts for the anomalously progressive views of rural New England. What’s the matter with Maine?
read albion’s seed. remember that the pacific northwest and san francisco were originally swarming with “yankees.” same with michigian, northern ohio, etc.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Why do Democrats fail to get the votes of wheat and corn plants?
November 11th, 2008 at 1:10 pm
Actually the map Tim refers to (a cartogram of county-level votes) is on the site Matthew links to in the original post, as Tim notes. But it’s ugly as all crap. Cartograms work well when you’ve got a relatively small number of features but not so well when there’s 3000+ counties.
There are probably better ways of visualizing this.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:15 pm
Why are there comments suggesting that Yglesias is being misleading with this map because it doesn’t point out variations in population, when Yglesias himself makes the point that “it’s an interesting dramatization of the Democrats’ base in cities and inner suburbs” which he likely realizes is correlated with greater population density than rural areas.
I know there is a habit of reflexive criticism. But this one seems kind of odd. Not only does he not make any misleading points based on the supposedly misleading feature of the map, but he even makes the point whose absense is supposed to make it misleading.
odd.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:16 pm
What’s the matter with Maine? Nothing. It has a large area, small population rural county (Piscataquis) that very slightly leaned McCain (3% margin). It’s the smallest county in Maine by population but it takes up one of the biggest areas. The problem is really that you decided to post a winner-takes-all map, and those type of maps suck if you want to know what’s really going on, because they oversimplify the results to a great degree.
Which, incidentally, is why we should do away with the !@#$ing electoral college.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
Do people (Hayek, Tim, Ish) actually think that Matt is trying to convince people the US is center-right through “misleading” maps? Did you just start reading the site today or something?
Note that rural New England isn’t the only rural area to trend Democratic. You also have the upper Midwest (Minnesota/Wisconsin) where there is a long history of Farmer/Labor alliances. Then you have the heavily black and heavily Hispanic areas of Louisiana/Mississippi and south Texas.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
The “archipelago” is like what you see on a cross-country plane ride at night. Islands of light surrounded by vast stretches of dimness.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:24 pm
looks like the bulk of the Dem areas are somewhat near large bodies of water.
Have no idea what that means — just pointing out the obvious.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:25 pm
It’s also geography not population based. Many of those red counties have low pops per sq-mile. Specifically in the case of Maine, the county there has a very small population, even tho it’s about a third of the land-mass of the state.
Nevada is similiar. It looks likes a really red state except something like 75% or more of its population is are Las Vagas and it’s surrounding cities and towns.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Miss Teen South America approves of Matt Y’s new map obsession.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:27 pm
Miss Teen South America. ha.
Freudian slip maybe.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
This map is cool. If you let your eyes blur, and almost look through it, you can see Rush Limbaugh parachuting oxycodone.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:37 pm
The republican party has become the party of the great empty spaces
November 11th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Maine? Pretty simple really. They are Yankees. No less out of place in a crowd of good old boys as any group could possibly be.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:41 pm
Offhand: does anyone know what the actually aggregate population of the blue counties is, versus the aggregated red county population?
max
['Since I am sure someone has already broken out the square milage numbers.']
November 11th, 2008 at 1:45 pm
Have a look at this Pharyngula post, particularly the second map with counties scales by population size: Purple America
November 11th, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Yikes! What’s the matter with Maryland? Its almost all red!
November 11th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
It looks like we have them surrounded.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
I wonder if anyone’s familiar with any good work on what accounts for the anomalously progressive views of rural New England. What’s the matter with Maine?
This is ex recto but my guess is the lack of racial tensions or fundamentalist religion helps. And it’s a different kind of rural in the northeast than it is out west. There’s “low population density” rural, and then there’s “you can look around and see that there’s no one within 20 miles” rural, and New England only has the first kind. I imagine it’s easier to buy into that rugged individualist, entrepreneur, self-made man Republican myth when you don’t even have to think about property line disputes with your neighbor or whatever.
November 11th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
Should I be high as I look at this?
November 11th, 2008 at 2:02 pm
It’s interesting that if you look at a map of Venezuela, or Bolivia, it’s almost the reverse. Chavez, for example, is unpopular in coastal areas and many of the larger cities, and overwhelmingly popular in the interior and the countryside. The same is true of Peru and Bolivia.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Venezuelan_constitutional_referendum,_2007
Caution- unlike in the US, red indicates Left on this map.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:04 pm
Rural voters in the US are often less favorable to the ‘environmentalist left’ than urban voters, and for understandable reasons- they get the same benefits as urban voters from a national park, but have to pay more opportunity costs in terms of not being bale to log, hunt, fish, etc. on that land.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Ramat is right: look at a map with the big American lakes and rivers in blue, and the rest of the landmass in red, and it looks a lot like this map. At the most simplistic level: river towns like things like bridges and dams, most of which are government projects.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Not really surprising when you realize that the Democratic Party is the part of urban areas, which are by definition highly concentrated populations. Cities tend to form in coastal areas, so you have the coastal nature of cities, as well. You can even see the blue outline of the Mississippi River in that map – there tends to be cities on major rivers used for trade.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
Exactly! The question is, why do so many Americans refuse to live in the middle of those empty areas?
November 11th, 2008 at 2:09 pm
Maine has a different political culture, for example: Maine has a tradition of government by consensuses – the town meeting. Land owners in Maine traditionally allow public access to their land much more than any other state. Maine has a tradition of managing commons, Read U of Maine professor James Acheson “Capturing the Commons” about the Maine lobster fishery.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:24 pm
The fact that the blue spots are disconnected isn’t that interesting given that the blue landmass (but not population share) is smaller.
This is just a consequence of percolation theory. Take a grid and assign each cell to be red with a uniform independent probability p and blue with probability 1-p. For sufficiently high values of p, there is going to be one connected red region covering almost all the red cells and an “archipelago” of mostly disconnected blue patches.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Can somebody find comparable maps that show income or wealth? How about population density? The blue areas on that map look suspiciously like the areas that are also rich and densely populated.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
In the rural areas, which have been struggling economically due to declining manufacturing and where people pride themselves on being rational, secular Yankees, you can only listen to yourself being mocked as part of the “northeastern liberal elite” so many times before you get really, really angry with the party making these claims.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:30 pm
That’s because the Dems are urban. The GOP is rural.
So, there are highly concentrated Democratic spots, and then a whole lot of nuthin’ voting for McCain.
[howling wind]
[/howling wind]
.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
As a Me/VT/NH person (I’ve lived in one of those three states for 15 years) I largely agree with what’s been said here about Maine. It’s a largely libertarian area, and also sports a gay tourism outpost of it’s own – Ogunquit. Preferring to do your own thing and not be judged by the circumstances of your life (gay, straight, educated, employed, young, old) is something that strikes me as unique about Northern New England as compared to the more bourgeois Southern New England. Nobody really gives a sh*t about the circumstantial stuff. Are you a good person? Which sport do you choose in the winter/summer time (let’s go together!), and hey come on over for a beer, ayutt.
As for the one county that is an island of red in a sea of blue, I’m trumping that up to the logging, SUPER rural terrain and the small population in that county. It doesn’t surprise me that one of the northern/inland counties went red, though I’m surprised that Carrol and/or Coos Counties in NH didn’t as well. They both have a similar demographic. Random chance that there was still enough republican sentiment to maintain their red status this time around?
November 11th, 2008 at 2:37 pm
The southern and coastal areas of Maine are quite different from the mountainous and sparsely populated areas of western Maine (red on the map), which has the flavor of a lot of the rest of Appalachia — rural, overwhelmingly white, and economically distressed. Evangelical churches are more common there, as are gun shops and distrust of government. The occasional pickup truck with the gun rack and the confederate flag bumper sticker doesn’t look out of place — Rumsford ME has a lot more in common with Dahlonega GA than Duxbury MA. But there aren’t a lot of people there, and the fact that smart young people tend to move away to find better economic opportunities skews its politics in the direction.
As for the rest of rural New England, most of those folks have enough of a libertarian streak for them to be appalled in equal measure by the religious right and by the neocon foreign policy that have dominated the republican party. Real small-government libertarians know that war is the ultimate big government program. And they don’t mind “socialism” so much, as long as it’s local.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:40 pm
look at a map with the big American lakes and rivers in blue, and the rest of the landmass in red, and it looks a lot like this map.
Or sometimes interstates. There’s a ‘majority minority’ House district in NC (Melvin Watt’s, NC-12) that’s mostly a few miles either side of I-85.
Chavez, for example, is unpopular in coastal areas and many of the larger cities, and overwhelmingly popular in the interior and the countryside.
Yeppy. Also, most anti-Chavez protests are made up of, let’s say, the paler Venezuelans, and display several varieties of designer sunglasses.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:43 pm
Scythia’s comment above links to an archipelago, the archipelago of bright spots from artificial lighting as seen from space, that looks like it would make a close overlay of the Obama archipelago. It’s all about population density, folks. Which also correlates to a lot of other stuff that has been mentioned.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
By the way, if you want to see a map with each county resized to adjust for its population, go here:
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=electoral-results-maps
It’s a much different perspective.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:47 pm
What’s wrong with Maryland? I think it’s that Maryland is a southern/Appalachian state outside of the Baltimore and DC metro.
I do, like Matt, wonder what it is that makes parts of the upper midwest and New England so uniformly blue. These are areas that are whiter than average, and Democrats get a considerably wider share of the white vote.
November 11th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Without correcting for population, this map is pretty misleading, and little better than Tom Brokaw asserting that McCain won more land mass than Obama.
Try the following 3D maps at the Washington Post (warning: takes long time to load):
Obama won 1+ million more votes in Los Angeles and Chicago, over 400,000+ more in New York City, Philadelphia, and Detroit. McCain’s largest margin of victory in the entire country was in Phoenix, at 113,000. Obama had a bigger margin of victory in Dallas!
November 11th, 2008 at 2:59 pm
New England has very few evangelical Protestants.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
Here’s a less weird population based map. Lot’s o’ blue for you lefties
November 11th, 2008 at 3:01 pm
“I wonder if anyone’s familiar with any good work on what accounts for the anomalously progressive views of rural New England.”
Republican presidential candidates have run against New England for several elections, never more than this year. They turn “Massachusetts” and “Kennedy”into swear words. New England (and NY & NJ) is the only part of the country that can’t pretend to be a part of Palin’s redneck movement, even if they wanted to. You can’t wear a cowboy hat in New England. You can’t denounce coasts or cities or the Ivy League in New England. What are New Englanders supposed to do, say, “You’re right, we do suck! I’ll vote for you!”
Unlike the rest of the country, this applies to the rural areas too. The areas between cities in New England are not “Kentucky”, as is said of the areas between Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. Although, if you go really deep into the back woods, you might see a confederate flag on a track with NH or ME plates. Just as most of NE can’t pretend to be rednecks even if they wanted to, those people can’t pretend to be Cabots and Lodges even if they wanted to.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
Re J’s comment “You could generalize a lot of US politics to an axis with New England at one extreme and the South at the other. You saw that in the 1790s, you saw it throughout the 19th century, you see it today. ”
————–
Yep — That was even a movement in New England to SECEDE from the Union, during the War of 1812.
Because the “fed’rul gov’ment” wasn’t respecting New England’s “peculiar institution” — it’s fondness for trading with the enemy.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:09 pm
Actually, the map shows the only OPTION the Republicans have. The billionaires who own the Democratic Party promote multi-culturalism because that’s the only way to get necessary business permits from urban governments.
Politics in such cases is simple — you put up a lot of money to buy airtime on tightly-controlled news media in a few urban areas, broadcast a line of bullshit , and bang — you own the election.
To get around that, Republicans have to set up a base in the RURAL areas and kiss the necessary totems: church, white supremacy, guns, and hostility to “foreigners” –whether they be from the Middle East, Mexico or New York City.
You go where opportunity is. ABC, NBC, CBS own the urban TV stations — so FOX goes to the big empty spaces. Yin and Yang.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:10 pm
“Do people (Hayek, Tim, Ish) actually think that Matt is trying to convince people the US is center-right through “misleading” maps? Did you just start reading the site today or something?”
Simultaneously saying that the US is a center-left country and that we are dangerously close to being overwhelmed by the center-right hordes is one of Matt’s favorite past-times. Or haven’t you noticed that he can’t keep a coherent opinion on anything other than “I love trains” ?
November 11th, 2008 at 3:12 pm
It’s all about population density, folks.
Except that it isn’t, not totally. Big chunks of New England are really, really rural. And while most of the Texas blue counties are around bigger cities, a big chunk of the (not that very dense) border is blue (presumably because that part of the state is heavily Hispanic and Hispanics are trending blue).
I think I have a quibble with Hector. The notion that rural voters suffer opportunity costs from environmental policy and respond to those costs assumes on some level that rural voters would personally be able to benefit from logging their own land, farming their own land, etc. The number of agricultural/forestry/mineral extraction workers in the US is rather vanishingly small. Less than a half are employed in agriculture and less than a half a million are employed in mining concerns. Of all those, a much smaller number are owner-operators. Rural voters ≠ people working the land.
In a place like Vermont, where, correct me if I’m wrong, a greater proportion of agricultural operations are smaller scale than in the Great Plains, operating an environmentally friendly or sustainable operation has a lot of cachet. I think that culture dictates a lot of this, but I wonder why the culture in new England is different.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:18 pm
the only part of the country that can’t pretend to be a part of Palin’s redneck movement, even if they wanted to.
While the overwhelming majority in New England was able to see right through the Palin farce, claiming that we can’t be rednecks is mildly insulting
November 11th, 2008 at 3:28 pm
less than a half a percent, that is
November 11th, 2008 at 3:32 pm
I wonder if anyone’s familiar with any good work on what accounts for the anomalously progressive views of rural New England. What’s the matter with Maine?
I think one way to answer that question is to look into who really is “rural” in New England and who isn’t. Maine certainly seems a pretty rural place when you’re driving through it, but Portland, Augusta, Lewiston, Bangor etc are perhaps more accurately described as urban — even though individually they’re pretty small urban areas. Heck, I suspect something like half of Maine’s population is within plausible commuting distance to greater Boston (not downtown Boston, mind you, but an office park in Andover, MA is a feasible commute for someone living near Kittery or York). This is doubly true for New Hampshire, whose southern portion — where nearly everybody lives — really is a bonafide extension of the Boston suburbs.
My point is, northern New England appears rural, but its genuinely rural parts are home to vanishingly small numbers of voters. The vast majority of voters in the region actually reside in small cities, or liberal college towns, or in the exurban spillover of Boston.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:39 pm
Except that it isn’t, not totally. Big chunks of New England are really, really rural.
True, geographically speaking, big chunks of New England really are rural. But what percentage of the voters live there? Even highly dense Massachusetts is a good example. The portion of the state west of Worcester makes up something like half the land area, but something like 10-15% of the population. If you remove Pittsfield, Northampton, Springfield and Amherst, you’re down to what, two or three percent of the state’s population? You’ll no doubt find a decent number of Limbaugh fans from amongst this small cohort, but they’re not sufficiently numerous to nudge Western Massachusetts’s political culture rightwards.
I know the image of the reasonable, centrist/liberal, libertarian Yankee living in the wilds of New England is a comforting one, but as a life long New Englander, I doubt it’s a very real image.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
The GOP kicked all the New Englanders out because they’re just not pure enough to be Republicans. When a group tells you you’re not welcome and makes it clear that they mean it, you tend to go elsewhere.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:43 pm
Maine. Sorry if this has been posted but I’m playing hooky from a meeting. That red section of Maine is mostly uninhabited, a bunch of it being federal property…
November 11th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
Democrats do best in metropolitan areas hemmed in by oceans and Great Lakes, while Republicans do best in metropolitan area inland where suburbs can expand 360 degrees. The greater supply of dry land for housing in places like the Dallas-Forth Worth metroplex means home prices are cheaper, which makes them more attractive to family-oriented people, which makes Republican family values appeals more appealing.
November 11th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
West Coast said it better than I did. My family used to be split down the middle between centrist Democrats and centrist Republicans. We’re Jews in/from Connecticut. This year, to a person, we all voted Democrat, despite having real differences with the party on things like Card Check etc. Palin made it pretty clear she hates people like us. Why would we vote for her?
November 11th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
Re: It’s interesting that if you look at a map of Venezuela, or Bolivia, it’s almost the reverse. Chavez, for example, is unpopular in coastal areas and many of the larger cities, and overwhelmingly popular in the interior and the countryside.
I don’t see a reversal there at all. Apart from some different particulars, Chavez is very like Bush: authoritarian, faux-populist, tough-talking, beloved of the booboisie, riding roughshod over civil liberties, and granting his cronies all manner of fabulous favors. Bush and Chavez should be roommates in hell. They deserve each other.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:19 pm
Yes, a large proportion of New England and Midwestern voters live in or near urbanized areas. But I think the question should be: Why do many of the rural counties in those regions also tilt Democratic?
November 11th, 2008 at 4:22 pm
You’ll no doubt find a decent number of Limbaugh fans from amongst this small cohort, but they’re not sufficiently numerous to nudge Western Massachusetts’s political culture rightwards.
To further cleave western Mass, the NY side of the Berkshires is more culturally urban than the depressed eastern side of the mountains, though both are clearly geograpihcally rural.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:29 pm
Earlier this year, Michael Barrone of U.S. News & World Report had a piece on the Germanic/Scandanavian settlers of the Upper Mid-West.
I believe, he claims that many of these states were initially settled in the mid-19th Century by immigrants escaping from the European Social revolutions.
They brought along their beliefs in education, hard work and progressive governance. And these have persisted there to this day.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:31 pm
True, geographically speaking, big chunks of New England really are rural. But what percentage of the voters live there?
According to the Northeast-Midwest institute, while Massachusetts, Rhode island, and Connecticut have a very small rural population, and New Hampshire a very large one, Maine and Vermont are each over one half rural by population, making them more rural than any other states. And, except for one county in Maine, they’re all blue. They’re also among the whitest states. This does call for an explanation. Something is different about New England.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:36 pm
That is, Maine and Vermont are among the whitest states. Mass, CT, and RI not so much.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
It looks to me like Obama got votes where people actually live. Could this be a lesson for the future?
November 11th, 2008 at 4:47 pm
Dean@68: Tell me more about that “federal property” in Piscataquis County. It’s escaped my attention for the 40+ years I’ve had a vacation home there; you aren’t by any chance thinking of Baxter State Park, are you?
As for the county’s deep crimson(R), my robot cousin nailed it as the trifling fluctuation it was in comment 10, as Matt himself did last week.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:50 pm
And, except for one county in Maine, they’re all blue. They’re also among the whitest states. This does call for an explanation. Something is different about New England.
Alex: The Northeast-Midwest institute’s definition of what “rural” is would need to be explained before it can be claimed that your point successfully counters mine. If they’re counting somebody living a couple miles from downtown Waterville, ME, as “rural” (which they may well be doing) they’re simply classifying people differently than I would. I wouldn’t call that “rural” so much as small town urban/cosmopolitan (or somesuch). Also, we would need more detailed statistics about how the vote breaks down. A so-called “rural” county in New Hampshire that went 53-47 Obama might not be that much different from a rural county in North Carolina that went 53-47 McCain, yet for our purposes one will be colored blue and the other red.
As I said, I’m a New Englander myself, and I’m suspicious of some of the claims made here because they’re infused with the flavor of lazy cultural superiority. I think the economic and demographic conditions prevailing in much of so-called rural New England are really very different from **real** rural areas in the hinterlands, and comparing the two is comparing apples and oranges.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:56 pm
What the hell is Orange County’s problem? Seriously guys, get with the program. Same goes for Monmouth and Ocean counties in Jersey.
November 11th, 2008 at 4:58 pm
This just further proves the superiority of New England. Even our white hicks realize how lame the republican party has become.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:18 pm
“I believe, he claims that many of these states were initially settled in the mid-19th Century by immigrants escaping from the European Social revolutions.”
No, it’s actually the converse. The German immigration came because of the failure of the 1848 revolutions. I.E. the authoritarians won in Germany (namely Prussia, Bismark and the other major royal houses of Germany most of whom were rapidly moving towards becoming subordinate to Prussia), the liberals went to the US and England. The Scandinavians came more due to the poor economic situation there rather than out of political turmoil.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
That seemingly anomalous part of Maine is northernmost Appalachia, hardscrabble country.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:26 pm
They’re going off of 2000 census bureau data, and the explanation of that classification system can be found here.
I’m not a demographer, so I don’t know how appropriate their designation of urbanized areas and urban clusters is, but it’s consistent across the US. There may be qualitative differences between the way of life in rural areas of NH as opposed to KS, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t both rural.
I’m not asserting any cultural superiority one way or the other. It seems to me that you simply don’t want to believe that rural people could vote Democratic. I do think that culture and cultural history (in addition to the aforementioned deprecation of Yankees by an increasingly southern-flavored GOP) explain New England’s overwhelming blueness better than economics or population density.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:28 pm
whoops. Here.
November 11th, 2008 at 5:44 pm
Compare and contrast to the satellite photo at night. I wonder if the dots line up as well as I’d guess.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:02 pm
NPR is carried by about 100 radio stations, mainly serving the higher population centers. Conservative talk radio is carried by about 600 stations, pretty much monopolizing the dialogue without opposition everywhere else.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:05 pm
New England’s always been progressive – that’s where all the O.G. abolitionists and suffragettes came from Read Henry James’s The Bostonians.
November 11th, 2008 at 6:10 pm
I was very happy to see Obama took back Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, after it wavered from its traditional country Democrat posture, voting for Bush twice. Although there Obama won the highest population counties of Delta and Marquette, but also some of the emptyier ones.
The map decided to color Isle Royale in Lake Superior red, despite it being a national park where no one not employed by the forest service lives.
It doesn’t seem like the moose would have voted Republican this year…
November 11th, 2008 at 7:06 pm
I feel like I’m banging my head against a brick wall here.
Why Matt do you continue to be so mystified by Maine.
What’s the matter with Maine….well, it hasn’t voted for a republican for president since 1988. That would be 20 years ago.
Why therefore does the blogosphere continue to be amazed beyond belief that Maine again voted for a Democrat?
November 11th, 2008 at 7:45 pm
So who cares if the Republicans win the dirt? I would much rather see the Democrats win the support of the people and cede the soil to the Republicans.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
Reporting from Western Mass, it seems more apparent that rural areas within 250 miles of Boston have been liberalized by former urbanites who have resettled out here, often drawn to liberal towns built around colleges and universities. The long-term residents (the legendary ‘rock-ribbed yankees’) have been swamped by more liberal newcomers streaming in slowly but surely over the last 50 years.
Reinforcing the demographic trend is the problem that the rural areas have lost their local manufacturing base for the mill towns, local dairies can not compete with the cost of production in Wisconsin, and the rest of the agricultural industry that survives is largely geared to organic and luxury foods. So the remnant population is as reliant on state aid the urban centers, and has by necessity adopted many of the cultural values of their best customers, the lefty and crunchy urban and suburban elites.
In many ways this is the victory of hegemonic cultural liberalism, and illustrates the most fevered nightmares of the reactionary rural south and midwest.
November 11th, 2008 at 8:49 pm
Re: Although there Obama won the highest population counties of Delta and Marquette, but also some of the emptyier ones.
There are a number of interesting blue rural counties out there. My favorite is Chatauqua NY (in the far western corner of the state, hard by Erie PA). I know it well because I have friends there and go skiing there every year. It’s classic redneck territory and everyone owns at least five guns (even my liberal, grad-degreed friends). It’s also white as a ghost (except maybe a handful of Blacks in Jamestown) but isn’t very evangelical– I think Catholicism predominates. The area used to be so anti-government that someone set a novel about an anti-government rebellion there.
November 11th, 2008 at 10:35 pm
JonF,
New England has at times been anti-Federal Government as well, see the War of 1812.
You’re right that Bush and Chavez both have some similarities, e.g. they both represent (for better or worse) the more explicitly nationalist faction in their respective country. I would stay clear of the term ‘booboisie’ though, coined by the late H.L. Mencken. Mencken was many things, but he was neither a nice man nor a good one, and his contempt for those he considered his intellectual inferiors is pretty typical of the man’s character.
As for the UP of Michigan, from what I’ve heard it’s an interesting place politically. It’s an old mining and logging area, VERY rural, and it’s currently represented by an ardently pro-life Democrat who has a 0% rating from NARAL. I would imagine that the mining history might have left a legacy of class conflict that would lend itself to Democratic politics, like other areas, but I’m not sure. Isle Royale, as far as I know, is run by the National Park Service, not the Forest Service.
November 11th, 2008 at 11:24 pm
Right, my mistake. I grew up up there, but I live downstate now. The U.P. has hung onto the country Democrat thing longer than other areas. There are still some miners in the Marquette area and the unions mean something there.
I think partly that’s about an older, small ‘c’ conservative culture. It’s also about religion, where the modern style evangelical protestant movement wasn’t really known in the 90s when I graduated high school and left. Not to say people aren’t religious, but it was more Catholic or mainline Protestant. The U.P. also needs government largesse from below the bridge to keep functioning. Plus, it’s just got a lot of poor people.
Bart Stupak, the congressman there, is supposed to be thinking about running for governor in 2010. He’s from Menomenee, down on the Wisconsin border.
November 11th, 2008 at 11:32 pm
Witless Chum,
That’s really interesting. I’m from New England but have been living in MI for about a year….haven’t been up to the UP yet. Wow, if Stupak runs for governor in ‘10 I will be voting for him in a heartbeat.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:29 am
Populated by people who have deliberated moved south from Union and Essex Counties in New Jersey and from NYC.
They hate urban New Jersey and multiculturalism.
Long Branch (in Monmouth) was also a major center of Klan influence in the 1920s.
New Jersey goes Democratic now mainly because of the urban multiracial counties. There are quite a few white liberals also but, for the most part, white New Jersey is just rural Pennsylvania with a coastline.
November 12th, 2008 at 1:19 am
The basic answer to Matt’s question is that the Democratic areas are discontinuous because they control urban areas and only a few rural ones. Rural areas make up the space between urban ones, so the Republican areas are mostly contiguous.
Note that rural New England isn’t the only rural area to trend Democratic. You also have the upper Midwest (Minnesota/Wisconsin) where there is a long history of Farmer/Labor alliances. Then you have the heavily black and heavily Hispanic areas of Louisiana/Mississippi and south Texas.
Plus a lot of areas with a significant number of Native Americans. Look at northeastern AZ and northwestern NM, and some reasonable chunks of places like South Dakota.
Also: mountain resort areas. Take a gander at sparsely-populated Alpine and Mono Counties of CA, Summit County, UT, and a lot of the mountainous areas of Colorado.
What the hell is Orange County’s problem?
Where do I start? Heh, well, actually it’s been red-blooded conservative for a long time. Remember how back in the mid-20th-century, Los Angeles was a conservative Republican city? Well Orange County was the suburbs of that, and there are still a lot of holdouts.
My mom grew up there, and I worked there for eight years. Nixon grew up there. It has both the old-style conservatives and the Sarah Palin religious-right types. Plus Vietnamese anti-communists.
There are now enough Hispanics in the area that centrist Republican Loretta Brixey was able to recast herself as centrist Democrat Loretta Sanchez (her maiden name) and barely beat super-right-winger Bob Dornan in 1997. That was big news, the first Democrat to represent a significant portion of the county (the central part) in Congress since 1984. Since then, she’s won by significant margins, but Democrats in the rest of the county are hard to find outside of maybe Laguna Beach (lots of gays and artist-types). Larry Agran, a former mayor of Irvine, got three delegates at the 1992 Democratic Presidential convention.
The map decided to color Isle Royale in Lake Superior red, despite it being a national park where no one not employed by the forest service lives.
First, as noted by somebody else, Isle Royale is a National Park, run by the National Park Service (Interior Dept.), not the Forest Service (USDA). Second, Isle Royale is part of Keweenaw County, whose populated part is on the northern tip of the Upper Peninsula, and which voted for McCain.
November 12th, 2008 at 1:24 am
Also: The rural parts of Hawaii are also Democratic, though you could lump that in with the other Democratic counties on the West coast.
November 12th, 2008 at 8:26 am
Could we get the same map for Clinton in 1992? My impression was that he did much better in rural america.
November 12th, 2008 at 10:14 am
There’s only been one Yooper Governor in the state’s history, so you might want to make sure you get your Stupak voting chance in the primary. Of the rumored Dems, I’d lean toward Dennis Archer, former mayor of Detroit.
2010 might be the year the state Republicans get their act together, though, and it might not matter.
November 12th, 2008 at 12:34 pm
Won’t Democratic redistricting change that?
November 12th, 2008 at 2:56 pm
Dan Savage and the folks at The Stranger did a piece on “the urban archipelago” after the 2004 election. Sounds like someone on Obama’s campaign heeded the advice.
November 12th, 2008 at 7:52 pm
re Maine etc.. My wife and I attended the local Dem. Caucus. Obama beat Hillary with the ‘youth’ vote (20-40 yr olds) and that seemed typical for the state. Not sure about up north though as they are ‘different’ up there. However, they have elected the sometimes liberal/bluedog Michaud. Moreover, no one mentioned the outgoing Cong., Allen, who ran a terrible campaign against the insufferable Collins, is a Dem.. And, his replacement is Chellie Pingree, a Progressive who received a rather resounding endorsement last winter from the noted Texas ‘commie’ Jim Hightower. Go figure.
Maine may be the first state in the country to elect a majority of women to represent the state in D.C.
My wife and I have lived in Vermont, NH and Maine and frankly they are all a bit strange. But, generally interesting, decent and well-meaning.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:42 pm
Wow! That’s a profound observation that will cause me to rethink everything I thought I knew about American politics.
A related thought…wouldn’t it be great if sparsely populated areas were connected by cities instead of the other way around?
November 12th, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Has anyone written anything about college counties? I’m loosely defining them as counties dominated by one or more universities. This definition puts a upper bound on county size because a sufficiently large county has other influences that would swamp the college vote. Off the top of my head, Franklin Co., OH with Columbus and the Ohio State University
would be the largest county that I’d classify as a college county.
With the definition out of the way,it looks like quite a few of the archipelagic blue counties are in fact college counties. Some examples from a quick glimpse of the DKos map & Google:
- Alachua County, FL (Gainesville – UF)
- Lancaster County, NE (Lincoln – Nebraska)
- Douglas County, KS (Lawrence, KS)
- Monongalia County, WV (Morgantown, WVU)
- Centre County, PA (State College – PSU)
More anacdotal evidence that the youth vote came in proportionately big for Barack.
November 13th, 2008 at 12:27 am
I might be wrong, but the only metropolitan area that I can think of that McCain won is Phoenix. Did he win ANY other major city? Maybe he did, but I can’t think of one. Tulsa? Lincoln? Sure, he won all of those vast contiguous areas of mostly empty farmland — great feat, that.
November 14th, 2008 at 12:03 am
I might be wrong, but the only metropolitan area that I can think of that McCain won is Phoenix. Did he win ANY other major city?
Oklahoma City, Salt Lake City, Virginia Beach… so I suppose it depends on the definition of “big city.”
March 2nd, 2009 at 5:14 am
levitraI want to say – thank you for this!
March 11th, 2009 at 4:43 am
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
March 12th, 2009 at 11:32 pm
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 22nd, 2009 at 6:17 am
tramadol
I want to say – thank you for this!
March 27th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Very nice site! cheap cialis http://ypxaieo.com/rrqaxxo/4.html
March 27th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Very nice site! cheap viagra
March 27th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Very nice site! [url=http://ypxaieo.com/rrqaxxo/2.html]cheap cialis[/url]
March 27th, 2009 at 12:53 pm
Very nice site!
April 2nd, 2009 at 5:22 am
I want to say – thank you for this!
buy cheap viagra
April 3rd, 2009 at 4:14 am
It is the coolest site,keep so!
cheap brand pfizer viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 6:18 am
thanks !! very helpful post! viagra
April 9th, 2009 at 2:09 pm
If you ever want to hear a reader’s feedback
, I rate this article for 4/5. Decent info, but I just have to go to that damn google to find the missed pieces. Thank you, anyway!