Blue Mass Group

Reality-based commentary on politics.

Democratic Shift

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The N.Y. Times has a nice map showing the shift toward the Democrats (including in the states McCain/Palin carried) on a by county basis.

Frank Rich had a good analysis of what was about to happen a week and a half before the election.

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  1. to be even more telling. The map shows the overwhelming majority of the country’s counties voted for McCain while the major urban areas were for Obama.

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    p>Now, obviously spacial area alone means absolutely nothing concerning the outcome but I can’t help but feel there is a message behind this data. Areas with high populations (Dallas, Houston, Kansas City..) voted for Obama, regardless of their RED STATE locations while areas with low populations (many counties in NY) voted for McCain regardless of their BLUE STATE locations.

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    p>No conclusions yet but it is still a very interesting map.

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    p>Any thoughts???

    • Rural areas are the “real America”.

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      p>/snark

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      p>Urban issues are so totally ignored. We talk corn, coal, and god but no one talks much about inner city problems, smart growth, public transit, etc. I am sick to death of it. The majority of the country lives in populated areas.  

      • I think this means something and I’m just asking for ideas. I don’t know the answer.

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        p>There are many issues that divide our groups and many issues which are in common. People in urban areas and rural areas care about retirement, fuel costs, national security… but what issues exist which divide us so that rural areas would be so consistently red and urban areas so consistently blue?

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        p>Education, 401K, foreclosures, social security… I don’t know. But I cannot believe the correlation between these maps of urban/red and large city/blue cannot lead us, political parties or other people running for office to try to understand this puzzle.

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        p>Do you have any substantive comments? BTW, do you really believe urban issues are ignored in this country? When does the Boston Globe or other MSM talk about corn, coal and God as leading stories?

      • Really.

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        p>I took the list of all cities with 100,000 people or more, and then took a subset of those with more than 5,000 people per square mile.  It turns out that the number of people who live in large cities with high density is…

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        p>32,000,000.

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        p>But, that’s a lower bound.  After all, in MA alone we have Quincy, Brookline, and Somerville which have 5,000 people/sq mi but fewer than 100,000 people.  There may be more: New Bedford and Waltham both fall just short of 5k/sq mi.  So I’d bet that number is a bit larger, say 40,000,000.

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        p>Now let’s not forget that in addition to living in cities, many more millions work in them.  They’ve got to get to/from work, eat and shop there, and so forth.

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        p>Urban issues impact a massive number of people in America, but the issues Lynne listed do seem to be ignored.

    • That’s how electoral maps look these days. If you look at the county-by-county map in Indiana you get the same thing. For the Oregon Senate race, ditto.

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      p>Random other thoughts: New England is all blue except for one county with very low population in Maine. Republicanism is an in-land phenomenon in California. Democrats used to do better along the Mississippi River.

      • To extend my last comments to Lynne… what separates the “needs and wants” of the typical rural red county from a rural blue county in MA? Are MA farmers that much more progressive thinking than red state farmers? I can understand there being “something” different from a rural to urban environment causing differing views on needs,  but why from one rural to another?

        • (Briefly without references)

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          p>There’s a hypothesis in political science that voters vote their self-interest, or their perceived self-interest.

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          p>Surprisingly, the data do not back that — with odd and small exceptions. Smokers, it turns out, will bullet vote on the issues relative to smoking. Few others.

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          p>So I doubt very much that what you’re seeing in the blue back woods of New England reflects different interests from the red back woods of Tennessee.

          • then the disproving and then the example of it being valid… I’m just to stupid and dumb to appreciate your input.

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            p>And thank you too for your other remark about what the observation doesn’t mean or means nothing or whatever.

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            p>Is there anyone out there who has a clue of what these observations DO mean?

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            p>According to KBusch, stupid and dumb superlatives are completely accepted  here so by all means let loose on me, although I’d prefer no ad hom attacks!!!

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            p>Again, does the inconsistency mean anything… yes, no and why?

    • No conclusions yet but it is still a very interesting map.

      Any thoughts???
       

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      p>Here’s a thought; Rednecks, hicks and hillbillies still don’t like city slickers…

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      p>All seriousness aside:  Here’s a pop quiz for ya… Give the geographic location most associated with the last 12 presidents;

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      p>a) Dubya
      b) Clinton
      C) G H W Bush
      d) Reagan
      E) Carter
      F) Ford
      G) Nixon
      H) LBJ
      I) JFK
      J) Eisenhower
      K) Truman
      L) FDR

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      p>That’s right… only two of those Presidents (JFK and FDR) are associated with large cities (Boston and New York).  The rest are practically anti-city associations: rural ranches (LBJ, Reagan, Dubya, Nixon) or farms (Truman, Carter) The remainder are smaller cities or townfolk (Clinton, Ford and Eisenhower).   Obama, and his associations with Chicago now join the ranks of city folk presidents…

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      p>I mention this to point out the simple fact that rural folken seem to take for granted that the debate should occur always and forever on their terms.

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      p>My favorite part of this last go-around?  The fact that not ONCE did I see either Obama or McCain in plaid.  Not once.  That’s real progress.  Nor did I see the once obligatory display of hunting rifles or brush clearing.  Glad we scaped with our dignity there….

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      p>But this isn’t all that new: pre-civil war America was divided between the slave labor agrarian south whose commerce was mainly by shipping and waterways like the mississipi and the wage labor industrial north, who built railroads to move goods around… The tensions have been bleeding into the fabric of our nation for a very long time.  

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      p>

      • I just got mu hunting license renewed after I finished cutting the brush on the back 1/2 acre this morning.

        • … but I often wear plaid…

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          p>

          I just got my hunting license renewed after I finished cutting the brush on the back 1/2 acre this morning.

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          p>The point is not that these things don’t happen, they do, but that some Yalie like Dubya tries to pass himself off as ‘authentic’.  I don’t know what’s worse: that he gave it a try or that too too many gave it a buy…

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          p>

  2. I guess we’re so much to one end, we can only go the other way. Curious about this though. Maybe because our own senator ran in 2004.

  4. To a large extent, those red counties are rural, white, socially conservative, religious, etc. Those things matter to them. A lot. Many of them really believe God is on their side, and we’re all sinners. Those religious and tribal instincts can overcome a lot what we would call facts and logic. They take the Bible more seriously than many science books.

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    p>40 – 50 years ago those Southern counties were deep blue. We talked about the Solid South as a Democratic stronghold. It was, too, for over 100 years. But is also the Bible Belt.

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    p>They also look at the government differently. Rural poverty is different than urban poverty. They don’t see government doing much about their economic problems, nor do they feel government can do anything for them.  To them government just wants to take away their guns and smokes, and tax their gas and beer.

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    p>I am NOT saying they are all ignorant, racist, bible thumping rednecks. I am saying they view the world, and their self-interest, differently than we do.

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    p>I think New England rural voters have less of the religious drive, at least fundamentalist / evangelical kind.

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    p>FYI, FDR had more “rural” in him than “urban”. Yeah, he went to Harvard and had a (short) legal career in NYC; but he grew up in rural New York State (OK, Hyde Park was a big ass estate) and spent most of his time there. He was elected to the NY State Senate from there. Plus, Warm Springs and Campobello, where he spent most of the rest of his time, are rural areas. He had a better understanding of rural voters than we might think. One reason he was able to hold the South in the party for so long.

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    p>But, hat tip for the map.

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    p>

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