Last U.S. election we all heard about red and blue states. There seem to be definite patterns to the political leanings of geographic areas, but is there any explanation for this other than birds of a feather flock together? Could particular livelihoods that are predominant in an area attract either liberals or conservatives? Farming vs. heavy manufacturing?
In the book Outliers, the author makes the case that Asian work ethic is significantly due to the requirements for rice farming. (I don’t know if he’s right, but that’s his claim.) This is not politics but is one explanation that ties geography to human behavior patterns, and the kind of example I am wondering about.
The best current geographic explanation for red and blue states is population density. The northeast, great lakes states, and west have forced diversity through proximity. Red states tend to be rural, have lower densities, and more homogeneous populations.
Tend is the major word, of course. All trends in U.S. politics nationally are fleeting. Both red and blue states are purple in many ways because there are smaller, fractal-like patterns within the states. (Cities are redder than rural counties; areas within cities are redder than other areas.) Economic and social patterns change with time, as in the solid Democratic south turning into the solid Republican south.
Thank you for giving me a reason to not just ignore Outliers but to toss it into the garbage if I happen to come across it. You’re kidding, right? He didn’t really say anything that outrageously stupid, did he?
The whole red state/blue state meme is oversimplified, overused, and deeply flawed. People look for some fundamental difference between a “red state” and the adjoining “blue state” when the difference in support for the political parties may differ by only a percentage point.
A classic example is Montana, which is “red” because Montana went with the Republican presidential candidate in the last election (by a 2% margin), but if you look closer, you’ll see that Montanans elected Democrats for governor and both senators.
I would be happy to give you my complete evaluation of the book; I was going to send you a PM but maybe you have that turned off. Basically he tries to sound like he’s actually done some kind of studies but in the end it’s a lot of navel contemplation. I enjoyed it, though, and it does give you something to think about (BTW the rice paddy thing is not the main thrust of the book).
The one thing about blueness being highly correlated to population density is that people in cities are forced to deal with heterogeneity and diverse cultures. I suppose that can backfire and turn one into an intolerant asshole, but at least we are exposed to different cultures and in turn less shocked by differences.
Imho, it’s race. Red and blue is a nice way of saying white or non-white. While geographic factors do influence population movement, it’s usually the people who “allow” integration or homogeneity. I believe that “blue” states tend to be racially integrated down to the neighborhood level. Red states have larger tracts of racially homogeneous groups (e.g. the hills vs the slums).
One additional thing to consider is that even in the reddest of the red or blue congressional districts, it is rare for one party to gain more than 70% of the vote. Which is a dead lock cinch in elections, but still does not allow you to genericize about the likely political leanings of any one random individual contained within.
This may be because Democrats from Montana are more conservative than Democrats from the majority of the country. For example, I’ve lived in Boston (liberal) and southern Utah (near crazy conservative). The Democrat from Utah was more conservative than the Republican from Boston.
My own opinion is that population density is a major determinant and I use gun control as an example. In cities there are so many more possible threats if everybody is armed (and cops are never far away) that the citizens are comfortable with guns being limited. In rural areas one is far less likely to run into a problem with another armed citizen and the cops will take far longer to respond (give the geographic distances), so rural citizens want their guns. Environmental concerns have a similar dichotomy.
I agree wholeheartedly. During the last presidential campaign, I was puzzled by snide references to Obama as a community organizer. That’s a bad thing?! Aren’t there community non-profits and charities everywhere? :dubious:
When I asked a moderate Republican friend, she explained that it struck many people odd or suspicious that someone could have “community organizer” as a full-blown occupation. My response was that you may be able to run community organizations in rural areas with only volunteers and dabblers but a metropolitan area, and in particular a city, is going to require at least some full-time non-volunteers just by the size of the population served. I observed that a rural area can have volunteer firefighters while a city needs a professional fire brigade.
But then that led me to consider the difference between urban and rural life. A city is nearly unliveable without water and sewer service, but a rural dweller can live on well water and a septic system. A rural dweller with a four-wheel-drive vehicle can bounce along on crappy roads and probably wouldn’t dream of walking to the store, but a city needs not only decent streets but sidewalks and a transit system. A sheriff and a handful of part-time deputies might be able to police a rural county (with backup from the state police) but a city needs a police force divided into districts or precincts, detectives working particular kinds of cases, etc. One-room schoolhouses with a single “schoolmarm” are virtually gone in the U.S. since the auto age, but cities have had large public schools since the late 19th century.
In short, urban (and suburban) areas depend on organized “bureaucratic” government to a much greater degree than rural areas. Politically, that translates in general to urbanites who accept a larger role for government (not necessarily the particular policies or leaders, but its general role), rural dwellers who don’t and who can if so inclined fall back on “rugged individualist” philosophies, and suburbanites – who have public services somewhere between urban and rural – somewhere inbetween.
So the Blue States are more HETEROgenous, and the 'Pubbies are more HOMOgenous. Can’t wait to give my relatives a hard time about that… explains that “wide stance” stuff…
If you read this Red states and blue states - Wikipedia and particularly the sections labebled “Map interpretatin problems” & “purple states”, you’ll see that reality is a lot more complex than “red state / blue state”
As described by Ludovic & shown in the wiki map File:ElectionMapPurpleCounty.jpg - Wikipedia, each congressional district or county is a lot more purple than it is red or blue. And summing those to get a sinlge all-red or all-blue determination for a whole state is pure statistical ignorance.
Or more accurately, pure partisan political malfeasance.
It depends on what you want the results to predict.
If you want to predict the outcome of a two-party election, then using the red/blue split currently works quite well. I’d guess that 90% of all federal elections can be sorted that way. That’s why election campaigning comes down to a few swing states for the presidency and a few congressional districts every two years. That’s why 90% of incumbents win and even the rare huge swings, like 1994, come about from less than 20% of the House switching sides. And about 20% of the states switched from 2004 to 2008 to give Obama a seemingly huge win.
Your own link shows that there are only 3 purple states, defined by going Republican twice and Democrat twice in the last four elections.
Red/blue is extremely accurate at the election level. It doesn’t work at all at the individual level. There is some point between where the change occurs, but that will depend on local conditions. You have to know how and when to use the term, but red/blue is definitely meaningful.
Section A starts out 100% segregated and Section B starts out 5% segregated. Ten years later, Section A is 90% segregated and Section B is 4% segregated. Congratulations! Section A “has on average declined, but less so in Section B.”
Now, I’m not saying whether **Superhal **is right or wrong about the correlation he sees–I don’t know. But your “cite” is useless to refute it.
I see your point Shot From Guns. I should have included the very next sentence of the Wiki article in my quote:
If anyone thinks the “blue states” aren’t segregated, they are badly mistaken, as can readily be seen by reading the entirety of the Wiki article I linked.
Did you see, for example, the racial map of Milwaukee, the “most segregated city in America” according to the 2000 census? How does that jibe with Superhal’s description of blue states being racially integrated down to the neighborhood level?
I *live *in Milwaukee, dude. I’m well aware of how segregated this particular city is. However, the question isn’t, “Are blue states segregated at all,” it’s, “Are predominantly Democratic areas over all more or less segregated than predominantly Republican ones?” Also, given that the point was made not specifically about Black/white segregation, but about integration of *various *ethnic and racial groups, just looking at the two most prominent ones isn’t going to necessarily prove or disprove anything.
Shot From Guns, I was responding specifically to Superhal’s post, wherein he said:
and
I think I have effectively refuted those points with evidence.
I think my evidence shows, or at least strongly suggests, that neighborhoods in “blue states” are no more integrated (and are perhaps less integrated) than those in “red states.”
If you have any countervening evidence you would like to put forward, then by all means do so. If you want to argue that the blue states are more integrated, then the burden of proof has shifted to you.
Also, since we are here to fight ignorance, please pardon me for inventing the word “countervening.” I meant contravening. (I was conflating “contravening” with “countervailing” in my noggin.)
No, you haven’t proven anything like what you think you have. What you *have *demonstrated is that there exist several large cities (presumably in predominantly Democratic areas, but you haven’t even gone down the list and verified that) that still have a high level of Black/white segregation. What you have yet to prove is your actual point. (In your favor, the *least *segregated large metropolitan area for Black in the U.S.–Orange County, CA–is considered as a whole to be Republican.)
To actually *refute *the point that **Superhal **made, you would have to actually compare the levels of integration in predominantly Republican and Democratic areas. For example, one could certainly claim that a rural area that’s 100% white is “not segregated”–because there’s no one there to *be *segregated–but it would be much less integrated in comparison even to a city like Milwaukee.
What you’d *want *to do is something like overlaying a map of all non-Hispanic whites versus everyone else with a map of Democratic vs. Republican votes. If **Superhal **is right, you’d see a correlation between areas with high minority populations and Democratic votes, with the correlation increasing as the populations are not only present but integrated, and between areas with low minority populations and Republican votes. If you’re right, there would be an inverse correlation or no discernible relationship.
