# Red & Blue geography, Why? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [July 3, 2008, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217 "2008-07-03T18:40:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![focusonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9dc877/32.png) [@focusonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/focusonz)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2008, 6:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/1 "2008-07-03T18:40:34Z")
This is a map of the [Presidential election 2004](http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004/). You can characterize the map as red rural. And futher characterized as northern Blue cities and souther red cities. The Blue rural can be explained by [Atlas black african american](http://nationalatlas.gov/natlas/Natlasstart.asp?AppCmd=CUSTOM&mLeft=-2259103.85934675&mBottom=-2427096.74029692&mRight=2682060.86775724&mTop=1121850.56369797&mWidth=636&mHeight=463&LonLat=null&bgoff=T&tabs=T&LayerList=Grid,States,Ethnic00;3) The Blue rural can be further explained by [atlas hispanic latino](http://nationalatlas.gov/natlas/Natlasstart.asp?AppCmd=CUSTOM&mLeft=-2274890.32812345&mBottom=-2420056.10138899&mRight=2776779.68041739&mTop=1208260.63112975&mWidth=636&mHeight=463&LonLat=null&bgoff=T&tabs=T&LayerList=Grid,States,Ethnic00;11) The Blue rural can be further explained by regions not white [atlas white](http://nationalatlas.gov/natlas/Natlasstart.asp?AppCmd=CUSTOM&mLeft=-2353822.67200689&mBottom=-2504347.85485368&mRight=2824139.08674745&mTop=1214676.79597802&mWidth=636&mHeight=463&LonLat=null&bgoff=T&tabs=T&LayerList=CitiesTowns,Grid,States,Ethnic00;5) The white population are in the majority in the Blue northern cities. The white population are in the majority in the red counties and red southern cities. With a few exceptions. These are broad characterizations. Many of the individuals in a given race will vote the other ticket and I intend no racism. Please comment on the validity of my broad strokes. I want to know why the whites in the northern blue cities vote democrat and why the whites in red counties and red southern cities vote republican? Sure There are the issues and people will differ but why does the difference of opinion fall so simply as red rural and Blue city? And sure there is a conservative and liberal view points but again why does the view point fall so simply as red rural and Blue city? This is a perplexing question that needs an answer! Please provide links to any previous threads that might be relevant to subject. The answer can’t be as simple as environmentally caused, can it? ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2008, 7:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/2 "2008-07-03T19:40:58Z")
[QUOTE=focusonz] I want to know why the whites in the northern blue cities vote democrat and why the whites in red counties and red southern cities vote republican? [/QUOTE] See [this thread.](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=426042) See also [_The Emerging Democratic Majority,_](http://www.amazon.com/Emerging-Democratic-Majority-John-Judis/dp/0743254783/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/102-0323301-0796122?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1182621390&sr=1-1) John Judis and Ruy Teixeira. > [@](#): > > In 1969 a prescient Kevin Phillips published The Emerging Republican Majority, predicting the rise of the conservative Republican movement. Now Judis, a senior editor at the New Republic, and Teixeira, a fellow at the Century Foundation and author of The Disappearing American Voter, argue that, if current demographic and political trends continue, a new realignment of political power is inevitable, this time sweeping Democrats to power. In support of their thesis they argue that the electorate is becoming increasingly diverse, with growing Asian, Hispanic and African-American populations-all groups that tend to vote Democratic. On the other hand, the number of white Americans, the voting population most likely to favor Republicans, remains static. Further, according to the authors, America’s transition from an industrial to a postindustrial economy is also producing voters who trend strongly Democratic. Judis and Teixeira coin the word “ideopolis” for the geographic areas where the postindustrial economy thrives. They also argue that other changes, specifically the growing educated professional class and the continuing “gender gap,” will benefit Democrats, whose political ideology is more consonant with the needs and beliefs of women and professionals. Judis and Teixeira predict that all these elements will converge by 2008, at the latest, when a new Democratic majority will emerge. Wisely, they warn that their predictions are just that, and that events might overtake the trends. But their warning will bring little comfort to Republicans, who will find their well-supported thesis disturbing. Another reason, independent of the difference between city and countryside as such, is regional political culture, a theory developed by David Hackett Fischer in [_Albion’s Seed._](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albion%27s_Seed) See also [_Vietnam: The Necessary War,_](http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-Necessary-Reinterpretation-Americas-Disastrous/dp/0684870274/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1201468966&sr=8-1) by Michael Lind, Chapter 4, “The Fall of Washington”: > [@](#): > > The real reason for the persistence of sectionalism in U.S. foreign policy can be found in the ethnoregional theory of American politics, which has been developed by the historians David Hackett Fischer, Daniel Elazar, D.W. Meinig, Kevin Phillips, and others. The ethnoregional theory holds that in the United States powerful ethnic and regional subcultures are more important and enduring than political parties and ideologies. The labels “Democrat” and “Republican” differ in their meaning from generation to generation; regional subcultures such as those of New England and the Tidewater South change much more slowly. > > The greatest insight of ethnoregional theorists is that immigrants in the United States do not assimilate to a uniform American national culture; rather, they assimilate to one of a small number of preexisting regional cultures. The historian Wilbur Zelinsky has defined a thesis he calls the Doctrine of Effective First Settlement that holds: “Whenever an empty territory undergoes settlement, or an earlier population is dislodged by invaders, the specific characteristics of the first group able to affect a viable, self-perpetuating society are of crucial significance for the later social and cultural geography of the area, no matter how tiny the initial band of settlers may have been.” . . . > > Historians differ on the question of how many of these enduring regional cultures there are in the United States. Most agree on three: a Yankee culture that spread westward overland from New England; a Quaker culture operating in Pennsylvania; and a Cavalier culture originating in the coastal South. Most, but not all, identify a fourth regional culture, that of the Scots-Irish Highland South from Appalachia to the Ozarks and Texas. In his magisterial Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America (1989), David Hackett Fischer argues persuasively that these four “hearth cultures” originated in different regions of early modern Britain and were transplanted to North America by four waves of immigrants. In the first wave (1629-40), Puritans from the eastern counties of England settled New England. The second wave (1642-75) brought anti-Puritan, royalist Cavaliers from the south of England to Virginia. Quakers from the North Midlands of England colonized Pennsylvania and the Delaware Valley after emigrating during the third wave (1675-1715). The fourth and final major Anglo-American migration, which lasted from 1717 to 1775, transplanted so-called Scots-Irish from northern England, lowland Scotland, and the north of Ireland (Ulster). > > In addition to having distinctive folkways and dialects of English, these four groups of British-American immigrants had their own unique variants of a common individualistic and liberal British political culture. Fischer describes the New England Puritan ideal as “ordered freedom,” the Quaker ideal as “reciprocal freedom,” the Scots-Irish ideal as “natural freedom,” and the coastal southern ideal as “hegemonic freedom” (deference to traditional elites). Another historian, Daniel J. Elazar, calls the New England tradition the “moralistic” culture, the midatlantic region the “individualistic” culture, and the coastal southern tradition the “traditional” culture. . . . > > The ethnoregional theory provides the answer to the mystery of American sectional differences with respect to war. Regional disagreements about war are part of a larger pattern of regional disagreement about the legitimacy of all forms of violence. “Historians of Southern mores are agreed that violence as an aspect of Southern life clearly distinguished the region from the rest of the country,” writes historian Bertram Wyatt-Brown. Of the southerner, Alexis de Tocqueville observed that “the energy which his [northern] neighbor devotes to gain turns with him to a passionate love of field sports and military exercises; he delights in violent bodily exertion, he is familiar with the use of arms, and is accustomed from a very early age to expose his life in single combat.” Southern states lead the nation not only in military academies but in homicide rates and death penalty laws and in low penalties for domestic violence. Northern states have the lowest homicide rates and the greatest number of statutes requiring a citizen to retreat before attacking an assailant or intruder in hishome. > > These regional differences reflect the difference in moral systems between the post-Calvinist Puritanism of Greater New England, which shuns violence as a means for resolving disputes, and the cultures of honor of the Scots-Irish Highland South and the Anglo-American Tidewater South. The two southern cultures are quite different, but compared to Greater New Englanders, both Highland and Tidewater southerners look with greater approval on violent retaliation for insults. But southerners are not indiscriminately violent. The difference between northern and southern homicide rates is accounted for almost entirely by violent responses of southerners to personal offenses: arguments, insults to women, lovers’ quarrels, and disputes within the family. The researchers Richard E. Nisbet and Dov Cohen discovered that, at the same university, white southern students were more likely to respond aggressively than white northern students to the same set of insults and provocations. The same researchers have pointed out the similarities between the culture of honor of white southerners and that of inner-city black Americans, most of whom are descendants of southern migrants. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 3, 2008, 11:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/3 "2008-07-03T23:52:28Z")
[QUOTE=focusonz] The Blue rural can be further explained by [atlas hispanic latino](http://nationalatlas.gov/natlas/Natlasstart.asp?AppCmd=CUSTOM&mLeft=-2274890.32812345&mBottom=-2420056.10138899&mRight=2776779.68041739&mTop=1208260.63112975&mWidth=636&mHeight=463&LonLat=null&bgoff=T&tabs=T&LayerList=Grid,States,Ethnic00;11) [/QUOTE] Actually, [Latino-Americans are only 57% Dem.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_Americans#Political_trends) ---
**Author:** ![GorillaMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/50afbb/32.png) [@GorillaMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GorillaMan)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2008, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/4 "2008-07-04T00:22:39Z")
You might be interested to see how the blue/red urban/rural divide is reversed in Britain. Simply mapping the colours of parties makes Labour look a [distant third](http://news.bbc.co.uk/nol/ukfs_news/hi/uk_politics/vote_2005/), behind the Tories (blue) and Liberal Democrats (orange). However, the huge chunk of orange at the top is only three very rural seats, and Labour’s support has always been in the cities, where constituencies may be only a mile or two across. Labour will never, ever, colour the map red. ---
**Author:** ![MilTan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/71e660/32.png) [@MilTan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MilTan)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2008, 12:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/5 "2008-07-04T00:53:20Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Actually, [Latino-Americans are only 57% Dem.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hispanic_Americans#Political_trends) [/QUOTE] You say only 57% Democratic, I say 30 point registration advantage versus Republicans. ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2008, 2:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/6 "2008-07-04T02:08:24Z")
There was an interesting theory put force in _The American Conservative_ a few months ago to explain political trends in American cities. The theory was that the more a city is surrounded by water, the more liberal it will be. Hence New York City and San Francisco are extremely liberal, cities like Chicago and Milwaukee that have waterfronts on one side are moderately liberal, and landlocked cities like Dallas and Oklahoma City are the most conservative. The reasoning went roughly like this. When population density is higher, liberal policies make more sense. When it is lower, conservative policies make more sense. Landlocked cities can expand outward in every direction, so they have lower population density. Waterfront cities can only expand in one direction, so density builds up. Cities on islands or peninsulas can barely expand at all, so they have the highest population density. Personally I’m not sure if this theory is brilliant or crazy, but it seems coherent enough to be worth mentioning in a thread like this. ---
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2008, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/7 "2008-07-04T02:21:53Z")
[QUOTE=ITR champion] The reasoning went roughly like this. When population density is higher, liberal policies make more sense. When it is lower, conservative policies make more sense. [/QUOTE] Why? ---
**Author:** ![ITR\_champion](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/c67d28/32.png) [@ITR\_champion](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ITR_champion)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2008, 2:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/8 "2008-07-04T02:45:40Z")
[QUOTE=BrainGlutton] Why? [/QUOTE] In high-density settings it’s more practical to have the government offering things such as public transportation, support for arts and culture, public parks and other spaces, and regulation of rents and housing. In low-density settings more people own their own homes and hence have reason to support strong property rights. Also high-density settings appeal to the childless while families tend to move to low-density settings. Large families, needless to say, are much more common among conservatives. ---
**Author:** ![focusonz](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/9dc877/32.png) [@focusonz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/focusonz)\ **Post date:** [July 4, 2008, 11:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/red-blue-geography-why/455217/9 "2008-07-04T11:01:01Z")
[QUOTE=ITR champion] There was an interesting theory put force in _The American Conservative_ [/QUOTE] thanks