They’ve spent the last 101 years watching cars drive in circles. It’s addled their brains.
Three points:
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2000 Census classifies Indiana as 71% urban, vs 88% for Illinois and 77% for Ohio.
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Voters tend to vote Democratic if they are near an Ocean (other than Gulf of Mexico) or the Great Lakes !
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Almost half of Indiana’s population is South of the Mason-Dixon line. The two other states have much more northerly population. (An easy way to see rough population plots is via Wikipedia pages like this.)
(No, the Mason-Dixon latitude isn’t magic. But there is a slight North-South gradient in certain American attitudes.)
To add to this, my understanding is that Indiana was settled from south to north, by immigrants from Kentucky and Tennessee. As opposed to east to west, like Ohio and Illinois. So, more Scots Irish and southern English, and fewer northern English (Yankees) and Germans.
Northernmost Klan stronghold, less urbanized, less industrialized.
I saw what you did there.
Save for Indy, Gary, and the Chicago suburbs in the northwest, it’s a pretty rural state. Auto manufacturing isn’t nearly the big deal there as it is in neighboring Michigan and Ohio, only 100,000 or so workers and those aren’t working for the Big Three, so the auto bailout is a non-issue there.
Forget Indiana, what the hell is wrong with the Texas to North Dakota belt? Save for a couple outlier years, you can color that whole band red before the candidates even think about running. My guess is that it’s because the lower half of the belt are rednecks and the upper half hayseeds, but seriously WTF? One would think that farm issues would be the big deal and I don’t really see where Republicans have an edge with that issue.
Me so holy?
WAG - the NRA is great at getting their message out, and scaring gun owners against Democrats?
Farmers have a big problem with federal regulation, even while holding out their hands for the subsidies. They think that a Republican administration means less government, although history would tell them otherwise. Quite often, as in the case of Oregon and Washington, the rural areas are at the mercy of governance from the few large urban areas, who have the most votes, and have a fairly legitimate beef (ha!) that city dwellers do not understand farming needs.
Not to mention rural roads, electrification, and postal service.
… and aqueducts.
But besides farm subsidies, rural roads, electrification, postal service, aqueducts, and defending the land, what has Washington ever done for us?
Viaducts?
Vhy not a chicken, Groucho?
All right, why a duck?
Just to help highlight the urban/rural divide there is a pretty cool map here
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2008/
They scaled the map of the US according to county and population and all sorts of other things. There is also a link there to the 2010 congressional elections.
Someone here on the SMDB posted the link during the '08 election cycle.
I grew up in NW Indiana and its very different from the rest of the state. Lake County (which is most of NW Indiana) is 8% of the total state population and only 70% white (25% black plus other minorities) so that probably had something to do with '08.
You know, I completely, 1000%, disagree with Murdock on this.
That being said, I can respect the fact that he is at least consistent on this. If you truly believe that Gods make you pregnant for whatever reason, and that human life is sacred, then of course rape should not be an exception.
I admire his balls for sticking to his position.
If God can intend a rape, He can intend an abortion.
There’s something deeply wrong with admiring a guy’s testicles on the issue of rape. 