Posted on 12/28/2003 1:41:18 PM PST by enviros_kill
One of the most awful prospects of the next presidential election is the return of…that damn map. Depicting the results of the 2000 election, the reigning graphic of American politics divides the United States into two colors, red for Republican and blue for Democratic. It's also the basis of a lot of simplistic political analysis. "The 2000 election map highlighted a deep cultural tension between the cities (the blue states) and the sticks (the red states)," as Matt Bai put it in the New York Times Magazine earlier this year. David Brooks described this schism in more acerbic tones in the Atlantic Monthly in 2001: "In Red America churches are everywhere. In Blue America Thai restaurants are everywhere."
But this primary-color collage resonates only because it turns up the contrast. Given that more than 40 percent of voters in the blue states backed Bush and more than 40 percent of voters in the red states backed Gore, doesn't the red vs. blue model seem, well, a bit black-and-white?
So CommonWealth decided to make a map of our own. Aiming somewhere between the reductionist red-and-blue model and the most accurate (but least useful) subdivision of the United States into infinity, we split the county into 10 regions, each with a distinct political character. Our regions are based on voting returns from both national and state elections, demographic data from the US Census, and certain geographic features such as mountain ranges and coastlines. (See "The 10 Regions of US Politics" for detailed descriptions.) Each region represents about one-tenth of the national electorate, casting between 10.4 million and 10.8 million votes in the 2000 presidential election.
Some states fall entirely within a region, but many are split between two or more. Electoral votes follow state boundaries, but populations don't, and the social characteristics that influence politics spill over jurisdictional lines. Rural sections of adjacent states often have more in common, culturally and politically, with each other than with the urban and suburban population centers of their states. If political campaigns can translate media markets into electoral votes, why not regional identities that cross state lines? Furthermore, upstate-downstate divisions are well-established dynamics in elections for statewide offices, such as governor and US senator. Why should it be a surprise that they play a role in the Electoral College tally for president?
That role becomes clear in CommonWealth's analysis of recent national elections (See "Continental Divides"): No winner of a presidential election has carried fewer than five regions in at least three decades. But it's especially clear in the razor's edge closeness of the 2000 presidential election: George W. Bush and Al Gore each won five regions, but it was Bush's hair's-breadth victory in Southern Lowlands that carried the day.
Although the purpose of our framework is not prediction, the explanatory power of CommonWealth's analysis is evident: If either Bush or the eventual Democratic nominee in 2004 can carry a sixth region, as Bill Clinton did in both 1992 and 1996, he is virtually assured to win in November. As political campaigns pull out their maps and sharpen their pencils, setting a course for November 2, 2004, they should consult our cartography - if only to determine where their opportunities lie, and where they're wasting their time.
Three of our regions have voted Republican in every election since 1964. SAGEBRUSH, which includes most of the Rocky Mountain states and a piece of northern New England; SOUTHERN COMFORT, which follows the Gulf Coast and reaches up to the Ozarks; and the FARM BELT, which stretches from Ohio to Nebraska but leapfrogs the Mississippi River. Two others lean Republican, but have boosted Democrats from time to time. APPALACHIA, which follows the mountain range from Pennsylvania to Mississippi, supported Jimmy Carter in 1976 but abandoned him in 1980 and backed the GOP ever since. SOUTHERN LOWLANDS, which stretches from Washington, DC, to New Orleans, stayed with Carter in 1980 and supported Clinton twice in the 1990s but rejected northerners Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis, not to mention Gore in 2000.
Three regions have flip-flopped in a dramatic way, voting for Carter in 1976, switching to Reagan in 1980 and 1984, then going Democratic in the past four elections: UPPER COASTS, which includes most of New England and the Pacific Northwest; GREAT LAKES, which takes in such cities as Chicago, Detroit, Cleveland, and Buffalo; and BIG RIVER, which follows the Mississippi from Duluth to Memphis. NORTHEAST CORRIDOR, which runs from Bridgeport to Bethesda, followed the same course except that it snubbed Dukakis and waited until 1992 to switch back to the Democrats - and stayed there. Finally, EL NORTE, which stretches from Los Angeles to Brownsville, Texas, and also includes the Miami area, backed Republican candidates from 1968 through 1988 but more recently supported Clinton and Gore.
Of course, CommonWealth's 10-region model is not the only way to analyze national politics. Many others now dominate the talk among the pundit class. (See "Dominators and Bloc-heads.") But in comparison to the others, our model has certain advantages.
First, ours is based on election returns, not on polls or focus groups or sociological speculation. There's no guesswork here, no margin of error, and the response rate is 100 percent. (Well, 98 percent, considering that there are always a few votes that aren't tabulated.)
Second, the 10 regions are clearly defined, right down to county lines. In comparison to Soccer Moms and Office Park Dads, there's no confusion about who's being counted. And because the data are based on geography rather than on vague demographic groups, it can be studied longitudinally. That is, we can compare the results from the 1976 and 2000 elections for each region. Hell, you can go back to 1912 if you want to. Just remember that Northeast Corridor carried a lot more weight than Southern Comfort did back then.
Finally, from a strategic perspective, the 10-region model shows each party where they can (or have to) win in order to take the presidency. In 2000, both parties won four regions by solid margins; no amount of politicking was going to change that. But four isn't enough to win, no matter how much you pump up the vote in your base. As we saw that year, even winning the popular vote doesn't do the trick if you can't nail down a fifth region, and a sixth is better still. Candidates can rack up votes - popular and electoral - by driving up turnout in the regions that like them best, tipping the outcome in states divided by region, or by expansionism, spreading the influence of friendly regions into adjacent territory.
But the real beauty of the 10-region map is that it gets beyond red vs. blue reductionism, introducing shades of purple. The American electorate is a big, variegated mass of humanity, and a small shift of votes in the right place can swing an election.
(Excerpt) Read more at massinc.org ...
Besides, if the illegal aliens were not permitted to vote the picture would look entirely different. :o)
Yes - "El Norte" would go Republican.
I can't bear it. How stupid are those people?
Hit your "refresh" button and check out my changes.
"They have a good point to say that the Florida panhandle is different from Miami. But the votes that count are by the state."
Which is why the left is trying so hard to push "proportional vote" distribution schemes on presidential electors.
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