Posted on 11/13/2014 1:39:51 PM PST by right-wing agnostic
If you’re a political junkie — or at least if you’re a conservative political junkie — you’ve probably seen the map. It’s a map of the United States showing the congressional districts won by Republicans in red and those won by Democrats in blue.
It looks almost entirely red, except for some pinpoints of blue in major metropolitan areas and a few blue blotches here and there — in Minnesota, northern New Mexico and Arizona, western New England, along the Pacific Coast.
Of course it’s misleading. Congressional districts are of basically equal population, and Democrats tend to roll up big margins in densely populated areas. So while voters have elected at least 244 Republican congressmen and probably will end up with at least 247 — more than in any election since 1928 — the map overstates their dominance.
But it does tell us something about the geographic and cultural isolation of the core groups of the Democratic Party: gentry liberals and blacks.
These were the two groups gathered together when Barack Obama had the opportunity to draw the new lines of his state Senate district after the 2000 census. He combined the heavily black South Side of Chicago with Gold Coast gentry liberals north of the Loop.
Together, they provided him with an overwhelmingly Democratic voter base and with access to the upper financial and intellectual reaches of the Democratic Party — and, in short time, the presidency of the United States.
But blacks and gentry liberals by themselves are not a national majority, as the map suggests. And policies designed to appeal to the Obama Democratic base may be repelling other, larger segments of the electorate. Consider the racial groups surveyed by contemporary political analysts.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
Yep. Gerrymandering. That’s why western Maryland is now blue.
Here is the 2012 election. The top chart is the raw vote. The bottom chart is the relative difference.
-PJ
Red is the response color.
Sure it does. Some red congressional districts on the map occupy almost the area of an entire state, while many blue districts are jammed together into little dots on the map. Yet, all the districts represent an equal amount of political influence.
No reason to annihilate. Just isolate.
Seriously, if they’d just leave the rest of us alone, they can go ahead and “be liberal” in their enclaves.
Haha, that’s my old district. It was not gerrymandered to get a democrat elected though, because all the surrounding areas would always go democrat anyway. It was specifically gerrymandered to link the shrinking pockets of white, middle class voters in the Chicago metro area together, so that Chicago machine politicians could keep the district out of the hands of the growing hispanic and black population.
Lost the Tallahassee area. I believe it usually goes democrat
Yeah, the Iranians, or the Norks, or the Pakistanis and Taliban and al-Q'aeda will take care of the annihilation part eventually, when someone lobs a 150-kt cookie into the middle of that mess.
In Houston, our pipples are purples. 8D
Gutierrez earmuffs?
They say blacks are NOT a growing segment of the population? Surprising. Their birth rates seem to be through the roof, particularly when you consider how young they are when they start having babies. Must be the black on black murder rate is having an effect.
North Carolina has Republican governor, state legislature (both houses) and both Senators?????
The numbers of blacks having abortions is through the roof.
Read somewhere the number is something like 70% of all black pregnancies end up in abortion.
LOL
Wyoming gives one the best numerical representation I believe.
Bummer.
I like to visit the Florida Panhandle.
It’s Florida without the noxious transplanted northeast folks that have taken over the rest of it.
I can’t understand why so many have given up painting the ‘Rats as REDs.
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