Red, Blue and You
I took a look at the web site from commenter “Obsidian”
and came across this wonderful map he posted.
So much for the skiplaoders of crap we’ve heard over the last four years about a Red America and a Blue America. This map shows 2000 voting by county, not by state. It mostly shows that Americans, in general, are much smarter than Pundits. Remember this, come Tuesday night.
October 31st, 2004 at 1:05 pm
I notice that your header bar is solid blue on the left, less so on the right. Your picture is on the right, but it is the combination of solid blue and lighter blue. the “aura” around your picture is fading towards white indicating a tendency towards the full spectrum of which red is a part. Welcome to the vast right wing conspiracy. (sorry, just couldn’t help myself)
October 31st, 2004 at 1:28 pm
Marc – thank you for posting this. I have another map which shows population density and voting by county, larger versions of both maps and some analysis, here:
http://obsidianorder.blogspot.com/2004/10/red-and-blue-mapping-votes.html
I don’t think the idea of a Red America/Blue America is wrong, per se: it’s just that the split is big city vs suburb/rural, not coast vs middle. Even in Texas or Georgia, cities tend to be blue-ish. Even in California, suburbs and rural areas are red-ish. Why? I don’t know, but denser areas are almost unifromly more Democrat, and sparser areas more Republican.
October 31st, 2004 at 2:26 pm
Obsidian……
Thanks! Finally something that makes sense!
GM………..
I sure appreciate all your thoughts and research, do you think it’s because we are on the same side?
Marc…….
Great posts this week! You have outdone yourself!
October 31st, 2004 at 2:58 pm
Gamekeeper, perhaps
Thanks for the compliment too. I feel really good about posting in Marc’s site. Not only is this a site where (for the most part) conservatives and liberals/progressives can actually discuss something, but it is an active discussion withouth the usuall vituperation. Marc is to be commended for that.
Cheers and Go W!
October 31st, 2004 at 3:18 pm
Okay—now I’m REALLY scared about the nation’s sanity. In the last hour I’ve gotten two MORE calls about the efficacy of Washington Redskins’ loss as elections indicator, (in addition to my previous call from my friend the shrink, mentioned in the last thread), this time one from a normally very well-ground attorney, another from a screenwriter.
Should I take their football-based prognostications seriously?
Or just find new friends?
I’m so confused!
October 31st, 2004 at 4:15 pm
New Hampshire
Concord Monitor
Kerry 49 (49)
Bush 46 (45)
Bush approve/disapprove 46/47
Iowa
Des Moines Register
Kerry 48 (45)
Bush 45 (46)
Bush approve/disapprove 45/47
Kerry leads early voters 52-41
Minnesota
Star Tribune Minnesota Poll
Kerry 49 (48)
Bush 41 (43)
Bush approve/disapprove 44/49
In this WaPo Sunday Outlook piece, Tucker Carlson suggests the following (on the record):
Popular Vote
Bush 48
Kerry 51.5
EV
Bush 260
Kerry 278
FL
Bush 49
Kerry 51
October 31st, 2004 at 5:45 pm
After nearly 80 candidate visits to Ohio, untold millions spent in ads, 500 more Americans killed in Iraq and 13,300 additional jobs lost in the state, the presidential race is back to where it was seven months ago.
Dead even.
President Bush and Sen. John Kerry are tied at just less than 50 percent in a new Dispatch Poll.
How close is this matchup? Kerry leads by a mere eight votes out of 2,880 ballots returned in the mail survey — the tightest margin ever in a final Dispatch Poll.
A similar survey in late March shortly after Kerry clinched the Democratic nomination put Bush ahead by 34 responses.
However, in the past four weeks Kerry has surged from a 7 percentage-point deficit into a tie with Bush. And several signs indicate the Massachusetts senator has gained the momentum in Ohio.
Kerry is ahead by 14 points among independent voters. He has a narrow lead in northwestern Ohio, the state’s most reliable bellwether media market. And he has brought black voters home, gaining 91 percent support among black respondents.
http://www.dispatch.com/election/election-president.php?story=dispatch/2004/10/31/20041031-A1-00.html
October 31st, 2004 at 6:56 pm
More of the usual crap and spin from Marc.
The country is more deeply divided than at any point since the civil war.
The conventional wisdom is in this case right. Marc is lying to you.
October 31st, 2004 at 7:06 pm
I didn’t write that last one btw, if anyone tries to blame me for it…
October 31st, 2004 at 8:22 pm
Hey, I think there’s some statistical bias in the geographic clusters!
Marc reassessment of the intelligence of Americans hardly seem justifiable by taking the sampling down to a granularity FINER than that of the electoral college, which is counted state-by-state. As Obsidian points out, rural tends red, urban tends blue. And some states are definitely more rural than others. Denver being blue still leaves Colorado red. At least Colorado is reconsidering winner-take-all.
This is why I ignore most poll numbers, which at best can give you a feeling only for the popular vote. What you need is a spreadsheet periodically refreshed with best estimates of how the battleground states will go. And if Americans were smarter, they’d insist on something like that from polling organizations, instead of just gobbling up the latest aggregate numbers from whatever source. If they were smarter still, they’d push for state referenda aimed at finally killing off winner-take-all.
The red-state-blue-state divide illustrates a problem endemic to most of the larger representative democracies: overrepresentation of rural voters. Here in Japan, some years back, the supreme court (a rather toothless bench compared to America’s) ruled that even a 7-to-1 rural overrepresentation was not a constitutional issue. Reform here is perpetually stalled as a result, and the party that’s been governing here (albeit only in coalition in the last decade or so) keeps ladling out pork-barrel projects to the country side, stemming the loss of population in rural areas, and – let’s face it – effectively buying votes. PM Koizumi’s flagship issue is privatizing the postal system, which would seem a small issue in America. However, Japan’s postal system is also the country’s largest bank, rural post offices double as the Liberal Democratic Party’s organizing centers, and those post office operations are generally handed down father to son, creating a rural politic-bureaucratic class with a strong vested interest in the status quo. Just yesterday, Koizumi’s chief cabinet officer allowed that he’s actually opposed to postal system privatization, but claimed by way of apology that he’s not been “actively” opposing it. The mind boggles.
Well, it’s a different system here in Japan, much more pork-driven. Koizumi seems strong because he has lasted many more years than most PMs. The reality: in Japan, if you want power, you want to be one of those EX-prime ministers – relatively free to funnel cash around without undue scrutiny by the press. My theory: that club has locked Koizumi out, doomed him to relative impotence. The conservative countryside voter will still continue to rule Japan, exacting high prices for city-dweller food with the protectionist policies they perpetually support, and exacting high taxes for pork barrel projects that Japan doesn’t need. That’s very smart of them, perhaps, but it’s not democracy. It’s definitely not something America should try to emulate.
October 31st, 2004 at 8:38 pm
That map is off. I live in Georgia, which is heavy Republican. Believe me, the method of presenting the data in the map clearly misrepresents reality. It’s okay if you want to believe it. Just don’t take it to court to try to prove that it entitles Kerry to a win.
October 31st, 2004 at 9:40 pm
“Just don’t take it to court to try to prove that it entitles Kerry to a win.”
Lol, I didn’t know anyone was planning to take it to court in Georgia since it’s hardly a key state. Then again, the pathetic attempt to force people with the wrong sounding surnames to go and prove to a court that they are citizens is certainly something that might push that result in the end…even in Georgia remarkably…
October 31st, 2004 at 9:41 pm
Michael, the main poll to ignore is the national one. the state by states are very relevant and have the Bushies very nervous at this point.
November 1st, 2004 at 10:05 pm
Michael Turner –
We agree that the nationwide polls are not informative about how the election will go. Total waste of time.
One place to go for the electoral vote numbers you crave
is
http://electoral-vote.com
which integrates all available polls.
The head page is getting hit hard now, for yesterday’s numbers you can try
http://www.electoral-vote.com/nov/nov01.html
which seems to work.
Marc –
The map is a cool link. The split between cities and rural areas is pretty definitive.
It does correlate somewhat with coasts if you interpret coasts liberally to mean some riverside cities like St. Louis, and lakeside ones like Chicago. It’s also amazing how well the Appalachian poverty belt jumps out in red (OK, red-gray), in addition to the well-known Rocky mtn red belt.
New hypothesis: it’s all altitude.
November 1st, 2004 at 10:10 pm
PS — Obsidian, what you want to show is a scatter plot with pop density on x axis, perhaps on log scale, and Gore voting %age on the y axis. One point for each county.
Then, if your software can do it, hilight outliers from the trend (Gore % goes up w/ pop density) on another US map, so you can see who the cases your idea can’t explain are.
November 3rd, 2004 at 2:33 am
Michael Turmon: “Obsidian, what you want to show is a scatter plot with pop density on x axis, perhaps on log scale, and Gore voting %age on the y axis. One point for each county.”
Yep, I had already done that, even complete with log scale
Search my original post for “scatter graph” or just go directly to it here:
http://img79.exs.cx/img79/9792/vote-vs-density.png
It shows excellent correlation (~0.6). The one dense outlier at the very top is Fairfax County, VA which is the voted roughly 50/50. It is a rather unique dense suburban-ish area next to Washington DC. There are plenty of sparse outliers.
November 6th, 2004 at 5:56 pm
The latest maps are here…
http://obsidianorder.blogspot.com/2004/11/red-and-blue-reprise-2004.html
Basically the same map for the latest election plus a map comparing 2004 to 2000.
Enjoy.
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