3D Election Results Map by County

FlopEJoe writes "There are many web-based electoral maps available on the regular news sites (Electorial-vote, CNN) but this image 3d county results seemed more profound to me. Wish I had more to say about it but I don't want to cloud the discussion. I think it speaks for itself and the spin-masters should enjoy it."

Comments

Re:Ummm...

[JabberWokky]

As far as I can tell, this is utterly misleading. Unless I'm wrong, what this does is take the county, draw a bar with the height of the population, and then color it with the majority of votes - discarding any other votes.

That is to say, a high population area may have 48% Republican votes and 49% Democratic votes but the entire tall bar is colored blue.

--
Evan

Re:Votes by IQ

[Shihar]

Just realize the statistical fallacies with taking that too far. Namely, correlation does not mean causation. For instance, I would bet that Boston (where I live) has a higher IQ then the middle of nowhere in Texas. You would also see that nowhere Texas votes Republican and Boston votes Democrat. If you assume it is because of IQ, you just made a very large assumption.

Democrats are more concerned with city issues. The city issues often come at the expense more rural areas. If I live in nowhere Texas and a Democrat blathers on about welfare and the environment, he isn't speak to me. Such a person probably has minimal expense and so even if he doesn't have a job has little need for welfare. The issue with the environment is a complete non-issue when you are surrounded by nothing but clean air. A Republican talking about cutting taxes on the other hand does appeal to such a person because it might very well be one of their biggest expenses.

You also need to realize that cities inflate their IQ with college students. College students have decidedly fewer issues they have to worry about and tend to be very liberal. As a college student doing the thing that 'feels right' is far more appealing then a tax break because chances are that college student doesn't pay a significant (or any) income tax.

I am not saying that the above explanations are the correct ones, just giving an example as to why I wouldn't take the analogy too far.

Re:I was modded down as troll for saying this

[Just Some Guy]

when I feel it is totally legitimate to ask. Has anyone ever looked at intelligence/education as a factor for party affiliation? Are the more educated people in the Bush or Kerry camp? I'm just wondering here.

I'll go out on a limb and say that Kerry got the more educated vote, but that it's correlative instead of causative.

Basically, city dwellers tend to be more liberal than rural residents, who are famously conservative. This probably has more to do with the facts of life in the respective locations than anything else. That is, densely populated environments tend to foster an atmosphere of mutual dependence (because if they didn't, the 10,000,000 people packed into a small area would probably melt down), whereas farmers pretty much have to be self-reliant. In harvest season, you'll help your neighbor if you can, but your first priority is getting your own work done first because that's what's going to feed your family for the next year.

I don't think that either of these ways of living is inherently better; each is well-suited for its own niche. So, I think it's perfectly rational for rural populations to be more conservative than city populations.

If you buy that so far, then consider where educated people tend to go after they graduate. You just got a PhD in particle physics. Are you likely to move to a Midwestern town of 15,000? No. You're going to go where there are jobs for people with your qualifications, and that pretty much exclusively means a largish city. And when you get there, you'll probably find your politics sliding to the left to match those of your colleagues and neighbors that were already there.

I don't think intelligence directly maps to political leanings at all. I've personally known plenty of smart (and dumb) people on either end of the spectrum (or corner of the graph if you're a 2d-map fan). I do think, though, that your intelligence has an effect on where you'll live, and you're place of residence has a large effect on your political beliefs.

So, I'll stick with my original statement that educated people tend to vote for Kerry.

PS. My wife and I are both educated (her: DPM, me: BS) conservatives. If you interpret my message to say that Kerry supporters are smarter, then you missed the entire point.

Wages are earned.

[AtariAmarok]

"Giving people a wage they can live off of is also a value"

Wages are earned, not given. They are earned by doing work for the value of the wage. Things really get messed up if someone outside sets the value of the wage without regard to the value of the work. Forcing companies to overpay workers at some government-set wage that has nothing to do with the work also demeans real work and turns the whole affair into a welfare program: a forced handout.

Every time the government arbitrarily sets the mininum wage to be higher, thousands of people end up losing their jobs, as it forces companies to try to get by without low-end jobs. When I point it out to people who favor the "minimum wage", the typical response is that these jobs are worthless: a poor person is better off getting nothing, as compared to getting $17,000 a year.

As long as you are arbitrarily setting wages without regard to value, why not set the minimum wage to $1,000 an hour? It will make everyone a millionaire. Why stop at a low value?

Re:African American Vote

[TrebleJunkie]

As a conservative, let me tell you that I'm not racist. By-and-large, conservatives are not racist.

That we're percieved as such, however, says a *lot* about the prejudices held by those who would call us racist. To which I can only respond with, "Dumbasses, heal thyself."

Re:How to understand the election results.

[zulux]

In the past century, the more intelligent, educated, and ambitious people have migrated away from the farms to places with more opportunities. The less educated have stayed behind. Those who live in rural counties are less likely to read, and therefore are not well-informed.


This is why a lot of liberals get stamped with the elitist tag.

Land doesn't vote.

[khasim]

The whole time I've been seeing state-by-state maps New York has always been a "blue" state. So I figured that the majority of the state was pro-Kerry. But when you look at the county-by-county maps of New York, you see that while Kerry did get the majority of the New York votes, that geographically most of the state is actually pro-Bush.

But land doesn't vote, only people vote.

So "geographically" is meaningless in this case.

If you look at the New York map, you see that most of the state is either pro-Bush, neutral, or weak-Kerry.

Again, land does not vote. Only people vote.

So comparing the 2-dimensional areas is meaningless.

It's a sad but true fact that one city can out-vote the rest of the state.

For the third time, land does not vote. So the population of NYC is out-voting the population of the rest of the state. In other words, "democracy".

It would be interesting if the electoral college could be split along districts. Like if say, the popular vote got the 2 senators votes for the state, and then each district had its representative vote the way that district voted.

Are you familiar with the term "gerrymandering"?

How about if we break it down further so that each person gets his/her "representative vote the way that" person voted? I can support that, but I cannot support a system that would be so open to gerrymandering abuses.

Re:But why do they vote that way?

[Orne]

In the old days, cities were where the factories were located. In order to find work, most people came to cities like Philadelphia to find jobs, whether in manufacturing, shipping, ports, etc. When the socialist movement swept through a century ago to improve the working conditions of those workers, they were the strongest supporters, and that was handed down the generations to today's citizens.

Fast foward to today, where most of the nation's industrial work has fled the higher taxes (and tigher environmental laws) of the cities to the rural areas. The cities are now home to many social programs, such as welfare, that are harder to manage in the urban areas (economy of scale, not as efficient if population is distributed).

Modern conservatives hold the belief of independence from the state, that they want to control their own destinies and not be told what to do by the government. Over time, many conservatives have left the establishments to start their own communities farther away from those that would oppress them (with things like high taxes, underrepresentation, etc)

Education levels would be roughly equal. It is a myth that liberals are higher educated, given that they are much more socially divided than conservatives are.. you have the rich highly-educated liberals along side the poor under-educated liberals who live off of social programs. Conservatives have a more equal average education level without this social divide.

Church percentages is again harder to estimate, though I would say slightly higher in the rural areas. Massachusetts has a very strong Christian Democrat estabishment, esp around Boston & the east (see Kennedys). Also, many of the urban minority democrats in the cities also happen to be strong Baptists, they are just more willing to put aside their religious convictions for (perceived) political gain.