This map has been a point of discussion at The Ready Room, and in several email threads. Based on the reported numbers from Tuesday, the bluer an area the stronger the vote for Obama in comparison to the vote for Kerry in 2004. The redder the area the stronger the vote was for McCain than for Bush. The less color, the closer the vote was to '04.
The rash of red in the South seems to suggest a disturbing racial pattern. The southern areas with larger African-American and Latino populations are bluer, but Old South whites seemed to vote Republican in dramatically higher numbers this year than in 2004.
I tend to side with Occam's Razor in assuming the most obvious answer is the best. The reddest areas seem to be where the whitest Southerners live. What else would move them so deeply?
McCain supporters are strongly denying this is about race. Maybe so. What's another explanation? Somehow you would need to isolate an issue that was unique to that area.
Before you are tempted to make the reverse racism argument, take a look at the West. Not a lot of black voters in Montana and Nevada.
**********UPDATE 11/11/08**********
As pointed out by Stephanie (Mrs. Ready Room), today's NY Times supports the cracker map thesis, adding terribly disturbing interviews with crackers that position Inland and Deep South as being out of step with the rest of the country and on the wrong side of history.
While not exactly in Cracker Map territory, this picture was sent to me from Mike in Springfield, MO. This was sent to the local paper.
And, this news: The Sapulpa (Oklahoma) Herald did not print anything about Obama's victory in their paper Wednesday. The cracker-dominated county went overwhelmingly for McCain.
God, bless America. Please.
18 comments:
Doesn't this seem like a classic example of constructing an argument to support a false hypothesis? If you're only going to look at the increase in votes from Kerry vs. Obama and Bush vs. McCain, strikes me as incomplete. And, sadly, I find myself unable to articulate this incomplete thought in my brain very well.
I do know this: my vote against Obama had absolutely nothing to do w/his race, and everything to do with his positions on issues that are important to me. His unsavory associations, while a concern, did not affect my vote at all.
And as far as the reverse racism argument goes, didn't I see where 96% of black Americans voted for Obama...
It is incomplete in that we isolate a variable with this map. There are plenty of other ways of looking at the map, but when we take this look, it suggests a racial problem.
As for your reasons, no one is disputing them. I know where you live (not to be read as a threat), and your precinct is actually bluer than '04.
Yes, the African-American vote was heavily for Obama. You actually help my point. The areas heavily populated by black voters are mostly light blue. Add to that the deep, deep blues of Montana, Nevada, etc. where there are virtually no black voters, and you see a broader coalition that is best explained as issue-based, as well as racial.
I can't come up with a broad explanation for the deep red areas beyond race. I'm sure there are some, I just can't make sense of them. I HOPE there are other reasons.
What are they? And how do we explain them being limited to such a tightly defined area?
To me one of the most fascinating things about the counties that turned red are that they are almost exclusively rural. Consider Huntsville. The county it is in went blue, but the counties around it all went red. Huntsville's not very urban but it certainly is compared to the surrounding area. (you can zoom in on parts by going to the map at The New York Times: http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/map.html)
So maybe some characteristics common among the culture of rural communities is on display (and perhaps more so in communities where the nearest and only "big city" is probably more than an hour's drive). My personal and limited experience from these areas lead me to believe that contributing factors could include:
-Lack of encounters with diverse communities or the "other" both because diversity within the community is low and because the people live there tend not to go very far from home (When we asked my grandpa why he wouldn't come from the midwest to visit us in Colorado, he'd say, "I haven't even seen all of my own county yet. Why do I need to go there?")
-Lack of career opportunities for those who live there
-Lower education levels (as compared to mostly urban populations)
-Strong community adherence to the religion that has historically dominated that community (perhaps because it's harder to be the one to challenge the held beliefs of a small community)
Just my two cents... (I apologize for not offering supporting data instead of just my WAG - take it with a lump of salt).
Yes, there are lots of uneducated racist people in Arkansas and Appalachia. This is not a conclusion that requires an in-depth analysis to reach.
In these areas, there's also a higher number of white people that go to church that don't like the Democratic stand on social issues.
The map that you've posted almost directly corresponds with the location of southern baptist churches (with the exception of the middle of Mississippi and Alabama where black people live).
http://www.adherents.com/maps/map_us_sbc.jpg
In one of Brandon's videos he told everyone who was undecided to "vote on the side of history" and support Obama. I think that millions of people, except the evangelical Christians and racists had a strong desire to do this. For obvious reasons, African Americans wanted to do this. If my great-great grandfather was a slave and my grandfather couldn't use the water fountain, nothing would bring a greater sense of victory than electing a member of my ethnicity to the presidency.
In conclusion, your theory is probably correct, but the only way to know for sure is for the Republicans to nominate a black guy next election.
Good point, CNEIL. Your overlapping map is pretty explanatory, except that it still doesn't account for Missouri, Virginia, and North Carolina.
You say "there are lots of uneducated racist people in Arkansas and Appalachia" and "there's also a higher number of white people that go to church that don't like the Democratic stand on social issues."
I'm going to go out on a limb here and suggest that we're talking about the same people. It's just that in those redder areas, there even more racists than the churches can hold.
I'm too lazy to do the research right now, but I wonder how the SBC map looks today, since your link is 1990 data. May not be that different. Just curious.
I hope that you're wrong, but I can't deny that you might be right.
Missouri is only light blue. Except for the urban areas, it's not deep blue, indicating that the shift between this election and last wasn't that much. Something simple like increased Democrat spending on television ads could explain it.
Virginia and North Carolina might be explained by the accounting for the number of rural blacks. I haven't researched that though.
Just to be clear... the limb upon which you are standing says that us church going whiteys are all uneducated racists? Or would you prefer "we is all unedkated rasits"?
I don't kid myself into believing that we live in a color blind society. I think, however, that you are looking too hard to find racism in the election results. If Barrack Obama were not so ardently pro-abortion I think you would have found many more white, southern, redneck, hick church-going evangelicals who would have voted for him. I might have been in that group.
You may be right, Joe, except that those issues are not unique to the mapped area. So far racism and Southern Baptism are the only variables that have been tied to the region.
Of course, one could read your comment as abortion was the tipping point for crackers. Maybe.
We may never know on this blog. I won't put the time in to see how abortion played in that particular area vs. the rest of the country.
Good points, though.
I just can't get past the fact that there are lots of other areas in the country with high numbers of pro-life voters who still voted more heavily for Barack Obama than John Kerry.
This got me thinking, and googling for maps, but my main point has already basically been made by CNEIL: the main red-shifted area seems to correspond to the part of the country that is both very white and very evangelical Christian. Go here and select 2000 Census -> Race -> % White, and then go here and select Religion, 2000 -> Major Religious Groups -> Evangelical Protestant. If you take the areas of highest concentration from each map, the intersection is similar to the red-shifted area on the electoral map. (The Census Bureau's own race maps are here)
Other observations:
- Note McCain's home field advantage in the pinkish hue of Arizona.
- Could the red shift in southern Louisiana be attributed to an exodus of (poor) minorities (who tend to vote Democratic) after Katrina?
- Why are Arkansas' borders with LA, MS, and MO so sharply delinated? My theory was that a ballot measure in Arkansas banning gay couples (actually any unmarried couples, but gays are the target; gay marriage was outlawed in AR in 2004) from adopting children brought lots of conservative voters to the polls, who then also voted for McCain-Palin (AR results, details on ballot measures). But a NYT article posits the opposite cause and effect, and as I started looking at Arkansas politics I got really confused (very conservative, but Democrats have a lock on the house and senate seats? Interesting that deeply red-shifted eastern OK also has that state's sole Democratic congressmember).
- If you look at the map and push the slider back to the Clinton elections, you see that even in this Obama victory, the nation is still a lot redder than in was in the 90's.
- More maps, with counties shaded on a continuous red-purple-blue scale, and also deformed to show population.
- I wonder what's going on in just that one part of the Florida panhandle. Some local race?
The paper of record comes to the conclusion that race is a factor in its Nov. 11 article "For South, a Waning Hold on National Politics":
http://tinyurl.com/3hupqe
As depressing and disturbing as that NYT article, etc are (there are a lot of racists), I also find a lot of reason for hope (if politicians really decide they can stop pandering to said racists).
Also, for the record, since the article quotes a woman worrying about Obama and same-sex marriage: Obama does not support same-sex marriage. Not a lot has been said about that (probably because the campaign didn't want to anger liberal voters who support same-sex marriage).
I don't think you can blame what happened in Arkansas solely (or even primarily) on racism. I live in that lonely little white-colored county in the middle of the Arkansas map, and while we certainly have our share of bigots, you'll not convince me it's any worse here than in Mississippi or Alabama or Georgia or South Carolina (or, ahem, lily-white Springfield). We're not the state still flying the Confederate flag at the Capitol. Even the counties with the largest black populations didn't show up bluer, which to me suggests something else was going on.
I think it might have been turnout, which was lower in Ark. than in the rest of the country. With all the polls and media outlets telling us that Arkansas was a lock for McCain no matter what, and with daily reports about the hours-long waits for early voting, I imagine a lot of Obama supporters just figured voting would be a waste of time. Had I not had a boss who blessed my extended absence from the office on Election Day, and/or someone else at home to watch my child if I'd needed to go before or after work, I'm not sure I would have made it either.
Hillbilly, I apologize if it seemed like I was picking on Arkansas. I was just objectively curious why it showed up so differently on the map from some of its bordering states. As you point out, views in southern Missouri are probably not dramatically different from those in northern Arkansas. And yet that border shows up blue/red on the map. By way of explaining that, your second paragraph makes a lot of sense to me.
No worries, lj -- no denying Arkansas sticks out, and that I love my home and desperately want there to be a different explanation for it.
I think another part of the problem, though, is that the map can be misleading because it doesn't show how the counties actually voted. Those two blue counties in the NW part of Arkansas are actually two of the most Republican counties in the state (Wal-Mart HQ territory) -- they show up blue because they were marginally less overwhelmingly R than four years ago. (Look at the results for some of the blue counties in SW Mo. and it's the same story.) And the county where I live voted 55 percent for Obama, but shows up white because that's exactly how the vote went for Kerry four years ago.
I guess my point is, it's a lot more complicated than declaring that red=racist and blue=enlightened. (On this map, anyway. ;) )
On the off chance anyone's still checking this thread, fivethirtyeight.com has a more in-depth analysis of this topic here.
More indepth than mine!? No. Way.
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