USA Map from 2012 Election & Civil War 1861

[R_P_A_S]

This map illustration has been making its round in the social media. Forget that it has to do with Democrats and Republicans for a minute but from a Revolutionary point of view why is the South of the USA still more reactionary and "stuck in their ways"? Can we say religion has a big role in this?

I mean look how similar it is!... thoughts?

https://sphotos-a.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-ash4/305605_4457938000342_1570210719_n.jpg

[Volderbeek]

I think the implication here is that racism was heavily involved in the campaign against Obama. I would tend to agree. He won mostly on the strength of non-white voters.

[R_P_A_S]

Do any of you think that religion plays a strong factor here? As to why people from the south and mainly some midwest states remain with the same mentality?

[KurtFF8]

Do any of you think that religion plays a strong factor here? As to why people from the south and mainly some midwest states remain with the same mentality?

I'm sure it does "play a factor" but what role do you think it's playing?

Both candidates are Christian, and the GOP candidate was actually more distant from the southern Protestant views than Obama. So a simple religious affiliation vote doesn't really help to explain why people voted for Romney (although it may have been one of the many factors in his defeat, as southern Protestants were skeptical of his religious affiliation)

[RedAnarchist]

Those states used to be heavily Democratic until the 1960s or so, but the parties have sort of swapped places since then. Look at these elections, from 1924, 1960 and 2000 -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/1c/ElectoralCollege1924.svg/800px-ElectoralCollege1924.svg.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/5d/ElectoralCollege1960.svg/800px-ElectoralCollege1960.svg.png
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/19/ElectoralCollege2000.svg/800px-ElectoralCollege2000.svg.png

I think one reason for the division is that most of the major cities in the US can be found in the blue states, whilst most of the red states are rural, especially places like Wyoming, Montana and Nebraska. I'm not stereotyping Republicans as all being rural or, to use classist terms, rednecks and hillbillies, but they definitely dominate the more rural states (same goes for this country too, to some extent, where the Tories tend to be the party of the countryside and Labour the party of the cities). In the map below which is the results of the 2010 General Election, you can see where the urban conurbations are, especially in England, Scotland and Wales (blue is Tories, red is Labour, orange in England and Scotland is Lib Dems, yellow in Scotland is SNP, green in Wales is Plaid Cymru, grey is Independent and green in England is Green. In NI brown is DUP, dark green is Sinn Féin, light green is SDLP and yellow is Alliance). As we don't have electoral colleges and we use a First Past The Post system, it is different for us anyway, but the rural/urban split is mostly there -

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/f/f7/2010UKElectionMap.svg/614px-2010UKElectionMap.svg.png

Obviously there are many reasons why the Republicans dominate in the former Confederate states, but I think demographic changes have helped the Democrats and I think in the coming decades some of those deeply red states will turn purple or even become deeply blue.

[R_P_A_S]

Nice RedAnarchist! Thanks for that!

[NoOneIsIllegal]

Always blows my mind that states like Iowa use to have as many votes as California :lol: Oh how things have changed.

[Questionable]

I appreciate RedAnarchist's posts. The solution to differing political views should be found in the economic situations voters face, in this case urban vs. rural. Blaming it all on religion is the liberal's way out.

[Red Commissar]

What Red Anarchist posted is right on. What happened this election isn't anything unique- if anything it mostly fell along the expected lines of Republican dominance in southern states and the more rural midwest, with Democrats winning in northern states and the west coast. This has been the norm for the past few years with a few exceptions.

It is important to see how places like Ohio, and Indiana however don't solidly go one way or another- there might be another regional aspect behind this though. If you ever go to those states, especially in their more rural southern areas, it's almost like an outcropping of West Virgina and Kentucky. I'd say this applies to Illinois too.

This is partially helped by party machines that the Democrats developed in big industrial cities of the north, in places like Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, New York City, etc. during the late 1800s and onwards. Republicans have done the same in the south after the 1960s by working through (mostly white) suburban communities for leadership and finding ways to get as many of other socioeconomic segments with them, typically appealing to subtly racist sentiments.

The Republican dominance in the South was them taking advantage of changes in the Democratic Party. The Democrats were becoming more and more a party tied to northern industry from their union links and the Republicans were looking to make inroads elsewhere. Their most opportune time came during the civil rights movement, and they were able to make significant inroads into the south by giving backhand support to racism, sugarcoating it with language about states' rights, blasting "bleeding hearts", and appealing to the resentment of these people thinking that they were having integration forced on them. Look up "Southern Strategy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Southern_strategy)" for more about this. Still, you got some old holdouts still where they vote Democratic because the person's been there forever (West Virginia was notorious for this), due to their ability to earmark funding to their district, farm subsidies, or union connections.

What we've seen recently is a dominance by Democrats in more urban areas, with Republicans more often than not dominating in rural areas. Suburbs (typically on the whole more wealthy than the urban residents) mostly go Republican too, though some to Democrats. When you look at the US electoral map by county, you get a far more different picture:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/8/8d/2012_General_Election_Results_by_County.png/800px-2012_General_Election_Results_by_County.png

There are some areas not counted (grey) but it still gives you an idea. I want you to look at say, Texas (which is easy for me to do), which on the national level is always Republican. The counties that went Democrat are those that contain the cities of Dallas, Houston, Austin, and San Antonio. Another along the border of Louisiana has the city of Beaumont. The other counties in the south of Texas have larger populations of Hispanics, mostly Mexicans, which have helped with Democratic clout in the state.

Same thing goes with other counties in other states- you'll see there's a lot of counties that went for Romney, but more often than not they are in rural areas and suburban areas across the country. It is in areas left over from the "black belt" and in the growing cities like Atlanta where Democrats get better results in the South. Likewise in the northern states you'll see that Romney won in some areas, again rural and richer suburbs. Note the many rural and small suburb counties in say Pennsylvania, Ohio, Indiana, and Illinois that voted for Romney.

It's also worth looking at the way the House seats were divided up this time around. Google has a useful map for this

http://www.google.com/elections/ed/us/results

That has a US map which lets you look at the counties too for the president, but I want to focus on the House, which you can select there. There are a total of 435 seats- the amount of people each Representative has varies, but it averages at about 700,000. The way congressional districts vary is determined by each state's legislatures- this has a lot of political ramifications and opens the way up for gerrymandering, where the dominant party in a state will use new census figures as they come in to "redistrict" after the census is taken every ten years- this year for example, we saw many traditionally democratic states actually lose seats, while mostly southern states gained them.

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6f/Electoral_College_2012.svg

(on a side note, the amount of House seats each state has is equivalent to their weight in the electoral college)

Take Texas for example again- Republicans are mindful that they do not perform well in more urbanized areas. To deal with this, they have redistricted before to dilute the strength of minority and urban communities with more solidly Republican districts in as many places as they can. Use the Google map linked above and look at cities like Dallas, San Antonio, and Austin and check out the way the city is districted.

The case holds for states under Democratic control, where they have divided districts such that their cities hold more weight and try to dilute the vote of surrounding rural and suburb communities as much as they can. You can see this particularly in Illinois. Hell, look around all over the map and you can find some really oddly shaped districts because of this practice- some stretch across the state, others are not even contiguous which you can see in the NYC area.

The only thing that this really represents for the Republican Party I think is that they can no longer appeal to this odd social standpoints which seems to propagate out of southern party circles. They tried (and succeeded in some respects) to appeal to the working class in the rust belt by doing a similar approach to the whole "blue labor" thing they got in the UK, appealing to what they say is an intrinsic 'social conservatism' in working class individuals.

As Red Anarchist says, as demographics continue to change the urbanization rate in the south will increase and with it an erosion of Republican districts, which is why they attempted for this cycle to put through all sorts of weird laws under the guise of preventing election fraud that would more or less discourage potentially democrat voters from voting.

Funny thing is really if you remove the dumb language about welfare, race baiting, cushy language about the benefits of the free market, I find that most people are generally understand the merits of things like public services. Honestly when you find Republicans campaigning in working poor areas they'll sometimes fall back on populist banter about corporate influence and government, they're (and I mean politicians from all parties) just able to take advantage of what I think is the rather poor, all-around political knowledge of people as well as their tendency to blame fellow workers rather than the big wigs for the problems of the country. It's easy to direct rage against the presidency like Romney tried to do, but he takes liberties with this. Ditto with Obama supporters who blame Bush for everything under the sun and dream how things could've been if Gore won the 2000 elections.

The problem isn't Obama or Romney- neither would do anything different. The issue is capitalism. We know this, the problem is trying to get this message out to other people.

So from this point forward Republicans are going to have to either find a way to make inroads in urban and minority communities (beyond ones like the Cuban-Americans or other "model minorities") or they'll continue to try and cling onto their current strategies by applying redistricting more heavily and lowering turnout.

However, as many of those who try to vainly reform "democracies" do, it makes for a good argument against single-member districts. It encourages the growth of party machines and redistricting such that they can get as much of their reliable voters in one district while diluting as much as possible from the other party.

[R_P_A_S]

Red Commissar. amazing contribution! I gotta say! When in doubt Historical Materialism!

[spice756]

The US political is very divided and always been that way with blue states mostly city and red states suburbs , towns and country. The south mostly red states and north east and west coast blue states.

Where in Europe and Canada popular vote swings from minority government 40% to 80% or more where in the US geography it locked and swings from 40% to 55% :(:(

This may have to do with states feel that other states telling them what to do thus feel the need for state to to represent them.

The red states hate the blue states and the blue states hate the red states.Where in Europe and Canada it more nation and unity than geography of nation thus US is very divided .And may have to do with state feel other states telling them what to do thus feel the need for state to to represent them.

[zimmerwald1915]

Oh, the blue states hate the red states,
And the red states hate the blue states.
And to bomb all of the brown states
Is an old established rule...

Sorry about that.

[spice756]

Oh, the blue states hate the red states,
And the red states hate the blue states.
And to bomb all of the brown states
Is an old established rule...

Sorry about that.

What do you mean.

[Hermes]

What do you mean.

It's a modification of a Tom Lehrer song, if I remember correctly. He was a satirist.