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A brief examination of the shifts from 2004 to 2008
Captain Carrot
Alexandria, VARegistered User regular
Alexandria, VARegistered User regular
I'm not going to talk about which states Obama won. Everybody knows that. I'm not going to discuss which states flipped. Everybody knows that, too. Instead, I'm looking at something a bit more intriguing: the relative shift at the county level. See, in 2004 Bush beat Kerry by a national average of 2.47%, but in most states the margin was more or less than that. For example, Bush barely won Iowa, but won some counties easily and lost others just as easily. Thus, some counties were more Republican than the country and some were more Democratic. In 2008, Obama won the popular vote by 7.25%, and won Iowa with extreme ease: 9.54%, but also won and lost some counties.Taking a closer look, in 2004, Kerry lost Carroll County, Iowa by 10.12%, making that county roughly 7.7% more conservative than the national average; Obama won it by 3.67%, making it roughly 3.6% more conservative than the national average. So Carroll County shifted 4.1% to the left from 2004 to 2008, independent of the national shift of 9.7% blue.
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to make a map of this so far (and if anyone knows how to do that, let me know), but looking at this, I've noticed a few things:
1. Much of the Deep South and Appalachia shifted hard right. As in, 20+%. Many counties were even 30+%, and a few were 40+%. Kerry won Poinsett Co. AR, and Obama lost it badly.
2. The Rust Belt pretty much did the opposite.
3. National Republicans are pretty much fucked in New England. Bush outright won New Hampshire in 2000, and McCain won only a single county in Maine. And that only just barely.
Google Docs spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p6Jtd2YnGSF3L1fUBacTCNw Let me know if there's a mistake on there somewhere or if I need to make anything clearer.
(Hawaii and Alaska not included because for some reason my 2004 data source didn't have them. Fortunately, that doesn't matter much, because each state had a strong favorite son/daughter effect, and neither switched anyway.)
Unfortunately, I haven't been able to make a map of this so far (and if anyone knows how to do that, let me know), but looking at this, I've noticed a few things:
1. Much of the Deep South and Appalachia shifted hard right. As in, 20+%. Many counties were even 30+%, and a few were 40+%. Kerry won Poinsett Co. AR, and Obama lost it badly.
2. The Rust Belt pretty much did the opposite.
3. National Republicans are pretty much fucked in New England. Bush outright won New Hampshire in 2000, and McCain won only a single county in Maine. And that only just barely.
Google Docs spreadsheet: http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?key=p6Jtd2YnGSF3L1fUBacTCNw Let me know if there's a mistake on there somewhere or if I need to make anything clearer.
(Hawaii and Alaska not included because for some reason my 2004 data source didn't have them. Fortunately, that doesn't matter much, because each state had a strong favorite son/daughter effect, and neither switched anyway.)
Captain Carrot on
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Results per county, 2004
Results per county, 2008
Variation per county from 2004 to 2008
And I wonder why Ellis county got redder.
Not quite. I'm not looking at each county's flat results, but its percentage relative to the rest of the country.
Why would we agree to that?
Oh, Obs
Conservative areas are more common but they tend to be in places with no fucking people.
Calling yourself conservative doesn't make it true. America is not a center-right nation, as we saw in November. And in any case, this has nothing to do with my OP.
Provided you totally ignore New York and California I suppose
but they're not real Americans
I was under the impression that while more people self-identify as conservative in America the average American actually agrees with the Democratic party on matters of policy more frequently than they do the Republican. Fits with the way that the republican party has tried to make "liberal" a dirty word.
Of course this requires you to use American definitions of conservative and liberal. If you compare the average american to the average person from another first-world democracy then yes, the american is probably going to be more conservative.
America is a center-right nation already compared to the rest of the world. Our liberals are just really moderate conservatives compared to the rest of the world, some of us are just more conservatives than others.
I don't care about the rest of the world right now. I'm trying to look at relative shifts in this country from 2004 to 2008.
Hijack over.
Gallup Party Affiliation Poll, 2/9/09-2/12/09:
Republican: 29%
Independent: 36%
Democratic: 33%
Republicans, including leaners: 39%
Democratic, including leaners: 51%
Edit: Sorry, Carrot. I won't say anything else on this topic, and let you resume your regularly scheduled discussion.
For what? What are you trying to find?
Further, since we're disregarding states and focusing on counties, we can see what regions went more blue/more red relative to national swing, as opposed to just individual states.
Things like, as CC said before, the Rust Belt, New England, etc
That's why Obama won?
Comparing that map with this one:
is fun, though unsuprising. Those who self identify as 'Americans' and nothing else being obviously the hard core Pub/Real America demographic.
See those 4 states that shifted solidly GOP?
That would be Palin's electoral votes if she got the nom
And more would be moderate or liberal than conservative.
And we could tinker around with the weird, fuzzy borders of what those terms mean.
But really, what's the point, except that you like to rile up a bunch of liberals and will find seven or eight more irritating things to say that upset people but aren't that interesting in the next few pages.
So what Obs. So what.
This is the same mistake people made about Hilary.
Look, no one in rural West Virginia loved Hilary Clinton. They voted against Barack Obama.
Palin energized a segment of the Republican Party, but she doesn't really shift any states around.
The rest of the world?
I'm pretty sure our liberals are fucking hardcore left wing radicals by Khazak, Yemeni or Malawian standards.
Or did you mean by Western European standards.
So Palin wasn't being facetious. She really was talking to "Real America".
Wait, when did Germany conquer us?
I'm pretty sure most of those people who said German just meant "white european." They probably aren't very different from New England, except people here are usually related one way or another to a family that has been in New England for a long time, so they call themselves English.
I mean, the upper south calls itself "American." Come on.
Except I'm in MA with all of these Micks.
The 1880-1930s, weren't you paying attention?
Yeah I was more trying to make the 'self description' point rather than the ethnicity one, with the maps showing the unsuprising point that it seems those who consider themselves Americans only and apperently disregard any ancestral identies strongly rejected Obama/the Dems.
Up until the 1980s these groups would generally have put themselves down as 'English' (based on the number of 'English' on the census dropping from 50mil in 1980 to 24mil in 2000, and the number of reported 'Americans' rising similarily). This development's pretty interesting and obviously linked to the GOP's southern strategy.
I was wondering if you guys think its more racism against Obama or rejection of the Democrats values that caused this culture group to swing even further Red in 2008. Also how is this block going to develop down the road?
This went on for a while, and I could not get an actual response. It seems that, because these people only know "America" they think that their family has been here the whole time. If you're not Native American, you're not American by definition. Your family came from somewhere in the past. Not surprisingly, this person was quite redneck and outwardly racist.
I don't know why this topic is so hard for some people to grasp. Maybe it's the inbreeding that normalizes all the local genetics into a common pool of sameness.
Edit: I like how the Italians own NYC. Maybe I should move there to be with people who understand what fucking ancestry means. No disrespect howya doin.
Let 'em eat fucking pineapples!
As much as Alaska loved their Governor as the VP nomination, they still doesn't mean they liked McCain. Combined with Obama being awesome and it managed to stymie the gains from Palin. I mean, Obama still got beaten down pretty hard, but it was still a nice effort considering.
I'm not sure where my ancestors came from. All I can gather is that somebody had a stopoff in Londonand everybody most likely came through Ellis Island.
If you asked me my ancestry I would answer primarily Norwegian and Danish because that's where my great-grandparents came from. Maybe my great-great-grandparents. Not 100% on that actually.
It's not unlikely for people to confuse nationality and ancestry since in casual conversation people tend to confuse the two. I imagine there's also a fair number of people who really don't care a whole lot about their ancestry. I know I don't. :P
I dunno. By that methodology, we're all African.
And by god I'll apply for those African-American scholarships until the day I die.
jews
Why are there so many Jews in Florida?