Electoral geography of the United States

The electoral geography of the United States is a description of regional political differences in the country. In recent years this has been popularized by the red states and blue states paradigm.

The divide in Presidential elections

The maps that have emerged from recent U.S. elections follow a sharply defined geographical pattern. The Republican states tend to fall in the South, the Great Plains, and the Intermountain West, with the Democratic states in the Northeast, the Great Lakes States and the West Coast. Ambitious politicians sometimes attempt to change the nature of the map through a sweep, referred to as a Fifty State Strategy.

The Midwest is rather divided. Indiana has voted consistently for Republicans since 1968, and Iowa also is thought to lean Republican, although Iowa is often considered to be a swing state as well, having given its support to Democratic Party candidates Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996 and Al Gore in 2000. The states that have larger urban areas such as Illinois (Chicago), Michigan (Detroit), Wisconsin (Milwaukee, Madison), and Minnesota (Minneapolis-St. Paul) are considered to be Democratic. Wisconsin, however, was won by the Democrat by narrow margins in 2000 and 2004, with its rural areas strongly backing George W. Bush. The strongest Democratic state in the Midwest, Illinois, is by far the most urban, where both Gore and 2004 presidential candidate John Kerry had over 10% margin wins, lending to the strength of its designation as being the United States' "Third Coast".

The county-by-county and district-by-district maps reveal that the true nature of the divide is between urban areas/inner suburbs and suburbs/rural areas. Even in "solidly Democratic" states, most of the counties outside the major urban areas voted for Bush and even in "solidly Republican" states, most of the urban areas voted for John Kerry (with exceptions of Dallas, Texas; Houston, Texas; Phoenix, Arizona; San Antonio, Texas; Salt Lake City, Utah; Colorado Springs, Colorado; Oklahoma City, Oklahoma; Tulsa, Oklahoma; Wichita, Kansas; Cincinnati, Ohio; Omaha, Nebraska; Virginia Beach, Virginia; Birmingham, Alabama; Jacksonville, Florida; and Tampa, Florida.)

Solid Republican states are Alaska, Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Nebraska, Oklahoma, North Dakota, South Dakota, Utah, Virginia and Wyoming, which have not voted for a Democratic presidential candidate since 1964. Of special note is North Dakota, which is solidly Republican in presidential elections but has an all-Democratic Congressional delegation. Other strong Republican-voting states include Alabama, Mississippi, North Carolina, South Carolina and Texas, none of which have voted Democratic since 1976. Many of these states, particularly those in the South, were once Democratic strongholds, but are now reliable supporters of Republican candidates. Of these states, Idaho is the "most" Republican, voting President Bush in 2004 by 68% (though Bush won Utah by more). In addition, Alaska, Idaho, and Wyoming are represented entirely by Republicans in Congress.

Additionally, Virginia elected Democrats to the governorship in 2001 and 2005 – Mark Warner and Tim Kaine respectively.

States currently thought to be solidly Democratic include Minnesota, Wisconsin, Michigan, Illinois, California, Oregon, Washington, Hawaii, New Jersey, New York, Maryland, Connecticut, Massachusetts, Vermont, and Rhode Island. As well, the District of Columbia, while not a state, does vote in presidential elections, and has been solidly Democratic. Though some of these states have voted for Republican (GOP) candidates as recently as the 1980s (most notably in 1984, when Ronald Reagan carried 49 states, with Minnesota and the District of Columbia being the two holdouts for Walter Mondale), they have recently supported Democratic candidates by significant margins. Of these states, Massachusetts is the "most" Democratic. In his 2004 presidential bid, John Kerry won Massachusetts, his home state, with 62% of its vote. But Massachusetts' title as "most Democratic state" is not dependent solely on the margin of victory of a favorite son. In 1972, Massachusetts was the "only" state carried by Democratic nominee George McGovern. (McGovern did not even carry his home state of South Dakota.) In addition, Massachusetts is the only large state to have a single party Congressional delegation. Three small states, Hawaii, Rhode Island, and North Dakota, also have all-Democratic delegations, but Massachusetts has two times the number of representatives in the House of Representatives as these three states "combined".

Republican-voting states and Democratic-voting states have several demographic differences from each other. The association between politics and demographics was notably made in a column by Mike Barnicle, and reinforced in a controversial response from Paul Begala (though the association between demographics and voting patterns was well-known before that). The most common observation made mostly among "blue" voters is that the majority of Republican-voting states tend to feature more rural areas, with agriculture being a more important industry while the majority of Democratic-voting states tend to be more urban, have higher per capita income, higher levels of post-secondary education and are more multicultural (even in such Democratic strongholds as New York and California, the GOP won the slight majority of the white vote in 2004). However, according to exit polls both Bush and Kerry had an equal number of college graduates (Bush with more Bachelor's Degree voters and Kerry with more Postgraduate Degree voters) and Bush voters actually tended to be wealthier with higher income levels than Kerry voters [http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html] . These demographic trends, along with less obvious correlations, have been analyzed in detail by conservative pundit Steve Sailer.

The demographic differences between smaller geographical areas applies as well to counties, which follow the same trend as states. The results of the 2004 presidential election support this, as even Red states contain Blue counties, particularly counties that include major cities. For example, out of the 17 counties that constitute Nevada, only Clark County was won by Democratic candidate John Kerry. Not only is Clark County the most populous county in Nevada, but its county seat is the city of Las Vegas. The second-closest county—in which Republican candidate George W. Bush won by the slimmest margin—was Washoe County. The county seat of Washoe County is the city of Reno. In Colorado, the cities of Denver and Boulder, along with some of their suburbs, vote overwhelmingly Democratic. However, El Paso, Arapahoe, Weld, and Douglas Counties which combine for over 1.5 million people, vote heavily Republican, and are among the fastest growing counties in Colorado. While Colorado gave Bush its electoral votes, California on the other hand is an archetypal blue-state that on closer examination reveals significant regions of Republican strength. President Bush won Orange County, the second most populous, by 222,593 votes, the largest absolute majority for him in any county in the nation. He also won the next three most populous counties of San Diego, Riverside, and San Bernardino, along with 32 of the 58 counties. [ [http://vote2004.ss.ca.gov/Returns/pres/mapAN.htm CA Secretary of State - Vote2004 - Map - - President ] ]

However, one exception to this is probably Indiana, where in the 2004 presidential elections, Vanderburgh County, home to the state's third-largest city of Evansville, voted Bush by 59%. Marion County, home of Indianapolis, was only a win for Kerry by a 1% margin. St. Joesph County, home of Indiana's 4th largest city, South Bend, is also a battleground. Lake County, which includes the 5th and 6th largest cities, Gary and Hammond, is one of the state's Democratic strongholds, largely attributed to the large black population in Gary; another stronghold is Monroe County, whose seat is the college town of Bloomington, home to Indiana University.

Much of the current division in American politics was foreseen by analyst Kevin Phillips in his 1969 book "The Emerging Republican Majority". Philips, just off a stint as a numbers cruncher for the Richard Nixon campaign, anticipated a strongly Republican "Heartland" and the Democratic "Yankee Northeast". He anticipated the upper Midwest, the Pacific Coast and the "non-Yankee northeast" (Pennsylvania and New Jersey) as swing regions. He also predicted, accurately, that the Democrats would not win Oklahoma in Presidential election for the rest of the century.

Electoral College

The Electoral College dilutes the votes of population centers that might have different concerns from the rest of the country. The system is supposed to require presidential candidates to appeal to many different types of interests, rather than, say, the urban voter. The College enabled the Founding Fathers to deftly incorporate the Connecticut Compromise and three-fifths compromise into the system of choosing the President and Vice President, sparing the convention further acrimony over the issue of state representation. In the Federalist Papers No. 39, James Madison argued that the Constitution was designed to be a mixture of federal (state-based) and national (population-based) government. The Congress would have two houses, one federal and one national in character, while the President would be elected by a mixture of the two modes, giving some electoral power to the states and some to the people in general. [http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa39.htm]

Regardless of why the system was chosen, the term "Electoral College" is not used in the United States Constitution, and it was not until the early 1800s that it came into general usage as the unofficial designation for the group of citizens selected to cast votes for President and Vice President. It was first written into Federal law in 1845, and today the term appears in USC|3|4, in the section heading and in the text as "college of electors."

Section 1, Article II of the Constitution says, "Each state shall appoint, in such manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a number of electors, equal to the whole number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress: but no Senator or Representative, or person holding an office of trust or profit under the United States, shall be appointed an elector." It then goes on to describe how the electors vote for President.

The winner-take-all strategy of voting has led to the resurgence of a debate about whether a national popular vote should be taken rather than the currently instituted United States Electoral College. Proponents of the Popular Vote refer to a number of candidates who have won the Presidency despite not receiving at least a plurality of individual votes:

The proponents of the popular vote focus mainly on the election in which George W. Bush defeated Al Gore in 2000 due to a drawn out and highly controversial court battle over the Florida recount.

Proponents of the current system, however, point out that the right to choose how to award a state's electoral college votes is guaranteed to the state by the United States Constitution, and was part of the Founders' original plan for the country, though the system was not fully used until the 1804 elections.

A current movement is the National Popular Vote Campaign, which uses a state by state based platform of reform rather than a constitutional amendment to attempt to institute the popular vote. California and Maryland have passed laws allowing for this, only symbolic for the time being because the laws were each passed under the condition that they are triggered when states representing a majority of the electoral votes pass similar laws.

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