Post your maps of the election results
 

All are good, the county by county one that shows large swaths of red with dots of blue in it is one part of the story, but there are so many ways to show the data so you can get a real picture on the makeup of america and how we vote.
I'll start with this one
http://www.esri.com/industries/elect...lts2004_lg.jpg
Best one I've see yet.
Shows you that republicans are relatively low population, but make up for it in area.
Democrats are small in the area but huge pinpoints of votes that make up the difference.

problem is that area garners electoral votes.

you know what that means?

I think you guys should shift to local strategies. start changing the state level apparatus--like dems are doing in california.

(stem cell anyone--stuff it george!)

You're absolutely right. The Democrats ran the campaign from a nationwide perspective, the GOTV efforts were done by 527 organizations. Democrats do need to strengthen the state parties and get leaders who can do the work themselves. That's how the Republicans rebuilt after losing to Johnson.

I don't know how long it would take to regain national power. but with the high concentration in local areas, the dems can definately enact statewide legislature and harness the power of the rights discourse of State's Rights.

It's interesting to see all that blue in the what most people are calling red areas... especially in southern Texas.

Also interesting to see how the urban vote is VERY blue.

This map shows clearly what I have been reading over and over again on this board.
The cities are full of liberal elite, godless homosexual, left wing radicals.
And the countryside is full of god fearing, gay bashing, right wing gun nuts.

After all the votes are counted it only takes a few fence sitters going one way or the other to win a national election, LOL.

The only thing I hate about these maps is people act like there aren't republicans in the blue areas and there are no democrats in the red, which is ludicrous. There are very few of those areas where the win was a total landslide as if the other choice didn't even exist.

We're more of a melting pot than those maps show that we are.

I think it was SecretMethod70 who posted the Purple map. I copied it out, so here it is again:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v3...Purple-USA.jpg

The purple map certainly show just how split it was... facinating.

What is important to me about these illuminating maps is the influence of environment, culture, and experience on people's worldview.

I think we all need to honor and respect that more.

I know this is the deepest message I will take away from all this.

It appears to me to be really split between cities and rural areas. Even in the states that Bush won most urban areas went to Kerry and visa versa.
The difference seems much more pronounced on the maps that actually show voting patterns within the states.

That is the most general way to describe it, but there are socio-economic factors, historical ones as well.

What I mean to say is that not to honor and respect the fact that people from very different environments and with very different experiences have very differnt views of the world is to ignore the simple facts of anthropology and sociology and worse, to devalue actual life experience.

The most interesting thing about the first map is the blue along the Mississippi. I had no idea.

But there seems to be a flaw in the map - Alaska looks like it has a high and flat population throughout it's borders. Almost as high as Denver.

It would be interesting to see this map with the shading of purples from the second map applied. As is, it polarizes too much.

I'm not sure what black means. I suppose their votes haven't been counted yet?

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/...erica_2004.gif

Sorry to take attention away from the intended, and very good, points of this thread, but LBJ never won. He inherited the presidency, but he never won.

i'm almost certain black counties indicate a large Al Sharpton constituency...

oh wait, i mean... i think it indicates either missing or conflicting data.

Those are very interesting.

What I'd really like to see are those maps modified so each state is proportional to the number of electoral votes they have...except that would probably be very time consuming.

Ha.

Heres the best political map.

http://chrisevans3d.com/files/iq.htm

the average Connecticut citizen is 20 points away from being Mensa qualified? hmm...

Hey man, I didn't write it, just found it. :D

It's also well-known to be totally fake.

Did you skip over the landslide election of '64 in history class? Or were you not paying attention? Goldwater... Daisy... George Wallace... Ring a bell?

my favorite:

http://jja.image.pbase.com/u41/autom...1jesusland.jpg

mrb

i was gonna mention that, glad you pointed it out.

i also loved hte first map where it shows the disparity between city and rural voters...

innteresting indeed...

Two more:
Here is Rush Limbaugh's favorite map.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/...tymaplarge.png

here is that same map skewed for population, not area.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/...ountylarge.png

In this map of the U.K. you can (well, I can because I know the geography) clearly see that urban areas tend to vote one way and the rural areas vote another.

One obvious difference between the U.K. map and the U.S. is that ours has a few more colours on it.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/furniture/vote...es/maps/uk.gif

I fucking love maps, me.

Superbelt - yep the skewed one is what counts.

I'm most interested in the cultural, environmental, experiential, and human differences. That's the map we need to look at and think about.

Thanks.

it is interesting to see the extent to which there is already a kind of symbolic conflict going on about the meaning of the election across the medium of maps.

and it is nice to see this thread, which tracks the conflict.

obviously, the right wants to use colored graphics to convince itself and the rest of us that there is more unanimity than anyone would otherwise think, given the actually existing results of the election. i am interested in this process. cool graphics did not help colin powell before the unsc in teh run-up to the iraq war--i suspect it will not help the right in tis attempts to claim for itself the single voice of "real america"...

the most interesting graphic i have seen so came in an email from someone where i teach---it juxtaposes the pre-civil war map of the us (1860) to the conservative color-scheme for the last election. it is interesting--stands teh meaning of the conservative graphics on their head. i am still trying to find another copy of it.

I don't think going into this with our old partisan views is really helpful at this point. Wouldn't it be more sensible to try again to understand each other better rather than state the old generalizations over and over?

Art, I think these two maps should help you in your desire to understand the "cultural, environmental, experiential, and human differences." For this country.

roachboy, this is for you.
http://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos...then_map_2.jpghttp://bigpicture.typepad.com/photos.../now_map_2.jpg
These two are especially important because of the intense social issues that we dealt with this year. Gay Marriage propelled Bush to victory, the social conservative nature and religious bedrocks of the old slave state regions territories still remains to this day.

Superbelt, I see it differently.

My own personal take on this tends to see the term "morality" as an unintentional obfuscation. What I will pursue is the notion that "morality" is a code word for media influence. It is not such a stretch. I think many voters associate the large notion of "mass media' influence as an immoral or amoral force. And they voted their relationship to that.

My focus is on the effects of media influence upon the more urbanized vs. the more rural cultures of the US. I have a sense that those who live in urban cultures are more accepting of media influence as reflecting their own worldviews than those who live in more rural areas, who are motivated to reject perceived media influence. That is the cultural distinction I'll be addressing.

IMO - The other, more commonly expressed divisions - "morality" and homosexual rights, for example, are not at the core of this division. They are not the most basic reason for the cultural divisions we are experiencing.

I completely agree, 100%.

As for the pre-civil war map, it fails to keep in mind that the majority of the reasons for the civil war had nothing to do with slavery. Neither side was particularly vehemently against it.

Furthermore, if you're going to make a geographical comparison like that, it's more appropriate to look at the counties map. The majority of geographic Illinois voted Republican, Idaho, which was in an anti-slavery territory, voted Republican, Iowa, Ohio, and Indiana voted Republican, North and South Dakota - both of which had half of their geographical area in an anti-slavery region - voted Republican, Maryland voted Democrat but was a slave state, as did Deleware. I think you get the point.

thanks superbelt....


art---i do not see why it is not possible to argue that there is a particular ideological offensive underway that has a particular origin

(like i said, i see the map question as an aspect of the right's attempts to make the election an expression of unanimous popular support in the "real america" as they see it)

without the argument necessarily presupposing that i am somehow myself "partisan"---the moves are specific, they have a function, that function serves the interest of a particular political position--they are not abstract, not general.

there is no sense to this question of control of the graphics that come to represent this election result in general. there are only tactics.

I agree that the Republicans are distorting the truth in their focus on the unskewed county map. I do not see this particularly different, however, from sweeping generalizations that "red states" are filled with knuckle-dragging bigots. In fact, if I had to pick one side which was more respectable in their distortion, it would be the Republican spin.

I would have preferred Kerry to win over Bush as well, but it's no surprise that he lost when his most vocal supporters are people who will throw around maps of slave states and false representations of the "average IQ" of red and blue states to make the point that they were right. You will not win elections by insulting and denigrating those who hold different values and beliefs than you do.

roachboy, to move forward with me on this it will be necessary for us to agree that there are two particular ideological offensives underway that have particular origins.

They oppose each other at root levels and are the cause of the current sense of cultural division we experience.

Keep in mind that "Republican" back then was the complete 180 of the "Republicans" you have today.

art: ok.
keep in mind that i understand "the left" in the states as being organized on fundamentally different grounds than the right. the left such as it is is far more diffuse. the term, supreme in its vagueness, encompasses eveything from the dlc to folk like myself who operate in a space much closer to marxism.

maybe this is why i was confused by the label partisan.

anyway, the method problem is posed--the assymetry in the types of formations we are looking at. but try to suspend some of this tendency to name things i shall--but i cant promise that it will be consistent.

what does that have to do with anything? I was showing that a significant handful of states which voted Republican TODAY were anti-slavery and that there were also states which voted Democratic TODAY which were pro-slavery.

Art... an interesting take on the media.

The way I see it is that if you look at the population skewed maps they show the US population is greater in Urban centres than rural... Wouldn't it make sense then, the media (always looking for a greater base of eyes for their advertisers) would aim their content at that larger population?

In other words, the media would speak to the urban over the rural (by and large) because of the population base to be found in the urban centres.

Yes, Charlatan. And now that roachboy has given his acceptance of the dualistic nature of the ideological offensives now underway, I'd reduce them to the effects of mass media upon the two major cultural/environmental divisions we experience today - the urban and the rural - and their attendant respective worldviews, as can be generally described.

This is the great experiment in which we're engaged. It is comparable to subjects' susceptibility or rejection to hypnosis based on the ability or willingness of a particular subject to suspend disbelief. I'm framing it this way to approach the cultural issues by means of aesthetic analysis. More later as I consider this...

So assuming that popular media is not going to just up and vanish... isn't is relatively safe to argue that the best thing that could happen for the media is diversification rather than consolidation?

The more niche the programming, content, whatever becomes, the more chance there is that ALL (or nearly all) points of view will be captured?

There is no escaping the beast to be sure but at least it should speak to me and my experiences when it wants my attention...

perhaps, but perhaps not.
without a sense of shared commonality, I think we're sunk.
excessive diversification of sources can lead to the kind of narrrowcasting that makes for increasingly narrow minds.

I think we either develop a greater ability than we display today to comprehend worldviews other than our own or...else, basically.

I agree with that, Art.

It is interesting. For all the divisiveness that gets written about here, I think America is probably one of the most successful nations at building a common history and mythos. Considering it was virtually created from scratch a few hundred years ago, makes it all the more powerful.

There does seem to be a big disconnect between current day world views, however and I agree that greater understanding and tolerance is required on all sides. Orthodoxy from any point of view is a negative.

I think you are on the right track in regard to media influence. I also think that people in urban areas are exposed to others of different cultures and beliefs from them and are therefore more accepting of peoples differences than rural folks. But I think that will change, or I hope it will. With satellite communication etc.. they have much of the same media exposure as the cities. Where I live we get 100+ channels on TV and high speed internet via satellite.

I have made several cross country trips on my Harley mostly avoiding the main freeways in order to visit the small towns and try to get a feel for the local areas. It is getting harder and harder to find small towns that are unique anymore. As soon as the Walmart, McDonalds, etc... go up, many of the mom and pop stores and restaurants on main street are forced to shut down. You might as well be in a suberb of LA, LOL. The people there are still close to the earth but their living experience is becomming not much different.

Many of the complaints I have heard about city folks is that as soon as they start moving in they try to zone against things like smelly livestock and gun clubs, etc.. Also people sense that some of their traditions like Christmas displays downtown are under attack. Political correctness is almost a curse word. I don't think the rural areas will ever become totally urbanized but I hope eventually they will become more lenient when it comes to social issues and still stay fiscally conservative. The best of both worlds.

flstf -

I agree that exposure to different cultures is a crucial aspect of why urban populations are different than rural/suburban populations. In fact, I would say it is that distinction much more so than media that controls the disparity in culture between the two general types of population in this country. Media is but a reflection, twisted, sanitized, amplified - but still nothing more than a reflection.

One could even say that this twisted, sanitized, amplified reflection of urban culture being presented to the rural/suburban population is prompting that population to push back with greater urgency. But the underlying difference remains the exposure to multiple viewpoints and how this exposure contributes to a higher degree of acceptance for any alternative viewpoints.

Perhaps. Perhaps not. Perhaps a sense of exposure and sophistication overrides a higher degree of acceptance.

Personally, I'm not accepting an answer or a solution at this point. This seems to be similar to fish discussing the attributes of the only water they have ever known.

Without more substantial analysis and reflection upon what exactly constitutes the nature of our mediated experience and its effects upon us, I'm content to pose the problem and even it's potential insolubility. Perhaps we can overcome this. Perhaps we can not.

I wouldn't say so. We're discussing American culture, not World culture. A major portion of the varied cultures found in urban centers is the higher degree of immigrants, less inebriated and generationally programmed by the American media. It is this exposure (among others), lacking in rural communities, which increases acceptance. That it is lacking in rural communities is likely to be a large portion of the disparity of understanding between urban and rural society. Urban environments are more accepting. Rural environments are not.

You can test this by donning a clown wig, singing showtunes and walking through SoHo in NY. Maybe you'll get a few looks. Try it in a small town and most people will wonder what's wrong with you.

Sorry, but I don't buy any of that.
I will continue thinking about the nature of the problem and not accepting quick explanations. I think it is far deeper than that and deserves far more complex and balanced explanations. The essential axiom in cultural analysis is non-judgmentalism.

art--you assume that television occupies the same kind of relation to how people construct their views of the world in urban and suburban/rural spaces--i do not think that is the case--television does not float above other patterns of sociability--it is used in terms set by those patterns.

i think you have basically different patterns in these spaces.

nor do i find that people in the city tend to see their views doubled in those of tv--no-one i know watches tv for information about the world--they check in with it to see what the american ideological apparatus is making of them--but they do not rely on it.

Thanks roachboy, you cogent comments are always appreciated. As you know, I pursue this question in many ways and prefer to raise it without arriving at conclusions. I don't see anything even resembling a resolution to the dystopianism of our identity/relationship to contemporary media. It requires, after all, psychoanalyzing ourselves. And there are far more impediments to doing this successfully than there is any evidence we can do it at all - or at least to the degree that seems necessary to me.

This is one of the big questions that I am very comfortable in raising but not very comfortable at all in accepting answers.

I'm not selling anything.

As I mentioned, it is my perception of a major portion of the cultural disparity - not a final or quick explanation. The overall proclamation I have made is that variation in environment promotes acceptance of that which is atypical or different. Monotony in environment promotes non-acceptance of that which diverges from the norm. I do not consider that to be either judgmental, imbalanced or simplified. It is but one of undoubtedly many differences between urban and rural culture, certainly not one to be considered irrelevant or taken lightly.

How about the one map I can't find anywhere.....the one that shows the whole country in red and labeled as Bush Country and NOTHING labeled Kerry Country

Laugh I'll remember that the city folk are so accepting the next time I walk through the projects.

You want a match for that straw man?

Wow Art... I think that is the most optimistic I seen you in ages... Usually you are missing the first sentance altogether... ;)

heh heh - yeah - even some fish did evolve toward freeing themselves entirely from the bonds of their aquatic environment.

one interesting subplot in all this: connecting this status of the maps with the assumptions about documentary film that underpinned the recurrent f911 threads.

using conservative responses to moore's film as anecdotal evidence, i can say this: the folk who invest in that space seem to want to naturalize images that they are presented in the context of "informational" programming. they like to believe in "objectivity" and its correlate, that a camera would not distort what it filmed. that there are not problems with the relation of spectator to world, understood as accumulation of objects. it seems a kind of enforced naievte. total faith in genre rules--if it is "news" it must be presented as "objective"--the curious twist in this--and i think this particular feature is not specific to the right--is that what is understood as "objective" is that which correlates at the level of assumptions/framing gestures to the political predispositions one brings to watching in the first place. "objectivity" then is about the desire to have one's politics written into a logic of nature, to make them not problematic, to remove them from the space of argument.

if that is true, then the problem with the map conflict comes from the status imputed to the objects by viewers. i do not think that the folk who channel information into right media in particular are bound by the same relation to what is broadcast as those who consume it--for the former, images are images and can be manipulated--for the latter, images--presented in certain contexts, with the "correct" political assumptions built into it--are reflections of nature.

if this is accurate, then it means that the viewers in this ideological space are motivated at some level by anxiety and that the contents of this space function at some level as reassurance. if this is true, then the reassurance would tend to override or exclude a critical relation to images. which would mean that graphics like the maps slot straight in as enframing a vision of the "nation"--and that you would not expect a critical relation to that enframing to emerge from within this space.

this would in turn run into a space where competing maps--as reduced versions of cometing visions of "the nation"---juxtaposing them would not engender a meaningful debate about what is a stake across the question of maps as elements in an ideological campaign--instead you woudl get an exchange of defenses of the spaces within which the maps are situated, performed more or less automatically.



all this as a way of suggesting that this matter--what is going on with these graphics--can be framed in a way that does not require we try to take on the general question of television and its relation to patterns that shape its usage in spaces that you classify in extremely general terms.

i sometimes wonder about this in myself: the desire to be able to shift to an extremely high level of abstraction in analysis is a function of the desire to occupy a kind of super-spectator relation to the social processes in which one is, in fact, embedded. whether the same set of relations i outlined above inform everything about the relation of a Theorist to the objects theorized--in a direct or inverted way, it comes to the same thing.

just wondering.
but maybe it is the coffee i am drinking.

"The times they are a changin'" Well, not really. I found this map comparison very interesting.

http://www.selekta.com/map.jpg

I like the maps with the different hues showing the party alignment. I feel those most accurately represent the population.

Some interesting links about this.

<a href="http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/">Election results adjusted for population density</a>

<a href="http://java.yukstah.com/~joe/gsp.htm">I made this page myself. It's a ranking of state per capita gross state product (similar to GDP) according to data collected by the Minnesota department of commerce, ranked from highest to lowest. I just thought it was sort of interesting.</a>