Political maps.
Nov. 8th, 2008 03:39 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
wileypeterWe hear a lot of talk of Red or Blue states, as if the electorate of any state were a monolithic whole. Certainly the discussion of Pennsylvania as a politically divided state puts the rest to this, but I found it more interesting to look at the district maps of three states in which I've lived, Minnesota, California and Oregon.
Here's a link to CNN's countrywide map.
California is, in essence, three states. You can make out one of the states here pretty clearly, along the coast in the northern half of the state. If you continued that line down to the border you'd have the second, mixed state. Then the Central Valley would be a third state. Most of this is pretty clear, not only from the Red/Blue dichotomy but also the district lines.
Oregon looks like it is not dissimilar, but the division is more along an urban/rural line, with Portland, Eugene, and to a lesser extent Salem pulling coastal areas blue. The areas east of the Cascades, much like the Central Valley, ran red.
Minnesota, though . . . that map is different. It looks like a target. The very urban core of the Twin Cities looks like it went blue, then the ring of territory surrounding the core went red. (This, for the record, is where my relatives live.) Then, opposite the trend out on the West Coast, the most rural areas of the state are blue. Of course, at least one of those districts contains a metro area (Duluth), so the pattern I see may well not be real.
No conclusions here. Just an interesting set of data.
Here's a link to CNN's countrywide map.
California is, in essence, three states. You can make out one of the states here pretty clearly, along the coast in the northern half of the state. If you continued that line down to the border you'd have the second, mixed state. Then the Central Valley would be a third state. Most of this is pretty clear, not only from the Red/Blue dichotomy but also the district lines.
Oregon looks like it is not dissimilar, but the division is more along an urban/rural line, with Portland, Eugene, and to a lesser extent Salem pulling coastal areas blue. The areas east of the Cascades, much like the Central Valley, ran red.
Minnesota, though . . . that map is different. It looks like a target. The very urban core of the Twin Cities looks like it went blue, then the ring of territory surrounding the core went red. (This, for the record, is where my relatives live.) Then, opposite the trend out on the West Coast, the most rural areas of the state are blue. Of course, at least one of those districts contains a metro area (Duluth), so the pattern I see may well not be real.
No conclusions here. Just an interesting set of data.
