(no subject)

[katallison]

sockkpuppett earlier posted the US voting breakdown, state by state, as shades of purple, instead of blue vs. red; here's the same thing, except county by county.

I find this fascinating, especially as a countermeasure to the generalizations about the South and Midwest that have been flying around the past couple of days. Consider, for example, that very blueish-toned band of counties meandering from Louisiana through Alabama and Mississippi and into South Carolina. Or those blue spots in the upper Great Plains--I can't even identify what, if any, cities those would map onto. (Since state boundaries aren't shown, one thing this map also reveals to me is my less-than-perfect grasp of geography. *g*)

I should locate a good color printer and run myself a copy of this, to tack up over my desk. Nothing about this country is as simple as I am sometimes, in my bitter moments, tempted to believe.

Comments

[jonquil.livejournal.com]

Isn't that a beautiful image? And I find it abstractly beautiful, without regard to its meaning.

[ineke.livejournal.com]

Nothing about this country is as simple as I am sometimes, in my bitter moments, tempted to believe.

And perhaps that should go double for us, the non-Americans, with our bad habit of mentally homogenising America... to the point where we overlook, as tzikeh pointed out, the 55 million Americans who did vote Democrat...

[jackiekjono.livejournal.com]

Apparently, large portions of Maine have been eaten by the Langolieres. I blame the close proximity to Stephen King.

[akite.livejournal.com]

I've made this comment on a couple of other journals today, but I am really please and a bit surprised to see that Texas wasn't the solid red that we were led to belive. Even my county is purple (Harris County where Houston is and where Former President Bush lives when he's not in Maine. I liked seeing the darker purple up through Arkansas and Southeast Missouri too. I was born in S.E. Missouri and have family up there.

[rhiannon-jehane.livejournal.com]

Thank you for the link - I do feel a little better now that I've seen all that purple (and patches of actual blue!) in places that were solidly red on the news channels.

Blue in the Upper Great Plains

[sanguinity]

Link-hopping, hope you don't mind. Started out from matociquala's journal hopped to someone who quoted your question about the blue in the upper great plains, so I came over here because I wanted to comment:

I had the same question when I saw that map last year, and I did some research on a few of those bright plue patches. Most of them show nothing there on maps of their respective states -- half the county is federally protected wild area, and the other half doesn't even show a town, let alone a largely democratic city. So who's voting, I wondered? National Park Rangers? And why isn't there even the slightest tinge of purple?

It turns out that every blue patch I looked at is a reservation. Native American tribes who are really, really pissed with Bush.