BS: USA - historical election results maps

Subject: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 05:09 PM

Have a look at the maps on this site:

USA election results - historical maps

Go to 1948. Take a look at which states voted Republican and which voted Democratic. Then go forward to each succeeding election, and look at what happened. Then see what occurred in the early 60's and since...

Ask yourself why.

It's fascinating to see how things have switched around, but it reveals an ongoing battle between a deeply reactionary South and a far more progressive North...regardless of which political party was doing well in which region at what time. It's a cultural split which predates the Civil War, and which produced the Civil War and all the racially charged traumatic events that have occurred since.

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Bobert
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 05:42 PM

Lincoln should have just let 'um go... Hey, 11 of 'um could ask to secede today amd I'd be all over campaigning to ley 'um go... It is apparent that the deep South has no interst in anything but their little redneck life style... I'd say, Bye-dee-bye and don't let the door hit ya' on the way out...

The South cries about the "governemnt" but per capita gets more from it than do most of the blue states... Yeah, we don't need to carry these folks anymore... Let 'um fend for themselves... Serious...

Hey, I understand obstruction... I understand partisanship... But the South has turned into "rejectionist"... Thay hate it that a black man won the presidency so they are just not going to recognize this reality...

So who needs 'um...

America, love it or leave it!!! (lol) I've waited a life time to be able to say that...

B~

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Little Hawk
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 09:25 PM

And yet...you love Stonewall Jackson and Mars Robert...and so do I! ;-) Ironical, isn't it?

I find it ironical that the Republican Party was the darling of the presently liberal Northeast and the North generally pretty well from its inception right up to the early 1960s...when the whole thing suddenly switched like the Earth flipping 180 degrees on its axis. Now the Republican Party is the darling of the very parts of the country that detested it for most of its existence and wouldn't vote Republican if you put a gun to their heads...and the Democrats are in solid on what was pretty much guaranteed Republican turf for a long, long time.

The hidden nugget in the whole strange mess is this: the most reactionary, ignorant, and conservative elements in the whole country used to support the Democrats back in the 1800s and early into the 1900s. Now they support the Republicans. To have the support of that constituency is nothing to be proud of.

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Bee-dubya-ell
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 11:19 PM

One way to beat an opponent is to adopt his tactics and become better at them than he is. But since tactics are closely tied to attitudes and philosophical principles, when one adopts the enemy's tactics one actually becomes more like the enemy. That roles would eventually be totally reversed is a natural consequence of the process. The only surprising thing to me is that it doesn't occur more often than it does.

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Janie
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 11:35 PM

LH, methinks you have bought into the caricature of the White southerner and are absolutely ignoring real and legitimate differences between the rural, agricultural south and the industrial northeast. The political parties themselves do not represent the same positions and philosophies they did 40, 80 or 120 years ago.

Historically, and worldwide, rural agrarian cultures are much more conservative (using the word in it's traditional, philosophical sense.)

Your assertion strikes me as sounding as reactionary and as over-simplistic as is the position of any reactionary.

Kick the South out of the Union, and you also kick out a majority of the African-American and Hispanic population of the Union.

The South is not the only region of the country that needs to "get over" the Civil War.

As you know, my roots and my identity is West Virginian. Some people consider WV to be southern, but it really is it's own little cultural and historical island. It also, sure as hell, ain't the urban, industrial northeast. I grew up very aware of the widely accepted caricature of my place, my culture and my heritage as that poverty-stricken, incest-ridden, Hatfield & McCoy feuding, deprived and ignorant population and region referred to as "central Appalachia. I endured the well-meaning, condenscending, and very arrogant invasion of Vista volunteers from the Northeast. Isolated by torrain (though the interstate system has changed that some,) West Virginia, is rural industrial. You will note the number of times it changes between Red and Blue on those maps.

There are elements of truth in all caricatures, but caricatures are very, very far from the reality of a person, a place or a culture.

I moved to North Carolina 23 years ago with great trepidation (and thinking we would be here only a year.) The trepidation was because I had accepted the national media caricature of the South as truth. I've lived here plenty long enough now to know better.

And so, while there is some truth in your explanation of the party shift in the South as being the result of the South (and I am presuming you are referring to White southerners when you label the South as reactionary,) the way you are interpreting that data is still very, very far from the truth.

Oversimplification is always very, very far from reality.

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: bald headed step child
Date: 15 Feb 09 - 11:56 PM

I enjoyed going thru the results and finding my home state of Kansas has only gone to the democrats 6 times in 148 years. The last being Johnson in 64, before that Roosevelt in 32 and 36.

I was hoping Obama would take it this year, but no such luck.

Of course, this is the state still fighting over Darwin, when even the Pope says evolution does not conflict with Catholic belief, and we send people like Roberts and Brownback to the senate.

Actually, "we" didn't. I had nothing to do with that.

I keep hoping we might be growing towards being able to have a reasonable debate here, but with the radical fundamentalists using this area to fight everything from evolution to abortion, I doubt that will be any time soon.

BHSC

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Ebbie
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 01:33 PM

Good for you, Janie. I have family living in North Carolina and I love to visit there. And I lived next door to West Virginia- "I could see West Virginia from my house". *g* (Not true)

Stereotypes are distasteful. There is always a grain of truth but it becomes distorted and ugly when passed through uninformed and uncaring people. It would not be difficult to formulate and perpetuate a stereotypical view of people outside the South. But as I said, stereotypes are distasteful, distorted and ugly.

I have frequently said that a Southerner moving north will have much greater culture shock than a Northerner moving south. There is such a warmth in the South which has nothing to do with weather a Northerner couldn't possibly refrain from responding. A Southerner transplanted to the North - and west - , on the other hand, cannot help but flounder for awhile in his/her opinion of humankind and society itself.

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 02:25 PM

Your points are all well taken, Janie, and I agree with them.

This isn't a case of my trying to stereotype all Southerners, and that isn't my intention. It only takes 51% of the vote for a state to favor one viewpoint over another! Therefore, the fact that the state votes red or blue in an election does not indicate that all the people in that state are of the same opinion. It certainly doesn't indicate that they are all rednecks or racists.

There are many things I love about the South, always have, and I am not seeing Southerners as a single stereotypical group of people.

What I am seeing, though, in these election maps is a strong indication of regional blocs that polarized around certain issues over and over again. It would only take an extra 1% of the electorate to tip an election to one side or the other, correct? That does not mean that all the people in that state fit some kind of stereotype, but it means that there's an ongoing issue that has some regionally-based triggers that drive it, that's all.

I think the whole USA has yet to "get over the Civil War"...not just the South. The wounds, however, are far deeper in the South. Wounds are always deeper in the side that lost a war.

You know, when I think of the South, I think of all sides of what you find there. I think of the warmth, hospitality, and intelligence of Southerners. I think of the military traditions of West Point. I think of the hillbillies, the rednecks, the Appalachian poverty. I think of the ordinary middle class people in the cities and towns, people like the people I grew up with. I think of all of it. I don't see it as a single igonrant, racist, beer-guzzling stereotype. I've been to the South a few times, and I liked it just fine.

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 03:33 PM

In order to sort out the changes, one has to look at different demographics.... such as urban/rural, rich/poor, and various 'special interests' which the Republicans have taken to courting the last X number of years. It is also true that WWII caused many folks to move in search of work and the simpler lines can't be drawn any more. Kansas is still mostly rural, but has had several Democrats as Governor or as Representatives because 3-4 cities can sway the count in certain areas, whereas presidential contests get the rural vote.

What used to be the "Solid South" for Democrats is now quite different for many reasons. Some voted Democratic because it was a **Republican** who defeated them and gave rights to Blacks.....but in the past 150 years, the Republicans & Democrats have largely flipped. Lincoln would not BE a 'Republican' if he were running today.

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Bill D
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 03:51 PM

Who remembers Dan Glickman?. He was an excellent member of Congress for 18 years and well respected by both sides...but he'd never have been there if he lived 'out West'.

"He was defeated for reelection, by Todd Tiahrt, in the 1994 congressional elections, one of 34 Democrats to lose their seats. Part of Glickman's loss was attributed to the fact Kansas lost one House seat following the 1990 Census, shifting the city of Hutchinson out of the 4th District and into the more conservative First District (the "Big First"), and moving rural areas east of Wichita into the 4th.....Tiahrt continues to hold the seat as of the 2007."

Subject: RE: BS: USA - historical election results maps
From: Little Hawk
Date: 16 Feb 09 - 04:07 PM

"Lincoln would not BE a 'Republican' if he were running today."

Ah! There is my point in a nutshell, Bill. Thank you.