maps maps maps maps maps

[topaz]

The current meme going around seems to be electoral maps. We've all seen the state-by-state electoral breakdown, but here are some of the more interesting versions I've seen:

At http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm, a map of Democratic and Republican votes, broken down by county rather than by state:


At http://www.electoral-vote.com/carto/nov04c.html, a "cartogram," which is apparently a map scaled to population rather than area:


From http://www.boingboing.net. This map describes just the margin of victory. Each state is colored a shade of purple depending on how many Republican (red) or Democrat (blue) votes it got. This gives a much better idea of how mixed the vote was:


moominmolly and claudia_ each posted a purple cartogram, combining the last two ideas. I think they did this independently, but I'm not sure. claudia_ posted her version here:


And moominmolly's is here:


I think this one is my favorite. A purple map drawn by county rather than by state. From KieranHealy.org.


Kieran links to a really huge version of this one: 1547x1053, 400KB.

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

It's a similar story for the Jews: In much of the Old World, they were prohibited from owning land or farming until Emancipation in the 19th century. By that time, of course, they had become entrenched in urban areas and had no interest in a life of the soil. So, when they moved to the USA, they congregrated in larger cities while it was gentile peasants who founded farmsteads and villages.

Later immigrants also tended to congregate in cities. Was it primarily because cities were more tolerant or because, in an industrial society, that's where the jobs for unskilled labourers tend to be? The Great Migration, after all, didn't begin in the wake of the Civil War--most ex-slaves remained sharecroppers for generations--but in the shadow of WWII, when the factories of the Rust Belt needed every pair of hands they could find.

Due to the exploitative conditions, the urban proletariat was also ripe for radicalisation. I can't really see socialists and anarchists prosyletising from town to town in the Midwestern countryside, but I suppose some must've tried during the 20s and 30s. In contrast to the situation in Europe or Latin American, most of the rural dwellers were freeholders who had a stake in the status quo and no interest in revolution or redistribution. The same can't be said about factory workers living in urban slums.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

It's a similar story for the Jews: In much of the Old World, they were prohibited from owning land or farming until Emancipation in the 19th century. By that time, of course, they had become entrenched in urban areas and had no interest in a life of the soil. So, when they moved to the USA, they congregrated in larger cities while it was gentile peasants who founded farmsteads and villages.

There are also problems that come with isolation for religious Jews, even if the surrounding community is tolerant. No kosher butcher (though kosher meat was shipped West pretty much as soon as transportation links were established). You need at least ten Jewish men for most significant religious observances. Even today, Sabbath restrictions make suburban (let alone rural) distances more inconvenient for Orthodox Jews than for others, which is one reason that in Chicago there's still a big contingent in the city and inner ring suburbs while Reform and Conservative Jewish communities have tended to follow the rest of the country into suburbanization.

Due to the exploitative conditions, the urban proletariat was also ripe for radicalisation.

Some of them came pre-radicalized, including my own ancestors (who AFAICT weren't quite Communists-- though a great-aunt was, and would defend Stalin till she died in the 1990s). My grandmother still doesn't know just what went wrong with me. :-)

I can't really see socialists and anarchists prosyletising from town to town in the Midwestern countryside, but I suppose some must've tried during the 20s and 30s.

My impression is that the Depression helped with that, what with lots of freeholders losing their farms due to debt, the Dust Bowl, and deflation. But they were ultimately diverted into the New Deal (which, let us remember, was still pretty radical by early twentieth century American standards).