AmerCon : Cartograms

PolySci 0 / Cartograms / Purple America

The graphic below (from kieranhealy.org with the luminosity enhanced) adds nuance
(detailed county data) to the conversation about red and blue voter densities in the states.
There are a lot of Democrats in the red states and they dominate the coasts and the cities of
the whole country. Republicans dominate the rural areas. But most areas are
mixed, giving rise to the notion of "purple America."

ehj2

Harold Meyerson, in “Divided Land” (The American Prospect), writes,

“The most striking, the

most overwhelming fact about the 2004 vote is how

closely it resembles the 2000 vote. Think

of it: Since November 2000, the

twin towers have been obliterated, we've gone to war

preemptively and

under erroneous pretenses in Iraq, George W. Bush has become the first

president since Herbert Hoover to have jobs shrink on his watch, our

standing in the world

has diminished nearly everywhere. And how did all

this affect the electoral map? A shift of

17,000 votes turned New Hampshire

(four electoral votes) from red to blue, while a shift of

12,000 votes turned

New Mexico (five electoral votes) from blue to red. The battle lines of

the

cultural civil war that emerged in the 2000 contest have shown themselves

to be all but

impermeable to even the most earthshaking events.”

But the maps below (now circulating on the Internet) show that these lines were
effectively drawn in an earlier century. I don’t pretend to have an informed opinion about
why this state seems so intractable, but it is our “on the ground” reality.

Note that the graphic above (which gives equal surface area to equivalent population
“cells”) elucidates the following: there’s a lot of blue and it is pretty well distributed even
in the sparsely populated “red” state “cells.” America is "purple."

More importantly: just 16% of the population of America (in the sparsely
populated red states) choose 50% of the Senate.

Consequence: This systemic and deep “unfairness” in our democratic/electoral
system heavily favors the Republicans and invites an equilibrating response.

No matter where we live, we are now stakeholders in the decisions of every state. We’re
going to have to contribute (even more) to the Democratic Party (and individual state
campaigns outside our own state) to help progressives stay alive and win in these
states. We’re going to have to worry about political processes in red states (like Texas
that design school books sold all over the country, not just in red states) that encourage
“creationism science” to be taught in the schools ... and trains child-fundamentalists to
grow up aligned with the fundamentalist right.

It doesn’t matter what state we live in; we’re all simply “Americans” now.

ehj2