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From the diaries -- kos)
Robert David Sullivan, of CommonWealth (massinc.org), has a very interesting electoral analysis in today's Boston Globe, summing up county-level voting nationwide.
Here's the teaser in his lede:
GEORGE W. BUSH can now claim a clear victory in the popular vote for president, thanks in part to people in and around the city of New York. But the president got no reelection mandate from the citizens of Savannah, Ga.
Sullivan's work has been referenced in dKos before, as in
this diary from last December, and
Hrothgar's post last Monday.
(Click on image to enlarge.)
Hrothgar's post includes Sullivan's descriptions of his basic ten regions. It's worth drawing out some of Sullivan's observations about the implications of these regional votes.
Sullivan divides the Old Confederacy into five different regions, four of which overlap with other parts of the country. Kerry won one of those regions, El Norte (composed mostly of Spanish speaking areas in South Florida, South Texas, and Southern California), outright. Another, Big River (which follows the Mississippi from Arkansas to Minnesota) is the quintessential swing region; Kerry lost this region by 1.1 points.
"Southern Comfort" is the name Sullivan gives to the region populated by what I call "idiot rednecks": basically the Gulf Coast from Southern Florida through Louisiana including all of East Texas, most of Oklahoma and parts of Western Missouri and Arkansas. Bush took 61.3% of the vote here, his second highest percentage in all of Sullivan's regions.
As for the meaning of this, let's let Sullivan speak for himself:
The red-and-blue map didn't change much from 2000 to 2004, but our 10 regions reveal some significant shifts. With 61.4 percent of its vote cast for Bush,
Appalachia -- which has the poorest and most rural population in the United States, and was a bedrock region for Democratic nominees from Andrew Jackson to Harry Truman -- became the most Republican region in the country for the first time since at least 1976 (as far back as our county-level data go), and probably for the first time in American history. In almost all of the states in this region, Bush carried rural counties that haven't voted Republican since the Nixon landslide of 1972, and even stuck with Walter Mondale over Ronald Reagan in 1984. Meanwhile, the most Republican region of 2000, the Gulf Coast-oriented Southern Comfort, was a close second this time (61.3 percent for Bush), and it was a key factor in keeping Florida in Bush's column.
But the growing Republican strength in Appalachia and Southern Comfort obscures the fact that Southern Lowlands, which lies in between, remains closely divided between the two parties. While Bush once again won Southern Lowlands (with 51.5 percent of the vote), Kerry increased Democratic margins in many parts of the region: northern Virginia; most of the major cities of North Carolina; and not only Atlanta but two adjoining suburban counties. He also pulled the county that includes Savannah, Ga., into the Democratic column.
It's a bit counter-intuitive that there are regions in the Old South that could trend Democratic -- though Sullivan seems to suggest that the Dems couldn't win a Southern state without winning back some portion of Appalachia. But look what he has to say about the Northeast Corridor, which traditional red state-blue state analysis has as solidly Democratic:
The next most Democratic region was Northeast Corridor, but it was hardly something for Kerry to brag about. It was here that Bush enjoyed his biggest surge in the popular vote percentages, turning a 62-35 loss into a less lopsided 59-40. Nationally, four of the five counties with the biggest GOP gains, in raw votes, were those that make up Long Island. Kings (Brooklyn), Queens, Nassau, and Suffolk counties all went for Kerry, but his margin there was more than 250,000 votes short of Gore's in 2000. At the same time, Staten Island flipped from 57 percent for Gore to a 50 percent win for Bush, while New Jersey's Ocean County (which has a high retiree population) went from a 49 percent plurality for Bush to a 60 percent landslide.
More complete analysis along these lines, along with complete voter breakdowns in each of the ten regions, can be found at Sullivan's website, here