BY DAN
KENNEDY
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Wednesday, December 17, 2003
Why red and blue doesn't
work. The problem with dividing the country into blue states and
red states, argues Robert David Sullivan, is that more than 40
percent of voters in the red states voted for Al Gore four years ago
and more than 40 percent of voters in the blue states voted for
George W. Bush.
In other words, not only is the
country divided right down the middle; so are the states
themselves.
Sullivan - an associate editor at
CommonWealth magazine and a former Boston Phoenix
editor - has attempted to figure out what's really going on by
dividing the country into 10 regions whose voting patterns have been
similar since the 1970s. The result - "Beyond
Red and Blue" - is a model
of detailed analysis, based on county-by-county election results and
various demographic measurements such as ethnicity, education, and
income.
Many states are split under
Sullivan's model, but not Massachusetts. We - along with much of the
rest of New England, parts of New York, and the West Coast from San
Francisco to the Canadian border - are part of the Upper Coasts,
whose politics are both liberal and quirky. In 2000, for instance,
the Upper Coasts were Gore's second-strongest of the 10 regions, but
also Ralph Nader's strongest.
New Hampshire and Maine, oddly
enough, are split between the Upper Coasts and the Sagebrush region.
There's a lot more snow than sagebrush in northern New England, but
Sullivan groups them with the West for their libertarianism. The
Sagebrush counties are anti-regulation and not at all taken with the
religious-conservative base of the Republican Party - which explains
why they were only Bush's third-strongest region in 2000, behind
Southern Comfort (the deepest of the Deep South) and Appalachia (a
band stretching from central Pennsylvania through northern Alabama
and Mississippi).
Among Sullivan's most interesting
findings is that though the Bush-Gore race was extremely close, fewer
regions were up for grabs than was the case in 1976, when Jimmy
Carter beat Gerald Ford. Voters have become more set in their ways,
and despite the decline of formal party politics, many people are
actually more likely to cast a straight party ballot than they were a
generation ago.
As for why the 2000 election was so
close, Sullivan notes that Gore and Bush each won five of the 10
regions. If either Bush or his Democratic challenger can capture six
regions in 2004, he will just about be assured of victory. Sullivan
shows exactly how the campaigns ought to go about doing just that.
(Don't let Karl Rove see this.)
"Beyond Red and Blue" has already
attracted the attention of the Daily
Kos. Check out
this
wonderfully obscure take by DHinMI.
Sullivan's map is a political
junkie's dream. And it will change the way you think about
presidential politics.
posted at 4:25 PM |
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Dan Kennedy is senior writer and media critic for the Boston Phoenix.
