The 10 Regions of US Politics [really nice bit of election results scholarship]

CommonWealth ^ | 12-11-03 | Robert David Sullivan

[Dan from Michigan]

Interesting. My county is the only SE Michigan one in the farm belt.(It's aggie in the West and exurban in the East and very Republican).

[Snuffington]

Cool. I love this sort of analysis.

[southernnorthcarolina]

Interesting stuff. Thanks for the post and the ping, Granite.

Two books immediately came to mind, and I'd be shocked if they weren't sources of inspiration for the author.

The Nine Nations of North America (1981), by Joel Garreau, makes a similar effort to carve up the United States (and, in Garreau's case, Canada as well) into areas of commonality. Garreau's book was much broader in scope than Sullivan's article, which focuses on the political implications of the geographic breakdowns as he sees them.

Another obvious model is Kevin Phillips' prescient The Emerging Republican Majority (1969), still a good read and still accurate in many ways 34 years later. Phillips popularized the term "Sun Belt," linking the conservative sentiments of the South, the Farm Belt, the Rockies, and (less accurately, it turns out, Southern California). The "Sun Belt" concept seems so obvious now -- mirroring to a large extent the perennial GOP targets -- but the idea seems not to have been previously considered very much. Phillips, of course, broke down the Sun Belt into subregions, and frankly, many of his maps are more logical (if less detailed) than Sullivan's.

It's easy, of course, to nitpick the regions and boundaries that Sullivan comes up with. The "Big River" region seems particularly contrived to me. But it's a very interesting study, and one I'm sure will get the attention of strategists on both sides of the 2004 race.

[Amerigomag]

I can't speak for the other regions but Sullivan has done obviously shoddy research in his graphics presentation of El Norte.

50% of the land area he demonstrates in California is probably the most gentrified area in the state and has limited diversity. Starting from Oxnard northward, with the exception of Oxnard/Ventura on the south, King City/Salinas in the middle and San Jose in the north, the majorty of the area is populated by substantial wealth, mainly liberal to moderate and almost exclusively anglo.

The second highest percapita concentration of Hispanics in the US, behind the LA Basin, is located in the San Joaquin Valley, a substantial land area, which the author places in the Sagebrush.

This old boy paints whith a broad and loose brush in the West. Are the other areas as inaccurate as well?

[buccaneer81]

The Nine Nations of North America (1981), by Joel Garreau

I read this book back in 1982 and I was impressed. This was obviously an inspiration for the author of this piece.

[There's millions of'em]

bump

[southernnorthcarolina]

I live in Memphis and can tell you that Western Tennessee has nothing in common with Minnesota and Wisconsin even though all three states are "near" the Mississippi River.

I agree.

If I were drawing the map, I'd make the "Southern Lowlands" area more or less U-shaped. It would include most of Mississippi (how can the Delta be considered part of Appalachia?), eastern Arkansas, western Tennessee, and the tips of Kentucky, Illinois, and Missouri near the confluence of the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. These areas, it seems to me, are economically, socially, and politically a part of the South, and have little in common with Minneapolis.

[the lone wolf]

I live in the San Joaquin Valley. Please chack the Red/Blue county-by county map in post #13--every county in the San Joaquin Valley went for Bush II in 2000.

Many Hispanics around here are conservative.

[southernnorthcarolina]

I would also recommend Garreau's Edge City, 1992. He has a way of "thinking outside the box" that I find very interesting.

In this case, it's about the causes and effects of "new cities" which have sprung up on the perimeters of major metro areas, such as Lenox/Buckhead (Atlanta) and Tysons Corner (VA suburbs of DC).

It's a reasonably sympathetic look at what many denigrate as "urban sprawl."

[buccaneer81]

Sounds interesting. I would add Henderson (Las Vegas), Nashua (Boston), and Tempe (Phoenix).

[Torie]

Some of the regions are alas a rather clumsy artifice. I particularly dislike the Big River region versus the Farm Belt. The differences to the extent they exist in the more rural and small town regions have to do with agricultural variegation (corn and soybeans versus cattle and wheat), and with various and sundry ethnic traditions. The Southern part of the Big River is a whole other bag in and of itself.

El Norte also is queer (which includes Newport Beach, California and Laredo, Texas in it). Granted, most of it has varying significant percentages of Latinos, who themselves within the region have varying voting patterns. Some of El Norte is trending Dem, and some of it isn't, including really Orange County, where the Latino influence is counterbalanced more or less by the increase of population is very well to do, and heavily GOP, South Orange County. Southern Comfort is another artifice. It is just heavily WASP and Anglo (low black percentages to boot), and for varying reasons on top of that, heavily GOP. Just what do the well to do WASP retirees in Naples County, Florida have to do with the Tyson's chicken folks in Northwest Arkansas, and the odd little partial slice of some Coonass Parishes?

The Green region is more cohesive, and indeed Green, but it has the lumberjack county of Del Norte in it (the northernmost county on the California coast), which should be excised.

[Torie]

The map by and large although not entirely sucks in my opinion. Cheers.

[Travis McGee]

It looks like NM is the heart of "El Norte" (the PC term for New Aztlan.)

[Torie]

I might add that farming in Indiana and Western Ohio and much of Western Michigan is de minimus as to its relative impact on the economy. The place is fed by manufacturing, but it is done in smaller units with less union influence, and by ethnic groups that tend to be more conservative. Those areas aren't really in a farm belt.

[Torie]

Except that the Latins there think of themselves as Spanish rather than Mexican, and have been there since before the Pilgrims.

[Travis McGee]

Which Latins? How many today count themselves among that group?

[Torie]

The one's in the Northern third of New Mexico outside of the Eastern Northern sliver that is called "Little Texas."

[Doctor Stochastic]

This old boy paints whith a broad and loose brush in the West. Are the other areas as inaccurate as well?

Yes.

[Torie]

Actually Hispanics do the heavy lifting in the areas of California you mention. The place is simply too expensive to be very attractive to low wage earning Anglos performing such tasks, and they have decamped by and large. There is a significant Hispanic percentage through out, but they have a limited impact on the political dynamics.

[PA Engineer]

Big Thanks. Bookmarked and Bumped.