The RollingStan shakeup is the kind of event that will reverberate through the national political landscape, but it will also likely be felt in certain place more than others. Looking through the 2012 lens, for example, hawkish North Carolina will react different than dovish Minnesota.
One way we can examine the geography of the fallout on Dante Chinni’s map of military recruits. On the surface, it looks like military recruitment is fairly even nationwide. But Chinni’s Patchwork Nation blog designates 12 distinct American communities.
Among these, “Military Bastion” communities (the smallest group) such as Norfolk are unsurprisingly overrepresented in the armed forces. Second and third places go to “Minority Central” communities such as much of the black South, and “Evangelical Epicenters” such as east Texas or southern Missouri.
Bringing up the rear in military service are, in order of least representation, “Industrial Metropolis” (i.e. Camden, NJ), “Campus & Careers” (Madison, WI), and “Monied Burbs” (Fairfield County, CT). These stats alone don’t tell us much, but they may offer us clues how RollingStan will play geographically.
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