Democrats are in big trouble in the Jacksonian Belt stretching from southern Pennsylvania through Appalachia to Arkansas and eastern Oklahoma.
Redistricting post-Katrina Louisiana is going to be a mess.
The geography of smoking: Utah and West Virginia bookend the spectrum.
A map ranking, er, Californiaishness.
The Bay Area is shrinking and Pelosi has the smallest district in the state. [...]
Writing Archive
The Week in Political Geography: Jackonsian Belt
Where Could the U.S. Realistically Lay High Speed Rail?
High-speed rail sounds like a good idea on paper: Trains are quicker, more comfortable and often more convenient than cars if you’re traveling a couple of hundred miles. So why not develop a system similar to that of Europe or Japan? The only problem is cost: how much would be needed to build this [...]
Obama, Sotomayor and the Urbanism of the Federal Government
Chris Murray at the interesting demographics/politics blog Election Dissection and Burt Solomon, writing in the Post, are just two of the commentators who have taken a look at how SCOTUS nominee Sonia Sotomayor’s experience growing up in the rough-and-tumble housing projects in The Bronx’s Soundview neighborhood shape her outlook on life and consequently her interpretation [...]
Efficiency Through Consolidation?
Tom Brokaw recently penned a column in the New York Times suggesting that this recession is an opportunity to press the reset button and that one aspect we should focus on reforming is the efficiency of government. Specifically, Brokaw suggests that state governments could save billions by consolidating municipal governments in the way that [...]
Where Do Military Recruits Come From?
Dante Chinni at the Patchwork Nation blog has a new map up that busts three prominent myths about where our military recruits come from:
Myth 1: The Military is Over-Represented by Southerners: In his fascinating book, “Born Fighting,” Sen. Jim Webb (D-VA) consistently returns to the themes that the Scots-Irish who represent Jacksonian American and Appalachia [...]
Beltways
Add the terms “Slump Belt” and “Diploma Belt” to the new lexicon of Beltway demographers. “Rust Belt” and “Sun Belt” are already household terms; everyone knows that the Rust Belt refers to the decaying industrial Midwest and Sun Belt is a catch-all term for boom towns from Orlando to Phoenix to San Jose.
Slump Belt is [...]
Geographically Speaking, Biden is a Smart Choice
Joe Biden, the blue collar, Catholic, foreign policy expert from Delaware is going to help Barack Obama in places like Pennsylvania’s 12th District. It’s hardcore United Mine Worker and United Steelworker country, the “Cradle of the American Steel Industry,” according to the Almanac of American Politics. It was settled by the irascible Scots-Irish that Jim [...]
The Candidates and the Four American Folkways
Michael Barone had a fascinating column on August 11, in which he looked at how the candidates are running in the four historic regions of migration laid out in David Hackett Fischer’s masterpiece book “Albion’s Seed: Four British Folkways in America.” What he found is fascinating:
McCain is running stronger than Bush did in two broad [...]
Obama Running Ahead of Kerry in 41 States
Governing.com’s Josh Goodman has a good look at how Barack Obama is running ahead of where John Kerry was four years ago today in 41 states, according to data from Pollster.com.
It’s not surprising considering that Bush is about as popular as the Dallas Cowboys at a Redskins game and considering the fact that Obama makes [...]
Ambinder: Obama Must Win the West to Win the White House
On the heels of Barack Obama’s tour through the West, Marc Ambinder declares that the Illinois senator is going to have to spend a lot more time in the region if he’s hopes to reach the White House:
“The ONLY way, given the electoral college map that Obama is presented with, he can win the presidency [...]
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