When was the last time that Georgia and San Francisco struck the same chord? It was probably 1971 when the Allman Brothers Band played at the Fillmore West. Since then, the two places haven’t had much in common culturally, economically, and most of all, politically.
And so it was no surprise that Rep. Jim [...]
Writing Archive
Pelosi and the San Francisco Earthquake of 2010
Maybe Boxer Forgot California is a Pacific State
Barbara Boxer’s main line of attack in the first California Senatedebate was pretty much that Carly Fiorina exported jobs to China during her tenure as HP chief execute and can’t be counted on to protect America from China.
“This election is about someone who’s working hard so that we can see the words ‘Made in America’ [...]
Parsing the Prop 8 Map
When a state like South Dakota outlaws abortion or a state like Vermont legalizes gay marriage, it’s because most voters in that state agree on that position. But when California makes a decision on a major cultural issue, it’s a proxy for the nation.
Twelve percent of Americans live in California, and the state has [...]
Blue States Most in Debt
Forbes:
The five states in the worst financial condition–Illinois, New York, Connecticut, California and New Jersey–are all among the bluest of blue states. The five most fiscally fit states are more of a mix. Three–Utah, Nebraska and Texas–boast Republican majorities and two–New Hampshire and Virginia–skew Democratic.**
I point to three factors. First, states like New York, Illinois [...]
Political Geography Week in Review: Happy Holidays
I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday vacation. If you were like me and took a few days off from news, then you may have some digging out to do. So I pulled together a review of some of the biggest stories in political geography from the last few weeks. Here it goes:
We learned [...]
The Week in Political Geography: Flanel Shirt Country
My fellow political cartographers – Sorry for the sparse posting recently. It’s been busy at New Media Strategies with an end of the year push, and most of my political geography time and resources have been devoted to @The_Almanac and major National Journal story I’m writing with Cook Report’s Dave Wasserman about southwest Virginia.
I promise [...]
The Week in Political Geography: Jackonsian Belt
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. [...]
Astonishing Stat of the Day
H/T Barry Ritholtz:
Just 6 states account for 62% of US total foreclosures: California, Florida, Arizona, Nevada, Illinois and Michigan are the leading states in terms of receiving foreclosure filings. As the chart above shows, California, Florida, Arizona, and Nevada have the greatest foreclosure activity.
For what it’s worth, five out of six, with the exception of [...]
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 [...]
California Bleedin’
With the Golden State on the brink of bankruptcy, Chris Ayres at the Times of London wonders how it came to this. “This is a state whose money comes from the most bankable economic assets on Earth – the Long Beach ports, the Central Valley agricultural region, the defence contractors out in the Mojave desert, [...]
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