I’ll take all the smog in Cal-i-for-ne-ay,
‘N’ every bit of dust in the Oklahoma plains,
‘N’ the dirt in the caves of the Rocky Mountain mines.
It’s all much cleaner than the New York kind.

While Hyde Park is certainly unique in the American landsccape, it turns out that Obama’s old home and new home actually have a lot in common in terms of voting patterns.

inoljt at Polikalblog crunched the numbers and found that the District, which is among the most-educated and highest-income cities in America, also might be the most pro-Obama major city in America, regardless of race. 

Two key stats:
– San Francisco gave Obama 84%; Washington gave him 93%
– Washington is 54% black and gave Obama 93%, Montgomery, AL is 53% black and gave Obama 59%.

The two maps below show race in D.C. and the electoral map of Clinton vs. Obama.  To be sure, there is a correlation between race and preference for Obama, but don’t be fooled: Obama won all 142 precincts in the District in both the primary and the general.

So if you’re looking for a good place to find the president’s base, a good place to start is probably U Street.

Both parts are a long way form Hyde Park.

Burden’s descriptions of Texas reflect the contempt that many outsiders have always felt toward Texas (he was a Louisianan).  As early as 1845, New Englander New Englander Edward Everett Hale wrote “How to Conquer Texas Before It Conquers Us.”

George W. Bush, a New Englander by blood, nevertheless became as much of a Texan as Sam Houston or Stephen Austin.  Barack Obama, on the other hand, has no connection to the state and probably sees the state somewhat similar to Burden.

Texas Democrats found themselves a little too busy today to meet up with Obama as he spoke in Austin.  But this capital city and university town is definitely the friendliest part of the state for the pro-academia and pro-public sector president.

If Texas were divided by region, “weird” Austin would be undeniably blue.  The other solid Democratic area would be the “dry, hot, and Spanish” South Texas.

East Texas, on the “western edge of Scots-Irish American,” would be solidly red.  Gun sales soared here after the 2008 election and it maintains a “roughneck air,” according to Barone.  The awl bidness and the Bible reign here.

West Texas, home of LBJ, Willie Nelson and Anton Chigurh, is outlaw country where cattle outnumber people.  This is “some of North America’s most rugged and desolate landscape,” according to Joel Garreau.  El Paso is closer to San Diego than Houston.

For its part, Houston is “a swamp of heat and humidity only an air-conditioner repairman or an oil engineer could love.”  But it’s also an international energy hub and world-class space center.

I could go on and on talking about the various regions and fissures in Texas, and I ought to write a longer post on it.  But for today, Obama should rest assured that there isn’t a more friendly and blue city in Texas than Austin.

++++

Nate Silver envisions five regions in Texas:

Robert David Sullivan sees three: Southern Comfort (red), Sagebrush (white), and El Norte (brown):

Twelve percent of Americans live in California, and the state has the world’s fifth largest economy. “It’s a nation-state really,” says Barone. Ideologically, it’s left-of-center, but it has enough political crosscurrents to be a good case study.

Let’s take a look at how California voted on Prop 8 in 2008, which of course banned gay marriage and was struck down by Judge Vaughn Walker on Wednesday.

Prop 8 was opposed mostly in Pelosiland (Frisco), Boxerland (Marin), Oakland, Berkeley, Silicon Valley, Wine Country, the Hippie Coast (Humbolt, etc…) and Santa Barbara.

Prop 8 was supported in Reaganland (Inland Empire), Nixonland (Orange), San Diego, the Palm Desert, Pomboland (Stockton area), McCarthyland (Kern), the Central Valley, Shasta Cascade, and pretty much everywhere else.

Unsurprisingly, Republicans area largely supported it and Democratic areas largely opposed it, but dense suburban counties such as Los Angeles and Sacramento provided the tipping point for it.

Palin’s metaphor is a not-too-subtle suggestion to Moms that Democrats are making the country worse for their children.  Her target is smart, as women, and particularly white women, will be the largest and most the pivotal vote in 2010 and ‘12.

If white women were the only people to vote in 2008, Barack Obama would have lost the national popular vote 53%-46%, but in a twist of irony, he would have won the Electoral College 273 to 265 over John McCain.

The map below from Inoljt at Swing State Project shows how Obama ran with white women.  His worst states were in the SEC (he won only 12 percent in Alabama!), Texas, and Oklahoma, and his best states were in New England, D.C., and Hawaii.

Will white women stick with the president and his party?  I’m going to look to statewide races with white woman candidates in states like Arkansas, California, Missouri, New Hampshire, and Washington to tell.

The plan called for “three largely autonomous regions,” but it stopped short of partitioning the nation, even thought that’s how it was widely interpreted.  But imagine if the Middle East were indeed partitioned into new ethno-religious states.

A month after Biden’s column, Ralph Peters of Armed Forces Journal proposed such an idea in article called “Blood Borders.” Calling the current lines “awful,” he argued that “Without such major boundary revisions, we shall never see a more peaceful Middle East.”

Of course, trying to take land from nations like Pakistan and Saudi Arabia — among the most authoritarian on Earth — would unleash new waves of violence. But say the map below was imposed, would it create peace or breed even more resentment?

(h/t Strange Maps)

The geographic center of gravity for the Tea Party Caucus — or the average geographical location of the hometowns of its members — is in Stigler, Oklahoma, which is hundreds of miles south and west of the center for the whole House.

The map below shows the centers of gravity for the Tea Party Caucus (yellow), the Republican caucus (red), the Blue Dog Caucus (purple), and the Democratic caucus (blue).

However, there’s a caveat: The Republican location includes the Tea Party data while the Democratic location excludes the Blue Dogs. This wasn’t by choice; I originally made a map about the Blue Dogs and have since lost that data, so the Tea Party location is in a sense an addendum to an old map.

If the Tea Party Caucus members were excluded from the full Republican data, the non-Tea Party Republican center of gravity would shift significantly, perhaps even past the Blue Dogs.

From southwest to northeast, here are the respective centers of gravity:

Tea Party Caucus: Stigler, Oklahoma
(Represented by Dan Boren)

Republican Caucus, including the Tea Party Caucus: Just east of Branson, Missouri
(Represented by Roy Blunt)

Blue Dogs Caucus: Hartshorn, Missouri
(Represented by Jo Ann Emerson)

Democratic Caucus, excluding the Blue Dogs: Pevely, Missouri
(Represented by Russ Carnahan)

Here’s an interactive map:

View Political Party’s Centers of Gravity in a larger map

And a screen shot:

Proponents of the measure argue that every single citizen’s vote should count, not just those in Broward County.  Cynics argue that it’s just a ploy by blue states to tilt the electoral math since the current system favors red and rural states.

I think the idea is rational — It would force candidates to address national issues — but as a political geographer, I also like watching candidates navigate the battlefield and gamble on whether or not to target certain states.

If enacted (which is an extreme longshot), candidates might have to pay attention to medium size but “base” states like Massachusetts.  If they did that, we might discover that even states like Mass are still often political quilts at the local level.

Robert David Sullivan at Commonwealth magazine draws the “10 regions of Massachusetts” every four years.  Scott Brown’s best area was Cranberry County (keep on eye on the 10^th district race), while Coakley’s was Bigger Boston.

(For more detail on the regions, check out his article about Deval Patrick).

Anyone who has paid attention in the last eight years knows that the war is being waged in the tribal areas along the Pakistani border. But the Wikileaks data pin-pointed exactly where enemy attacks have occurred.

The first map below was produced by the Guardian and shows IED attacks in the last six years. The second map is from the Heritage Foundation and shows the area populated by ethnic Pashtuns in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

Pashtuns account for 35 to 40 percent of the Afghan population but — as the maps suggest — a majority of the violence. However, it may be foolish to consider them a single group: Pashtuns are among the most tribal and fragmented people on Earth, underscoring the challenge of selling them on the concept of national unity.

Webb’s major point was that the affirmative action systems designed to lift African-Americans and other racial minorities out of the legacy of Jim Crow have evolved into a system that often discriminates against poor whites.

He pointed to the fact that many poor white Southerners, whose ancestors were unlikely to have owned slaves, face the same plague of poverty, incarceration, and illiteracy that afflicts many minority populations.

A southern Baptist, he argued, should not be considered the same as a Connecticut congressionalist, even though both are WASPs.

Indeed, he is correct in his point that a Baptist from Tupelo, a Lutheran from Lake Woebegone, a Mormon from Provo, and a Dutch reformed from Grand Rapids share very different experiences – not to mention an Italian Catholic from Waterbury.

To examine Webb’s point, I posted three maps below.  The first is church affiliation by counties; the second is white population by density; and the third is wealth in 1870.