Geography of US Elections

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Welcome to the Geography of U.S. Presidential Elections. In this forum, we will discuss any aspect of electoral geography that you find interesting or pertinent. I have found from teaching several courses for Stanford Continuing Studies that members of the class often know more about particular topics than I do, and I am sure that the same is true for the global audience of iTunes U. Please join the discussion so that we can all learn from each other.

The overriding issue of contemporary American electoral geography is that of polarization. Is the United States a land of deep and almost unbridgeable political divisions that are closely linked to specific parts of the country, or is it predominantly a nation of political centrists, with most regions containing balanced populations of moderates, liberals, and conservatives? Good arguments can be made for both positions – and for the notion that the situation is too complex to be described in such terms.

A more specific question concerns Andrew Gelman’s finding that wealthy states tend to vote for the Democratic Party whereas wealthy people tend to vote for the Republican Party. As we saw in lecture, some evidence suggests that this basic pattern holds for California as well, where wealthy counties voted for John Kerry and poor counties voted for George W. Bush. But how general is the tendency? Would we find the same pattern replicated at a more local scale of analysis, such as that of Santa Clara County, California?

These are just a few of the questions we might entertain in this discussion forum; anything that links geography with voting behavior is fair game. I look forward to your comments.

Many thanks,

Martin W. Lewis

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Required Reading

1. Routledge Historical Atlas of Presidential Elections, by Yan Mieczkowski. 2001. Routledge.

2. Beyond Red State, Blue State: Electoral Gaps in the 21st-Century American Electorate, by Laura Olson and John Green. 2008. Prentice Hall.

Other Useful Works

1. Culture War? The Myth of a Polarized America, by Morris Fiorina, Samuel Abrams, and Jeremy Pope. 2005. Longman.

2. Patchwork Nation: Sectionalism and Political Change in American Politics, by James G. Gimpel and Jason E. Schuknecht. 2004. University of Michigan Press.

3. Presidential Campaigns: From George Washington to George W. Bush, by Paul F. Boller, Jr. 2004. Oxford University Press.

4. Political Geography of the United States, by Fred M. Shelley, J. Clark Archer, Fiona M. Davidson, and Stanley D. Brunn. 1996. Guilford.

5. Political Behavior of the American Electorate, by William H. Flanigan and Nancy H. Zingale. 2006. CQ Press.

6. The Unfinished Election of 2000, edited by Jack Rakove. 2001. Basic Books.

7. The Two Americas: Our Current Political Deadlock and How to Break It, by Stanley B. Greenberg. 2004 Thomas Dunne.

8. America’s Three Regimes: A New Political History, by Morton Keller. 2007. Oxford University Press.

9. The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, by Bill Bishop. 2008. Houghton Mifflin.

10. Red State, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do,
by Andrew Gelman. Princeton University Press, 2008

11. Historical Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections 1788-2004, by J. Clark Archer et al.
Washington, D.C. : CQ Press, 2006.

Important Websites

1. Dave Leip’s Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections
An invaluable source of information and maps. For a modest fee, one can join the site and get access to additional content.

2. Electoral Geography 2.0: Mapped Politics
A great source for international electoral geography.

3. Maps and Cartograms of the 2004 U.S. Presidential Elections Results
by Michael Gastner, Cosma Shalizi, and Mark Newman, University of Michigan. (http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/). Small site, but great maps.

4. StateMaster
A good site for general maps and statistical information at the state level.

5. Social Explorer
Good demographic and religious maps of the U.S.

6. Census Scope
Good demographic maps of the U.S.

7. The Electoral Map: The Intersection of Politics and Geography
An informative blog that often contains interesting maps.

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