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Final Lecture

Download Lecture 5 via Tunes U in high resolution or, watch the YouTube version below.

This morning the New York Times came out with a far bolder take-home message about the geographical implication of the 2008 election than I did last night in class.  As the Times headline puts it: “For South,  A Waning Hold on National Politics.”  According to this interpretation, much of the Southern White population, which had been a dominant group in the Republican Party, has now placed itself outside of the mainstream of American presidential politics, and, as a result, the influence of the South will decline.  The article also differentiates the new “suburban South,” which is trending blue, from the interior South, which is not.

Does this seem like a reasonable interpretation, or is it perhaps premature?

David Brooks’ op-ed column in the NY Times today is also worth reading.  He predicts that the Republican party will become more conservative in the short-term, but further contends that such a retrenchment will hurt the party, forcing it eventually to reorient its political stance.  Does this interpretation seem reasonable?

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Discussion, Week Four

Download Lecture 4 via Tunes U in high resolution or, watch theYouTube version below.

One of the biggest current issues in electoral geography concerns the voting patterns of affluent suburban counties.  I find it quite striking that the suburbs of Minneapolis vote more like the suburbs of Atlanta than the suburbs of San Francisco.  The fact that Minnesota has a high level of religious affiliation is no doubt part of the explanation.  But why then do affluent suburban counties in New Jersey tend to vote Republican (at least as of the 2004 presidential election), while those in northern California have voted Democratic since 1988.  Any ideas?

You might want to check out an interesting political-cultural map from the Christian Science Monitor:  http://www.csmonitor.com/patchworknation/

I love the idea of this map, but I don’t think that they have done a very good of classifying counties, particularly those of the Bay Area.  Any reactions?

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Week Three

Download Lecture 3 via Tunes U in high resolution or, watch theYouTube version below.

As we saw in this week’s lecture, the electoral geography of the U.S. was relatively stable from the Civil War until the 1930s (and to some extent until the 1950s), with the Northeast and Pacific coast generally aligning with the Republicans and the Southeast with the Democrats, while the “middle band” in the eastern half of the country (typified by Ohio) acted as perennial swing states and the interior West (Great Plains and Rockies) periodically switched allegiance in a wholesale manner.  In 2000 and 2004, at the state level, the same general geographical pattern held, but with the parties reversed.  In the current election, it looks as if the Pacific Coast and Northeast will hold solid for the Democrats, while a number of interior western states might swing in the same direction.  As a result, several Democratic Party strategists now argue that the Republican Party may be in the process of restricting itself to its southern base.  On the county level, however, the geographical split is not so clear-cut: under the old regime, virtually every county in Michigan voted Republican; now most Michigan countries still vote Republican, but the state as a whole is in the Democratic camp.

But why has such a state-level geographical reversal occurred?  Is it mostly because the two parties have changed, or it more a factor of the regions themselves changing?

Although it is a moot exercise, I often wonder what prominent figures of the past would make of today’s political landscape.   William Jennings Bryan would would no doubt find the Republican Party’s cultural stance appealing, but he would probably be horrified by its economic and foreign policies. T. Roosevelt would probably cheer on John McCain’s foreign policies, but he would likely be horrified by Sarah Palin’s brand of cultural politics. Grover Cleveland, on the other hand, might well be a Ron Paul supporter.  I think the general response, however, would be one of perplexity.

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Week Two: From Washington to Lincoln

Download Lecture 2 via Tunes U

As we saw in class Monday night, the United States in its first 80+ years evolved from a country marked by a clear political division between a North/Coastal Federalist region and a South/Interior “Jeffersonian” region to one in which Jacksonian Democrats and Whigs were competitive in most states to one in which the North and South underwent complete political separation (with the border states experiencing profound ambivalence).  Some observers think that the cultural and political division between North and South still forms the country’s main geographical-political dynamic, with the Far West aligning with the North and the “Near West” aligning more with the South.  Others disagree, noting that the pattern fails at the county level (most counties in New York, Michigan, and Minnesota, for example, voted for the Southern candidate, George W. Bush, in 2004).  What do you think?  Is the “Civil War Divide” still relevant?  If so, to what extent?

On a related note, Bill Bishop notes a high degree of correlation between political affiliation and parenting style, which also has a clear geographical expression.  See his article “Spank Your Kids? You Likely Vote Republican” in Slate Magazine (http://slate.com/) today (Oct. 21).   On Oct. 17, Bishop noted that the current campaign has “gone positively 19th century.” To join our ongoing conversation, click here.

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Week One: A Geographically Polarized Country?

Download Lecture 1 via iTunesU

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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Introduction

Starting Wednesday, October 15, you can follow The Geography of U.S. Presidential Elections in real time. To learn more about this timely Stanford University course, you can watch the introductory video below, or download it from iTunesU. And once the first lecture is posted, we invite you to join the discussion hosted by the professor, Martin Lewis. Stay tuned for more, and enjoy the course.

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