Al Ha VeDa על הא ודא

Monday, November 08, 2004

Posted 1:54 AM by Simon

Water from the wells of salvation

I wasn't going to blog about the US election, but this was just too interesting to pass by.

First of all, correlating county-by-county election returns with geographical data from the Tiger database is just so superbly geeky. Secondly, it struck me that there's a very strong correlation between voting Democrat and living near large bodies of water. Look how the blue clusters along the Pacific coast and round the Great Lakes. Even in the Midwest, which is solidly red in a state-by-state map, the nearer a county is to the Mississippi the bluer it gets.

The Gulf of Mexico looks like an exception to the rule — if you look at Texas, the Rio Grande side has far more Democrats than the Gulf side, and the Atlantic coast of Florida is bluish where the Gulf coast is reddish (Note to self: you already used the "You don't look bluish" line in a blog title. Don't repeat yourself, especially since you stole it from Yellow Submarine in the first place). New Mexico is an exception in the other direction, and so are parts of South Dakota (or is that the line of the Missouri?)