NationStates Jolt Archive

Greetings to you all. Democrat, Republican, any-Third-Party, or foreign to the US (such as myself).

Just noticed data from 2004 elections. Noticed how the distribution is not generally land-slide for either Dems or Reps in any state. Not even in the stronghold states. Typical results is winning party get ~55% in a state, the losing party gets the rest and Nader gets ~1%.

Which raises the question, does it mean 1/2 the population in Georgia is liberal enough to vote Democrat? Or half the population of Califionia is conservative enough to vote Republican?

The case in Georgia is especially amusing for myself. Reputed as the Home Of The Redneck - pick-up trucks with Confederate Flags and gun racks. Or is there a urban/rural division going on here - maybe the Dem votes in Gerogia came from Atlanta?

Or does the voting percentages not represent America as a whole?

Any one of you want to post your intepretations of this phenomonon?

actually if you break down the voting further, its really more of an urban vs. rural and suburban breakdown with some regional differences in degree. also to a lesser extent a racial and class breakdown. rural and suburban whites trend republican no matter what the economic class. urban whites and most other ethnic group trend democratic. wealthy urban whites trend a bit republican.

Bush has also been making some inroads with blacks and Hispanics lately, so the split isn't clear-cut.

Also, if you analyze it by county, you will probably find it to be pretty much a landslide in each of those. I haven't seen this done with the 2004 election, but I did see a map from the 2000 election, and it was pretty clearcut. Nearly everyone living in a certain county voted one way or the other.

Hey, a third of the population was too foolish to vote, and another third was too young.

That says a lot more to me than whether they vote the world to end in fire or ice.

The distribution is definatly dependent on urban vs. non-urban, I'd say more so then black vs. white. vs. hispanic.

Don't forget that a lot of people voted Republican in those blue counties and a lot of people voted Democrat in those red counties. Urban and rural are merely the deciding factors. My county is a rather rural one in Northern Michigan and it went Republican. But George Bush got 49.4% of the vote and John Kerry got 49.27% of the vote. That's out of 12,725 votes. 6,286 for Bush and 6,269 for Kerry. (Despite this, the web site says that Kerry won. I'm almost certain that maps by county show our county as having gone Democrat. Either the web site made a mistake or something is screwy. It's the vast left wing conspiracy.) Something beyond urban vs. rural is in play.

Or does the voting percentages not represent America as a whole?

You're only represented if you vote. The number of votes represent the Americans whose opinions truely matter.