Southern Strategies Laid Bare
I, um, I already said that*. More or less. Though if you look at what I wrote on the topic and correlate what I wrote to the maps, some things seem a little off — the “McCain Belt” where McCain outperformed Bush did not touch into South Carolina (the regions probably already saturated beforehand?) — the state for the historical prototypical and most rawly racist and populist political appeal I referenced in Ben Tillman.
But the map is fairly obvious, and anyone with a half way decent working understanding of American history knows what that blue streak was, and why they voted for Obama, as well what that red streak was, and why it voted for McCain. The thing about the “Obama Belt“, though, is it exists in this form since, I guess 1968 — and probably in different mechinitions of the same since time immemorial (Black Belt Conservative Tory versus Crudely Populist? and on to Yep! How the soil lined up during the Cretaceous Period!) On that score, it’s not been “picking presidents” at all, and still isn’t — .
I did think of another interesting effect to come up with on the NY Times interactive electoral map. Starting with the 96 percent figure and going backward, do you want to know what percentage of Southern Baptists you have to get to before the percentages flip from McCain to Obama? It is within one percent. If you take all the counties that have any Southern Baptists at all, the vote will go for McCain. If you add the counties that have essentially no Baptists, only then will the vote flip over for Obama. But maybe this means roughly squat and is indicative of nothing, I’d have to think for a minute.
* Groan. Edit replaced to what I meant to link. Trust me, you don’t want to know what I had accidentally linked originally — incongruity to the nth degree.