The map to the left shows the counties which voted for Obama (blue) and McCain (red) in the 2008 election. The blue counties are part of the Black Belt, the area where blacks are a majority of the population because of the economic concentration of cotton culture during the 19th and 20th centuries. The McCain Belt, those counties where John McCain beat George W. Bush, is getting some press, but obviously it is interesting to wonder about areas where large black populations which increased turnout are likely masking the shift of the white vote for John McCain. I have already shown on a state-by-state basis where the white vote shifted toward the Democrats in 2008, and where it shifted toward the Republicans. Though the average white vote budged only a bit, there is important regional structure which is being masked by aggregating all this information.
The political scientist Larry Bartels reaffirms my basic point:
However, there is a good deal of circumstantial evidence suggesting that racial resentment eroded Obama's support among white voters. His gains relative to Kerry were significantly smaller in states with large numbers of African-Americans--a pattern disguised in the overall vote totals by his strong support among African-Americans themselves. In the former Confederacy he gained only slightly over Kerry among white voters, despite making big gains in two key swing states, North Carolina and Virginia. The only states in the country in which he lost more than a point or two of white support were Louisiana, Alabama, Arkansas, and Mississippi.
You can see this in the exit polls. They rather straightforwardly illustrate that Obama won a smaller percentage of the white vote than Kerry in many states in the South. But I decided to look at it a different way: I plotted the percentage of whites in each county and their vote percentages for Barack Obama and John Kerry in Mississippi. This is more precise than an exit poll because votes are votes, and the Census counts everyone. So here is that chart:
Read the rest of this post... | Read the comments on this post...Read More...
[Source: ScienceBlogs : Combined Feed - Posted by FreeAutoBlogger]
