That map with the vertical bars is misleading, and doesn't say what you think it says. It's charting *margins of victory*: the counties with no bar for Kerry in them aren't counties were his support is nonexistent, they're counties where his support was less than that of Bush. So it incorporates the same threshold effect that makes simple red county/blue county maps look starker than they really are. I was misled by that myself for a while.
The concentration of Kerry's support in cities is, of course, real, but the map exaggerates it-- and I also don't see how it's particularly chilling, unless you swallow the Republican interpretation of these maps that somehow attributes popular support to land area.
I'd kind of like to see the latter map in terms of percentages rather than raw numbers. Because if it would look roughly the same then it really verifies my theory that Bush's support is a mile wide but an inch deep.
Put another way, it looks like the Democrats have a lot better chance at flipping Kansas than the Republicans do of flipping Denver. And the undeniable truth is that as the American economy marches on into professionalization and Starbucks penetrates the outer regions of civilization, urbanization is only going to increase.
Ah, but This one is now my personal favorite. [Via a commenter on Kevin Drum's site]
Posted by Andrew Cholakian | Link to this comment | 11- 6-04 2:26 PM
That map with the vertical bars is misleading, and doesn't say what you think it says. It's charting *margins of victory*: the counties with no bar for Kerry in them aren't counties were his support is nonexistent, they're counties where his support was less than that of Bush. So it incorporates the same threshold effect that makes simple red county/blue county maps look starker than they really are. I was misled by that myself for a while.
The concentration of Kerry's support in cities is, of course, real, but the map exaggerates it-- and I also don't see how it's particularly chilling, unless you swallow the Republican interpretation of these maps that somehow attributes popular support to land area.
Posted by Matthew McIrvin | Link to this comment | 11- 6-04 8:17 PM
[redacted]
Posted by [redacted] | Link to this comment | 11- 6-04 9:13 PM
It's the city mouse / country mouse thing. You're a city mouse.
Posted by apostropher | Link to this comment | 11- 7-04 12:43 AM
I'd kind of like to see the latter map in terms of percentages rather than raw numbers. Because if it would look roughly the same then it really verifies my theory that Bush's support is a mile wide but an inch deep.
Put another way, it looks like the Democrats have a lot better chance at flipping Kansas than the Republicans do of flipping Denver. And the undeniable truth is that as the American economy marches on into professionalization and Starbucks penetrates the outer regions of civilization, urbanization is only going to increase.
Posted by neil | Link to this comment | 11- 8-04 4:56 PM