Talk Elections

They'd be interesting.

I could, but my computer's hard drive is fried so I don't have access to Microsoft Paint. When it's fixed, I might do it; I was already thinking of making one anyway.

I don't have access to the Atlas info for that time, but there's a book at the library that has all of the county results going back to 1920.

You should send that info to Dave. He doesn't have country results for southern states prior to 1940, with a few exceptions.

I finally got around to making these. Here's 1920 (http://img103.echo.cx/my.php?image=1920countymap4zq.png). It's presently without Oklahoma, Missouri, Louisiana, Kentucky, Tennessee, and North Carolina; I'll be updating it until it's finished. Here's 1936 (http://img103.echo.cx/my.php?image=1936countymap27hi.png); it's missing Arkansas and Kentucky, but again, it will get updated.

While we're at it, here's  1924 (http://img103.echo.cx/my.php?image=1924countymap8be.png) (missing Iowa and Kentucky), 1928 (http://img103.echo.cx/my.php?image=1928countymap9ix.png) (missing Tennessee and Virginia), and 1932 (http://img103.echo.cx/my.php?image=1932countymap7rn.png) (missing Kentucky).

Nice! Do you not have the data for the missing states?

In FDR's 1936 landslide, it looks like he won 13 out of 62 counties in his homestate. He only won 2 counties in nearby Vermont.
 

Thanks. I have the data available; it's just very tedious to color in the maps. They'll definitely all be finished eventually, though.

What would be nice is some system where you specify the boundaries, and then it takes in the data and colors it for you. The county boundaries do change, but not that often. You could use such a system to easily make custom maps, like the Eugene Debs vote by county with custom colors.

It's interesting how the West is so much more volatile than the East. In 1920 and 1936, nearly every county in the west voted for the winning candidate, while the northeast and southeast resisted landslides quite well.

That tells you something about the bandwagon nature of politics in a place where people don't have strong roots and deep history.

However, Carter in 1976 did poorly in the west, despite winning.

I think I know why those few counties in Mississippi and Arkansas voted for Hoover, due to his work there durring their 1927 floods. Their are still statutes to him in the areras effected by the Great Floods of 1927.

Great maps!!

Excellent work, Bob!  Have you shown your data source to Dave?  I expect he'd be incredibly grateful for it.

Thanks :). Unfortunately, I don't think Dave would be able to use it, since it doesn't include third party votes (other than the major ones like LaFollette, Wallace, and Perot).

I could be wrong, but at the county level it probably wouldn't matter.  It certainly wouldn't hurt to ask Dave if it would be of any use.

1976 was hardly a landslide, though. Also, by the 1970s the West was begining to develop its own sustained political heritage.

The more interesting exception is 1896-- brought on by an economic crisis that disproportionately affected Western farmers. The West's abandonment of the Democratic ticket in 1900-1908 compared to the South's loyalty to it shows that 1896 is the exception that proves the rule, however.

1920 (http://img98.echo.cx/my.php?image=1920countymap2zv.png), 1924 (http://img234.echo.cx/my.php?image=1924countymap6se.png), 1928 (http://img98.echo.cx/my.php?image=1928countymap6dr.png), and 1936 (http://img234.echo.cx/my.php?image=1936countymap24pr.png) have all been updated.

Very nice! I'm looking at the 1920 map and thinking "and people say we're too polarized now?"

Exit polls going back to 1972 show it's by far the most polarized it's been starting with 1972. Too bad we don't have exit polls from the '20s and '30s.

It is true that polarization has followed a rough parabolic shape from 1920 to today. Before 1928, the partisan bases were sharply defined and relatively homogenous. They could be determined through an economic basis derived from the agricultural economy, which in turn was derived soil fertility and ultimately from climate.

Northern white ethnics and blacks' invasion of the Democrats was then followed by southern Baptists' invasion of the Republicans that year. This threw the postwar partisan alignment into chaos. The agricultural basis was no longer relevant in the industrial society.

The chaos transition period (1928 onwards) is now coming to a close. The spoke-and-hub artificial transportation system has replaced the natural clime-based agricultural system as the basic unit of economic activity, and by derivation, of its contribution to the determination of politics.

The Republicans have found a new economically determined base around the spoke of the modern spoke-and-hub transportaiton system and the Democrats have found a similiar base near the hub of the system. The demise of Dixiecrat state legislatures in Alabama, Mississippi, Arkansas and Tennessee, when such occurs, can be said to be the final conclusion of such a transformation. As of today, it is not yet complete; but taking 1928 as the beginning and 1972 as the median, we can expect it to be completed around  the year 1972 + (72-28) = 2016, assuming symmetry around the trough of polarization and partisan power.

Interesting how FDR got 59% of the vote in New York but most counties.

What are the numbers for New York City?

I actually found this site by accident, but it's pretty sweet!

county maps 1856-present! (http://geoelections.free.fr/USA/accueil.htm)

So what if it's in french?

Look at the 1860 map of Illinois!!!!

Why are their maps so small?

Lots of graphs there. It looks like people in Republican areas are more likely to be divorced.

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That's neat. I wonder if Dave has any plans to extend the site to cover county results for really old elections.

Wow! This officially makes it more informative than Dave's site. I wonder if Dave could get the data from them :)

They have the same Bush / Kerry vote totals, except that they seem to have rounded to the nearest 1000.

I thought they didn't have a popular vote in Colorado in 1876.

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The 1856-->1860 suggests that the Constitutional Union party was the true successor to the Whigs.

Awesome!

Badly translated version.

http://babelfish.altavista.com/babelfish/trurl_pagecontent?lp=fr_en&trurl=http%3a%2f%2fgeoelections.free.fr%2fUSA%2faccueil.htm

You have to love Babelfish.

Incredible! Harding won almost every non-confederate county in the country.

Roosevelt looks like he did even better. Why did he do so comparatively poorly in his native New York and the Northeast in general? Was the New Deal particularly unpopular there?

Did any of the two win more counties than Nixon in 1972? 1936 must have been the greatest landslide in history.

:D

The rural Northeast remained faithfully Republican through the Depression. The New Deal, which they viewed as an urban welfare scheme, didn't appeal to them. Upstate New York voted solidly against FDR in all four elections, as his home-state status had no effect.

Nixon still holds the record for most counties carried. Landon's strong support in the rural Northeast and Great Lakes precluded FDR from carrying a record number of counties.

Is it a record by percentage, or raw number? Because it can't be the former (1820).

Nixon had a state or two more than Roosevelt, though that probably doesn't make much difference.

Did any election produce something else comparable to e.g. Roosevelt's 97% in Mississippi?

By margin of the popular vote, 1920 was the greatest landslide in the 20th century. Other than that, you have to go back to the era of good feelings to get landslides on that proportion. It's funny that the greatest landslide of the 20th century produced what many consider to be the worst president of the century!

Also, the period from 1920-1944 was pretty unique; it was a quarter century of virtually continuous landslides. The next four decades 1948-1988 saw a high share of landslides, too, but not continuously. Since 1992, we have had four straight non-landslide elections.

Margin of victory is a really bad indicator.

Republican A 28%
Republican B 26%
Democrat 46%

According to MOV, this is a Democratic landslide.

I couldn't get to that site.  Is there a reason for this?

Neither can I

I truncated the website address, and got in.  Try
http://geoelections.free.fr

I can see it now after following links on that site.  Thanks.

I can see the maps now too.  Is Dave going to put the counties of the yrs 1856 to 1956 on this site?

There is a comment about Colorado in the Gulf of Mexico, but I can not read it.

I have sent an inquiry to the e-mail contact for the site.

There is a PDF file for 2004 that can be zoomed.

What's interesting about 1920 is that unlike the other landslides of the century (1936, 1964, 1972, 1984) it wasn't a re-election.

And also one of only two elections where a sitting senator has defeated a candidate from a position that has historically been shown to be much more successful.

You could argue that 1928 and 1932 were landslides.

And received the following response (in blue).

Si, le Colorado organisa un scrutin présidentiel en 1876, mais à ravers sa législature (3 élus républicains). Burnham publia les résultats par comtés du scrutin gouvernatorial concomitant "as an approximation to the strength of the two parties in Colorado at that time". C'est lui que j'ai cartographié.
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In 1876, Colorado chose its presidential electors through its legislature (3 republicans elected). However, a gubernatorial election was held that year, and the results by counties of it are given in Burnham "as an approximation to the strength of the two parties in Colorado at that time" (dixit). I mapped the latter.

The statewide result in the gubernatorial race was John Routt (R) 14,154 to 13,316 for the Democrat candidate.