Day 42: Tennessee

[Sam Spade]

The black/white thing is not a very strong influence in Tennessee, as Tennessee has one of the smallest black populations south of the Mason-Dixon line. (16.3%.  Florida and Arkansas have similar populations, only Texas has less)

The simple line with the state is this:  Western Tennessee votes Democrat, Eastern Tennessee votes Republican. 

This state used to be swing state in the 1980s because Central Tennessee was evenly divided. 

However, in the 1990s, the Nashville suburbs continued to grow and moved sharply to the GOP. 

Since 1994, only one Democrat has been elected statewide and that was Phil Bredesen, Mayor of Nashville.

I really can't see this trend changing at all in the future, unless the Democrat party changes.  So for the time being, unless Al Gore runs for President again (probably not even then), this state will be solidly Republican.

[Sam Spade]

The black/white thing is not a very strong influence in Tennessee, as Tennessee has one of the smallest black populations south of the Mason-Dixon line. (16.3%.  Florida and Arkansas have similar populations, only Texas has less)

The simple line with the state is this:  Western Tennessee votes Democrat, Eastern Tennessee votes Republican. 

This state used to be swing state in the 1980s because Central Tennessee was evenly divided. 

However, in the 1990s, the Nashville suburbs continued to grow and moved sharply to the GOP. 

Seems to be a fair bit more complicated actually (although I don't doubt that the aggregate picture for the three regions is as you describe).
Both rural and urban, both poor and affluent East Tennessee is solidly Republican, no debate here.
But West Tennessee has Dem Memphis, Rep Memphis suburbs, and pronounced Rep and pronounced Dem rural areas - and close areas too.
Rural Central Tennessee is traditionally mostly very Dem but trending away from them. Nashville city is Dem, the suburbia is Rep and seems to be rapidly increasing in importance as well as in Republicanness.

Oh, I don't disagree about the internal complexity of the different regions of the state.  I just didn't feel like giving an Al-like complex analysis.

And for pretty much all recent Tennessee state-wide and national races, the simple model applies strongly, so I felt like it was worthy.

[Sam Spade]

The black/white thing is not a very strong influence in Tennessee, as Tennessee has one of the smallest black populations south of the Mason-Dixon line. (16.3%.  Florida and Arkansas have similar populations, only Texas has less)

The simple line with the state is this:  Western Tennessee votes Democrat, Eastern Tennessee votes Republican. 

This state used to be swing state in the 1980s because Central Tennessee was evenly divided. 

However, in the 1990s, the Nashville suburbs continued to grow and moved sharply to the GOP. 

Since 1994, only one Democrat has been elected statewide and that was Phil Bredesen, Mayor of Nashville.

I really can't see this trend changing at all in the future, unless the Democrat party changes.  So for the time being, unless Al Gore runs for President again (probably not even then), this state will be solidly Republican.

Looking over the black white thing, its not as strong as I thought.  The western 1/4 of the state irts pretty strong (not the majority part), but out of the counties in the western 1/4 of Tenn that the Dems won, Lake County has the smallest % of blacks at 31%.  The eastern 1/4 (to 1/3) of the state is heavily white & heavily Republican.  The central 1/2 of the state (from benton to Overton) really has no black/ white mix at all.  In fact pratically all the counties in central TN that went (outside of Davidson, which is where Nashville is) are pretty much supermajority white, though the vast majority of these counties are very small (Jackson county which is 98.6% white, .15% black) went to Kerry by 19 , only has about 11,000 residents though

Look at your numbers and it should tell you again why Harold Ford has little chance of winning that Senate seat.