County Flips

[Rob]

In an attempt to better understand the shifts in American voting patterns over the past few decades, I decided to look at the county results for several elections: 1972, 1984, 1988, and 2004. Specifically, I was interested in counties that voted Democratic in GOP landslides of years past, yet voted against the Democrat in 2004's close election. I made maps showing the shifts...

1972 (blue counties voted for McGovern and Bush)

1984 (blue counties voted for Mondale and Bush)

I did something a bit different for 1988, which I think is more interesting than the previous two elections. Blue counties are still GOP pickups, but I also included counties that voted HW Bush/Kerry in red.

Map

The last "Massachusetts liberal" to run against a Bush clearly appealed to a different constituency. Note that many rural counties backing Dukakis went for Bush in 2004; Oklahoma, Texas, Iowa, and West Virginia are particularly depressing for Democrats. On the bright side, the Dems have made strong inroads in the Southwest and the Northeast.

What's the point of it all? I don't know- this was probably blazingly obvious. But if you ever need to know which counties voted for both McGovern and GWB in a pinch, here you have it.

[Rob]

Nice

Thanks.

The Western ones are largely logging or ex-logging, right?

I believe so, yes.

A very high proportion of counties on map two are (or were) mining areas.

I suppose all of this reflects the rise of social issues in the political debate. A prime example is Greene, Pennsylvania; its majority for Bush in 2004 (albeit a razor-thin one) was only the fourth Republican victory in history (the others being 1920, 1928, and 1972 iirc).

[Rob]

I did 1968, even though it doesn't meet the criteria I initially set out to look for. As you might expect, red counties voted for Nixon/Kerry and blue counties voted for Humphrey/Bush. With the Wallace factor, however, I had to introduce new colors: pink counties voted for Wallace/Kerry, while light blue counties voted for Wallace/Bush.

One unusual thing I noted: every Humphrey county in Arizona voted for Bush, while every Kerry county had voted for Nixon.

[Rob]

The map doesn't indicate that.

1968:



2004:

[Rob]

No problem.