Counties by Ideology - CA, CO, ME, MO, NV, OR, WA

[RI]

I attempted to discern the ideology of each county in Washington by analyzing the results of every referenda result since 2000 that we have on the Atlas. The results for a few counties went against what I thought they would be, but that could have been a result of my methodology and the limited sample size (especially for social issues), though I was pleasantly surprised that some of my feelings were born out (about counties like Skamania, Wahkiakum, Whitman, etc.). Hopefully another Washingtonian could judge how accurate these maps are.

On the top maps, Red is liberal and blue is conservative. On the bottom maps, the four colors correspond to the four quadrants of the political matrix.

[RI]

I would consider Whatcom to be socially liberal, though I suppose it is likely that Bellingham's turnout is lower during odd-year elections, allowing the crazies in Lynden to have more influence.

I don't know if "Communitarian" is the right word for Whitman. WSU totally and completely dominates the county---any threat to the funding of WSU is swiftly rejected by their voters. They kind of remind me of Alaska---"conservative" unless the massive amount of money being poured in is in jeopardy.

I do not consider the coastal counties (Grays Harbor and Pacific in particular) to be "Libertarian." They are old fashioned Democrats (Especially Grays Harbor) that strike me as communitarian more than any of the other options. But I suppose the initiative results don't lie?

It's a very cool idea, though.

That’s what my feelings going in mostly were too. However, I think part of the reason that it turned out the way it did was because most of the economic initiatives and referenda were regarding taxes, and while Pacific and Grays Harbor like things like regulations, they don’t seem to be particularly fond of taxes, and fairly often vote more like Eastern Washington on those.

Of course, Whitman was something of the opposite in this regard. Although, despite their reasons, they do vote more liberally on economic issues in general. For Whatcom, the county was only ever so slightly on the conservative side of the social spectrum, which was definitely because their were very few social referenda as opposed to economic ones in the database.

[RI]

Surely Cowlitz County is full of economic lefties.

Whatcom and Skagit strike me as more social liberal than economic left, but they are both extremely polarized on social issues.

Skagit seems like it has been a slightly communitarian-leaning area due to his relatively high hispanicity and its rural nature, but it has been moving to the left socially it seems. If we did this same test for the next ten years rather than the past ten, it would surely be different.

[RI]

Here is Oregon. Oregon had a lot more referenda that were won by the liberal side than Washington. I don't know if that was because of the issues or the years, but the map looks more liberal than I'd think it would normally be. Only two non-conservative/liberal counties, but they are ones that make sense. I thought Coos would be among them, but apparently they are like Pacific/Grays Harbor economically.

[RI]

Colorado. Would have been nice to have had some more results for economic issues as the result was to the left of what I would have thought. Interestingly very few libertarian counties and a number more communitarian ones, especially in the Hispanic areas and in the Denver suburbs.

[RI]

California. There were a lot of counties that narrowly went one way over another. Humboldt, Lake, Nevada, and Trinity were almost libertarian. Fresno was barely communitarian, while Merced, Riverside, and San Joaquin barely missed.

[RI]

Here's Maine. Very small sample size, so take it with a grain of salt. As I suspected, very few libertarian counties, but a few communitarian ones.



As for the other states mentioned, very few of them have any usable amount of referenda results to draw from, so I don't think I'll be able to get any significant results from them.

[RI]

Is Vermont possible?

The Atlas doesn't have any referenda results for Vermont, and their SoS doesn't have any results, so I can't do anything with Vermont, unfortunately.

[RI]

Missouri, since it had a fair few results, though I would have liked more economic results.

[RI]

Here is Nevada. Another small sample, though. Storey and Washoe ended up as I expected, though I'm not sure about White Pine.

[RI]

Mid-Atlantic!  Mid-Atlantic!

None of the states you requested have very many referenda results on the Atlas. I think Virginia has the most, but even that is only three or four. Not nearly enough.

[RI]

I just noticed Colorado. So what makes Pueblo conservative? And what makes Douglas County of all places communitarian?

One thing I've noticed in doing this is that a lot of suburban counties, while I had them typecast in my mind as libertarian, are turning up communitarian. This is probably because they see direct value in government services that someone in a more rural area might not, while at the same time not being more traditional minded. I'm sure someone has a better explanation. As for Douglas County, it voted for increasing spending and increasing taxes (although not increased minimum wage?), so I think the service explanation seems to fit.

Pueblo County is fairly hispanic, and votes like it on social issues, and it was almost evenly split economically, but it narrowly went towards the conservative side. Definitely a communitarian-leaning area.

[RI]

Are you using the shades as overall liberalism, etc., or compared to the state average?

It's all overall. I didn't think going off of a statewide average was very useful in this case.

I wish I had more data to work with, but I'm mostly limited to what we have on the Atlas and a few easily accessible SoS sites.

[RI]

Just a little request : could you switch the colors between "liberal" and "comuniarian" in your next maps ? It would make more sense to have liberal in red.

go me, having red for communitarian as opposed to liberalism makes intuitive sense. red is used internationally to denote left-wing politics esp economic, but it is also used in the US to denote cultural conservatism/traditionalism and populism.

This, plus I felt that green worked best for liberalism because of green's association with environmentalism and Green Parties that are obviously on the quite liberal end of the spectrum. I've always felt red was more fitting of socialistic/communal ideologies that aren't really associated with social liberalism.

[RI]

Here's Maine. Very small sample size, so take it with a grain of salt. As I suspected, very few libertarian counties, but a few communitarian ones.



As for the other states mentioned, very few of them have any usable amount of referenda results to draw from, so I don't think I'll be able to get any significant results from them.

What statistics were used to make this Maine map? I should like to make a town map for the state.

It’s a rather long and somewhat tortuous process, but if you want to make a town maps, here is what I’ve been doing:

1.   Find the results of a number of referenda/initiatives. The Maine SoS site has plenty. I chose as many of the non-landslide (as in at least one county voted contrary to the state total) votes as I saw from the past decade.

2.   Make one spreadsheet with all of the races that focused on social issues and another for ones that focused on economic issues. Copy the vote totals for each race onto their respective sheets. Mark yes and no as either liberal or conservative for later in accordance to which option represented which position.

3.   On each spreadsheet, add up the total liberal votes and add up the total conservative votes. Divide by the total to get the social issues and economic issues map. The quadrant map is simply based upon those two maps; places that voted conservative economically and liberal socially were marked as libertarian for example.

4.   For the quadrant strength map, I first found something similar to a political matrix score by subtracting the conservative percentage from the liberal percentage of each dimension and dividing that total by five. That should give you a ‘score’. To figure the strength, you use a variation of the distance formula to figure out how far that point is from 0,0. I did this by squaring both scores, adding them together, dividing by two, and taking the square root of that number. Multiply the number you get by ten and add thirty to get the shade you color it on the map (I added thirty just to make the colors more distinguishable).

Hopefully you can figure out how to do that with a program other than paint (which I've been using).