2012 White Obama Lovers Map by County Project: COMPLETE!

[Adam Griffin]

Very slowly but surely, I am working on building out a map that will display the approximate share of the white vote President Obama received in 2012 in each county. Inevitably and once a PNG gets too unruly in size, it'll be converted into a map layer for online use, resembling this very successful project. You've seen several of these individual state maps posted on various parts of the forum before as I have completed them.

If anyone is interested in helping out with this project, then please let me know. I can help explain how to approximate the white share of the vote in each county (if you are not familiar with how to do this). You'll need at least one of the following (in order from most ideal to least):

• 2012 voter turnout by county, by race
• 2012 voter turnout by race & 2012 voter registration stats by county
• 2012 Census estimates by county

Interactive Google Map (Click Here or on Image Below)

Winner by County

COMPLETED STATES - OBAMA'S SHARE OF THE WHITE VOTE:

DC: 87.3%
Vermont: 66.3%
Hawaii: 65.3%
Rhode Island: 60.2%
Massachusetts: 57.8%
Maine: 55.5%
Connecticut: 52.6%
Oregon: 51.3%
New York: 51.2%
Washington: 51.1%
New Hampshire: 50.3%
Iowa: 50.1%
California: 49.0%
Delaware: 48.4%
Minnesota: 48.4%
Wisconsin: 48.2%
Colorado: 46.7%
Maryland: 45.7%
Illinois: 45.4%
New Jersey: 44.7%
Michigan: 44.3%
Pennsylvania: 44.0%
Ohio: 42.0%
Nevada: 40.7%
New Mexico: 39.1%
Florida: 38.3%
Indiana: 38.0%
Montana: 37.8%
Virginia: 37.3%
Arizona: 36.6%
Missouri: 35.8%
North Dakota: 35.4%
South Dakota: 35.3%
Nebraska: 33.4%
W. Virginia: 32.8%
Alaska: 32.7%
Kansas: 32.5%
Kentucky: 31.5%
Tennessee: 30.8%
North Carolina: 30.6%
Idaho: 28.1%
Arkansas: 27.1%
Oklahoma: 27.1%
Wyoming: 25.4%
South Carolina: 23.4%
Georgia: 19.6%
Texas: 19.6%
Utah: 18.3%
Alabama: 15.8%
Louisiana: 14.4%
Mississippi: 11.4%

[Ebsy]

Neat-o.

[dpmapper]

Why are DeKalb County whites so liberal?  Or maybe the methodology used to estimate the white Obama % gets a little wonky in counties that are demographic outliers? 

[Skill and Chance]

Why are DeKalb County whites so liberal?  Or maybe the methodology used to estimate the white Obama % gets a little wonky in counties that are demographic outliers? 

It's a downtown with a substantial non-Southern population.  That's not particularly surprising to me.   It would be interesting to see if Obama won white voters in Orleans Parish, Mecklenburg, NC or Davidson, TN (probably the least likely).

[TDAS04]

For Florida, why is Miami-Dade at only 34%, while Osceola is at 57%?  Does it have something to do with how you count Hispanics?

[Adam Griffin]

Why are DeKalb County whites so liberal?  Or maybe the methodology used to estimate the white Obama % gets a little wonky in counties that are demographic outliers?  

I am confident in the overall projection for Dekalb County.  Roughly 38% of 2012 voters in the county were white (according to a combination of SoS turnout by race stats and a projected breakdown of "Unknown" and "Other" voters). 55% were black. If we assume 60% of "Other" voters (7% of turnout) voted Obama and 95% of blacks voted Obama, then that suggests ~55% of whites voted for Obama.

I am, however, currently having a running debate over a potential phenomenon that may exist in rural counties that are super-majority black. I came across this in Georgia, as well as the other states (Georgia was the first state I did; keep in mind that Georgia publishes voter turnout in elections by race, unlike the other states here). You'll see several counties that are rural, heavily black and that have high white Obama support. In almost all of these counties, it is virtually black and white population only. As such, there is no possibility that blacks are turning out in higher numbers (because SoS provided this turnout data), nor that blacks are less Democratic (that would make the whites even more Democratic). I considered all of this because I thought my formula had to be wrong for some of these counties.

My hypothesis for these counties is that when whites live in a super-majority black county, their tendency to kneejerk against blacks by voting Republican dissipates. In many Georgia counties where you have 55/45 or 50/50 black splits, whites are 10% Obama or less. However, when you get to around 60-65% black counties, there is a clear rebound in the share of the white vote Obama received. This is just a crude drawing so don't take it as 100% reflective of anything, but this is kinda what I'm seeing:

For Florida, why is Miami-Dade at only 34%, while Osceola is at 57%?  Does it have something to do with how you count Hispanics?

I think that for a number of reasons, Miami-Dade will be less Democratic in terms of white Obama support than Osceola (and Broward, for that matter). I do think my formula is incorrect here. I adjusted Latino support based on FL 2012 exit polling, but it was applied statewide. This means that in many of the northern counties, Latino support might be lower (non-Cubans; not as much impact considering lower Latino populations) in my formula than it is here (and higher in the South, particularly Miami-Dade; Cubans). This will get adjusted at some point, but figuring out which counties get what will take an exponentially larger amount of time than it did to create the overall result. In addition, the formula assumes that half of all registered Latinos turned out in 2012 - this, too, will vary depending on the part of the state and whether we're dealing with Cubans or not.  

[dpmapper]

Why are DeKalb County whites so liberal?  Or maybe the methodology used to estimate the white Obama % gets a little wonky in counties that are demographic outliers? 

It's a downtown with a substantial non-Southern population.  That's not particularly surprising to me.   It would be interesting to see if Obama won white voters in Orleans Parish, Mecklenburg, NC or Davidson, TN (probably the least likely).

Fulton County is the downtown, no?  I guess my question is more, why would DeKalb whites be more liberal than Fulton County whites? 

[Skill and Chance]

Why are DeKalb County whites so liberal?  Or maybe the methodology used to estimate the white Obama % gets a little wonky in counties that are demographic outliers? 

It's a downtown with a substantial non-Southern population.  That's not particularly surprising to me.   It would be interesting to see if Obama won white voters in Orleans Parish, Mecklenburg, NC or Davidson, TN (probably the least likely).

Fulton County is the downtown, no?  I guess my question is more, why would DeKalb whites be more liberal than Fulton County whites? 

Downtown in a Southern city developed with a lot of post-1950 growth (Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Austin, etc.) means a cluster of tall buildings within a 20 mile radius region with the density of a Northeastern inner suburb.  It's not particularly obvious where downtown ends and the built up suburbs begin.  The inner suburb to outer suburb divide is much more dramatic culturally.

[Adam Griffin]

Why are DeKalb County whites so liberal?  Or maybe the methodology used to estimate the white Obama % gets a little wonky in counties that are demographic outliers?  

It's a downtown with a substantial non-Southern population.  That's not particularly surprising to me.   It would be interesting to see if Obama won white voters in Orleans Parish, Mecklenburg, NC or Davidson, TN (probably the least likely).

Fulton County is the downtown, no?  I guess my question is more, why would DeKalb whites be more liberal than Fulton County whites?  

Downtown in a Southern city developed with a lot of post-1950 growth (Atlanta, Houston, Dallas, Austin, etc.) means a cluster of tall buildings within a 20 mile radius region with the density of a Northeastern inner suburb.  It's not particularly obvious where downtown ends and the built up suburbs begin.  The inner suburb to outer suburb divide is much more dramatic culturally.

Yes, a part Fulton is technically downtown, although downtown's broader limits can be considered to extend to the Dekalb County line. You have substantial populations of majority-white, wealthy and progressive communities in a triangle between Little Five Points, North Druid Hills and Decatur. In addition, Dekalb has a higher population density than Fulton (2500 versus 1900, if I recall correctly; which is understandable, given Fulton's rather odd shape). Speaking of Fulton's odd shape, I think that may be an element you're forgetting here: Atlanta proper is less than 1/2 of Fulton's population, and Fulton incorporates some very staunchly conservative, wealthy and super-majority white areas to the north and extreme southwest.

Just to illustrate: here are two contiguous areas - one in Fulton and one in Dekalb - that are roughly equal in population, roughly equal in white population and comparable in latitude (I've purposefully excluded some of the core of downtown ATL because it is both relatively small in population & has too many minorities to make the comparison make sense).

The Dekalb portion is more Democratic than the Fulton portion despite the fact that the Fulton portion has a 22% black population (Dekalb's has 14%). The Dekalb side has a larger Latino population, but turnout as a share of VAP in Georgia in urban and rural areas alike for Latinos is often around 40% or less, so you're talking about in reality 6% of the electorate being Latino versus roughly 3%).

[CountryClassSF]

SF, Portland, Seattle. There's your map. lol

[Adam Griffin]

SF, Portland, Seattle. There's your map. lol

Hey, I don't know if you noticed or not...but this is the Political Geography & Demographics forum. So if you can't discuss issues in an empirical (or at the very least, in a non-ignorant) fashion without being a blatant partisan hack, then kindly show yourself the door and fuck off.

[smoltchanov]

SF, Portland, Seattle. There's your map. lol

Hey, I don't know if you noticed or not...but this is the Political Geography & Demographics forum. So if you can't discuss issues in an empirical (or at the very least, in a non-ignorant) fashion without being a blatant partisan hack, then kindly show yourself the door and fuck off.

+100. I can't be a big help here (living abroad and being almost completely Internet-based), but waitng for the result with great interest. BTW - what is so special in that Mississipi county, that gave Obama only 2% of white vote? Even by Deeep South standard that's something

[YaBoyNY]

Likewise, is there something in that one county in west-central Alabama where Obama got a higher percentage of the white vote than Jefferson?

[Flake]

I'm just going to point out that it's not surprising at all to see a majority of whites in Osceola voting for President Obama. Those are tourism-centric jobs, they're not exactly conservative.

[Ebsy]

SF, Portland, Seattle. There's your map. lol

Hey, I don't know if you noticed or not...but this is the Political Geography & Demographics forum. So if you can't discuss issues in an empirical (or at the very least, in a non-ignorant) fashion without being a blatant partisan hack, then kindly show yourself the door and fuck off.

+100. I can't be a big help here (living abroad and being almost completely Internet-based), but waitng for the result with great interest. BTW - what is so special in that Mississipi county, that gave Obama only 2% of white vote? Even by Deeep South standard that's something

The dead rose to vote against the black man, of course! It's southern tradition!

[7,052,770]

+100. I can't be a big help here (living abroad and being almost completely Internet-based), but waitng for the result with great interest. BTW - what is so special in that Mississipi county, that gave Obama only 2% of white vote? Even by Deeep South standard that's something

I can't necessarily speak for RGriffin, but when I calculated for Mississippi, I used some constant assumptions across counties, a constant black and white turnout percentage across the state, and constant minority percentages in the breakdown (I think it was 96-4 for blacks, around 75% or so for Hispanics and Native Americans, etc.) Whatever is left would be my calculated white vote.

However, if for some reason a county had a black turnout that was a lot lower than the state average, or for some reason Romney did better with blacks (I don't know why that would be the case in Mississippi, but there had to be some county-to-county variation), it would make the calculation undercount white votes for Obama.

[Antonio the Sixth]

Fascinating! I'll keep an eye on this!

[Adam Griffin]

+100. I can't be a big help here (living abroad and being almost completely Internet-based), but waitng for the result with great interest. BTW - what is so special in that Mississipi county, that gave Obama only 2% of white vote? Even by Deeep South standard that's something

I can't necessarily speak for RGriffin, but when I calculated for Mississippi, I used some constant assumptions across counties, a constant black and white turnout percentage across the state, and constant minority percentages in the breakdown (I think it was 96-4 for blacks, around 75% or so for Hispanics and Native Americans, etc.) Whatever is left would be my calculated white vote.

However, if for some reason a county had a black turnout that was a lot lower than the state average, or for some reason Romney did better with blacks (I don't know why that would be the case in Mississippi, but there had to be some county-to-county variation), it would make the calculation undercount white votes for Obama.

I did 95/70 on mine. I remember you saying you had a lot of negative Obama percentages in MS counties (I had several myself); having such a high minority level of support in the formula would definitely cause that.

[Adam Griffin]

As I map out differences between states, I take pause and may need to find subtle ways to tweak my formulas. As you can see in the map below, there are two abrupt changes in gradient with respect to which types of counties appear and don't appear depending on which side of the state line they find themselves on. In the instance of GA/FL, it actually makes sense: one state was notably contested by Obama, while the other was not. In the AL/MS example (why there are so many <10% Obama white counties in eastern MS & not in western AL), I don't see an immediate reason as to why this should be the case.

All counties in white were counties where whites gave Obama 10-19% of the vote. Red counties are counties where whites gave Obama 20% or more of the vote; blue counties were where whites gave Obama less than 10% of the vote.

 

[Adam Griffin]

SC has been added to the map.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 23.4%

[7,052,770]

SC has been added to the map.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 23.4%

I hear numbers like that and I just get jealous. If Democrats could get 23.4% of the white vote in Mississippi, we'd be a solidly Democratic state, and probably pretty inelastic about it.

[IceSpear]

SC has been added to the map.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 23.4%

I hear numbers like that and I just get jealous. If Democrats could get 23.4% of the white vote in Mississippi, we'd be a solidly Democratic state, and probably pretty inelastic about it.

I find it quite creepy how strong the correlation is between the amount of black voters in a state and how solidly Republican the whites are in said state.

[Adam Griffin]

NC has been added.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 30.6%

[Adam Griffin]

TN has been added.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 30.8%

[Ebsy]

Wow, Obama did a lot better in Tennessee then I would have expected. I guess the only thing separating it from North Carolina in terms of competitiveness is the massive black flight from the state.