Abstract
Since the 2000 election, both scholars and popular observers alike have become increasingly interested in the political geography of presidential voting. These discussions presume that this geography is structured into blue (Democratic) states and red (Republican) states. In this chapter, we employ spatial methods to move beyond this simple state-level dichotomy to identify how partisan voting has been structured geographically since the advent of mass voter participation in the 1828 presidential election. We find that partisan voting is not structured at the state level, but instead at much more localized levels that often bleed across state boundaries. Regimes of Democratic and Republican support are not election-specific, but instead have changed gradually over time and in understandable ways.
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Notes
- 1.
See Darmofal (2015) for an extensive discussion of how to diagnose and model spatial dependence.
- 2.
The data employed in this book are part of a county-level and state-level political, electoral, and demographic archive collected by Peter F. Nardulli and a team of researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. The data include observations on all counties in the continental United States for each presidential election from 1828 through 2016.
- 3.
As Jenkins and Sala (1998) demonstrate, however, there is little support for the “corrupt bargain” thesis. Clay’s policy positions were closer to Adams’ than they were to Jackson’s and the voting in the House is consistent with a model of sincere voting by members for the most like-minded candidate rather than strategic voting as would be consistent with the corrupt bargain thesis.
- 4.
Electoral College and election results are from Dave Leip’s (2018) Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, https://uselectionatlas.org/
- 5.
Because our interest is in the political geography of county-level voting and in counties as units of analysis, the averages reported in this chapter are not weighted by population.
- 6.
Virginia counties in what would later be West Virginia also had strong Jacksonian support levels, but West Virginia would not become a state until 1863.
- 7.
The Illinois counties exhibiting strong Jackson support were located in the Southern portion of the state. This regime extended westward into Missouri, a border state.
- 8.
Harrison was the Whig candidate on the ballot in CT, DE, IL, IN, KY, ME, MD, MI, NH, NJ, NY, OH, PA, RI, and VT. White was the Whig candidate on the ballot in AL, AR, GA, LA, MS, MO, NC, TN, and VA. Webster was the Whig candidate on the ballot in MA. The results presented in Fig. 2.4 are for the contest between Jackson and the specific Whig candidate in each state.
- 9.
- 10.
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Darmofal, D., Strickler, R. (2019). Beyond “Red State, Blue State”: The Political Geography of Presidential Competition, 1828–2016. In: Demography, Politics, and Partisan Polarization in the United States, 1828–2016. Spatial Demography Book Series, vol 2. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-04001-7_2
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