I am a Liberal

Wooo Hooo Me too.

A big Amen there

Red on the map. Lets put it this way

If you had a county that had exactly 10000 people in it

and 5001 people voted for the Fundamentalist, er I mean republican Party, and the other 4999 voted for the Peoples Party er I mean Democratic Party, is the county truely Red?

It shows up on the map as such. The Red you see is highly deceptive. In many of the so-called red states the votes were 50.9% to 49.1%

Yeah, and there were close blue states too. Your point?

Exactly. The whole red vs. blue poloarization of the country is largely a product of the media and partisan politicians. I'd guess that the majority of people in general don't fit so neatly in to either camp. I'm definitely a liberal, but I'm loathe to call myself a Democrat, or anything else. I care about policy, not bumper stickers. I'll accept "sane" though.

I've been saying for years, both here and elsewhere, that when you get right down to it, most Republicans and Democrats have an awful lot in common, and are basicly good people. I think the hardliners from both parties screw up the perceptions for everyone else.

It's human nature - the herding instinct. People want to belong to something and that belonging seems more meaningful if their herd has "enemies." All people in the world have more in common than not (unfortunately, one of those things is being easily manipulated).

Very much agreed. When you drill down the numbers you find that very few states are fully "red" or "blue".

You have the well known map that everyone has seen here:



When you break the 2004 results down by county you get something like this.




If you do a catrogram map of this data based on population you get this.



When you get down to it, with some notable areas that are strongholds of "redness" and "blueness", most of the coutry (based on the 2004 results anyway) is more purple than red/blue.

Wow. That last map is funkeh!

More Red than Blue on the map

Your point?

Which if anything argues against you, so thanks, Magnum.

The maps only show who won. Most of the red states, its 50.9% to 49.1% not the big 60-40

It does not give the true numbers of Democrats

Read again. My point is that the red makes an area look like its 100% but in reality its more like 50.1% and in some areas its 42% to 41%

But again, this can be said of several of the blue states too. You can't slice the numbers to get an overpowering majority on either side, because it just doesn't exist.

Did you bother to study the second map, and more particularly the third?

Did you bother to spend more than a fraction of a second looking at the third map before you started posting?

Oops... Sorry, I should have read the rest of the thread. lol

I still like this one here:



(Showing percentage of voters)

That's not what it says, that's not it's intent. If that is what you think it makes it look like then you don't understand how to read the map in context, or you just laboring to hard to find something to take issue with.

The summary point I put at the bottom should have made it clear if you'd missed it looking at the maps (or being familar with the data).





So let me state my point again and see if it sticks. Not all red states are pure red, not all blue states are pure blue. That fact of the matter is, with some localizations that are deeply red or blue, the country is mostly purple (i.e. a mix of red and blue that is so close as to deny clear dominance to either "red" or "blue".

Now if you want to engage in a pissing contest over who's dick is 50.10110% larger than the other person's, you go right ahead. Whip it out and have a ball with any an all who will play with you.

But for my money it's a waste, and it's the wrong message to take away from all this. In my not so humble opinion, the key two things to take away from the results are:
1) The electorate was (is?) very evenly split.
2) Every fucking vote is important so get your ass out and vote regardless of who you vote for.


Thank you, and goodnight.

I prefer this one that normalizes area to population:

Yup...looks pretty darn purple to me. I want to know who that ultra bright blue splotch in the mid-west is though.

The data in that map are flawed. It normalizes by both color, and population, so it takes a concept and presents that concept visually in two ways at the same time (by color, and by relative size) To be an accurate reflection, it would have to either be shades of purple OR be depicted in a distorted shape, not both.

I suppose it would be possible to make the picture mathmatically accurate, but it would convey no information visually whatsoever.

For example, it would be like presenting a pie chart, and then telling the person looking at your chart "Oh, the size of the slices of pie really don't mean anything, the darker the color of the slice, the more value it represents, so keep that in mind."

tell that to the Soviet Union and the entire Warsaw Pact

Recipe for Overwhelming Majority:
1. Preheat oven to 400 degrees
2. Slice numbers
3. Dice numbers
4. In a large bowl, combine numbers, mix of fear, good advertising mix, 3 eggs, and a healthy amount of partisan optimism. Beat until the evening news is on. Batter will be thick and ideological. Spoon into prepared pan. Add blue or red food dye according to taste.
5. Bake in preheated oven for one hour at center rack.

Go look up Socialism. Go look up Communism. Get back to us. Tell us in 100 words or less why there are two different words.