The fella at Electoral Vote Predictor has read my mind and produced exactly
the kind of election results map I wanted. It gives a better indication of just
how deeply divided this country is than the simple red and blue maps.
Nobody seems to care about how much healing America needs. The Republicans are patting
each other’s backs and claiming
a mandate from the people and the liberals are turning
their noses up at the “unwashed masses” who elected Bush and/or fleeing
to Canada. Meanwhile, Christendom still can’t agree on what
takes moral priority in politics.
On a side note, the
election cost American tax payers way too much. There are so many programs
that could have benefited from that money. What a waste.
-it may also be interesting to note this historical context, while I’m on the subject of overusing the term “mandate”: George W. Bush has sported the two lowest electoral vote winning margins since Woodrow Wilson.
At least there was quite a bit of violet/purple, which means there were many places where neither candidate did overwhelmingly well.
Still, given the pure numbers, I’m amazed how many people are throwing around words like “mandate” — I’m not sure how three percentage points in a nation our size makes for a mandate. There was no explicit blessing of George W. Bush’s policies; by most of the moral values information in the polls, it seems more people leaned toward Bush because of some abstract sense of moral proximity, not because they were raging conservatives who share his political agenda.
Oops! I forgot to leave the relevant documentation for that last comment, so here it is:
http://www.archives.gov/federal_register/electoral_college/scores.html#1932
Pontificator,
I’m not expecting perfect unity. However, the current hatred and prejudice I hearing about and encounter is the worse than anything I’ve seen in my life. This election wasn’t just about political disagreements. A lot of the people who voted against Bush consider those who voted for him to be dim-witted yokels whose values are little more than folk myth. There is real hatred brewing in this country and it scares me.
Since when haven’t we been a divided country? And is that a bad thing? This is called democracy.
But even by EVP’s map, there’s still a heck of a lot more red than blue.
There’s a map that shows shades of purple, reflecting that there were often sizeable minorities within any given red or blue state. I saw it on someone’s blog and will need to relocate it.
A Washington Post article also noted that many red states elected or reelected Democratic governors: Virginia and Montana come to mind. I’ll try to scare up a link to that as well…
As for healing the divides, well, it’s only been a week, and people’s heads are still clearing, with folks still talking over what went wrong or right.
Today’s viciousness and name-calling have nothing on the prejudice against Jews and blacks in previous eras (at least we yokels can vote and get graduate-level educations!). Nor does it compare to the early 19th century, when members of Congress would attend sessions armed, and I believe one was actually killed by a colleague. There was also the affair with Rep. Sumner, a Maine representative who was beaten to within an inch of his life over a remark Sumner made about the, um, “relations” some slaveowners had with their female slaves.
I’ve been meaning to post some articles regarding the divides, and in many battleground states, there was little of the nastiness we’re talking about. I think the nastiness seems worse than it is when one reads many media sources and works within academia, putting oneself in some of the more fanatical circles of the nation.
You see a lot more red because the red areas have very low population densities.
If you look at the maps that break down by population you’ll see the 50/50 nation that everyone’s been talking about.