Presidential Landslides

"The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." - Thomas Jefferson

French cartographer, Frédéric Salmon, has collected/created voting maps of all US presidential elections. The collage below was assembled from Salmon's maps by RealClearPolitics.com. It shows the county voting patterns of presidential landslides for Roosevelt in 1932 and 1936, Eisenhower in 1952, Johnson in 1964, Reagan in 1980, and Obama in 2008. Democrats are yellow/brown; Republicans are blue. The color darkens as the win margin increases.

There are many interesting points that I see.

1. In past landslides, when you won the election most of the land area of America supported you. Look at the majority of yellow/brown for Roosevelt and Johnson, the vast amounts of blue for Eisenhower and Regan.

2. The Obama victory is quite different. A naive look at the map would make blue the winner. But compare 2008 to 1980. Obama won the large cities on both coasts and the greater Chicago area. He lost the rural vote.

3. Take a look at the Bush 2004 win which evenly split the country. The map looks amazing similar to the 2008 "landslide". It takes few moments to see the differences. Obama took a few extra counties in California but the real difference is the Rust Belt, the Great Lakes region that remains seriously depressed with the failure of the US automotive industry and steel industry. During bad economic times, people will switch their vote in hope of "Change". Obama was very clever to use "Change" as his theme.

4. On a historical note: note the erosion of the Dixie Land Democrats. The south is VERY Democrat in 1932 and 1936, starting to drift away in 1952 and divided in 1964. From the 2008 map it's hard to tell if Obama won or lost the south. Did he win enough city votes to take the southern states?

Bottom Line

Today's political division is not North-South, regional or state based. It's rural vs city.