Robert David Sullivan

14 maps on how the Democrats and Republicans carved up America

My newest project at America magazine details when each county in the U.S. adopted its current political hue.

From the intro:

If this year’s presidential election is at all competitive, we will see the major candidates zero in on a handful of “battleground” states and ignore most of the United States. The red-versus-blue electoral map has changed little since achieving iconic status in 2000; all but 10 states have repeated their choice of party three times. A slight majority of the more than 3,000 counties in the United States have voted the same way over the past seven elections; at the county level, the current red-versus-blue map was mostly written by 1988, when the first president Bush defeated Michael Dukakis.

Mitt Romney won 2,090 counties by at least 10 points, and President Obama won 468 counties (mostly larger and more urban) by at least 10 points—leaving 557 counties that could be considered “purple” by the most generous definition. It would take a landslide this fall to shake many of the counties out of their decades-old voting habits. The maps below illustrate how the current political map has evolved over the past century, showing when each country slipped into the groove it inhabited in 2012. 

See the entire project here.

The disappearance of jobs as a political issue and other SOTU thoughts

This week I covered the State of the Union address for my (Un)Conventional blog at America magazine. On Friday, I noted that President Obama didn't talk so much about creating jobs as about providing some financial security when jobs aren't enough. An excerpt below:

For much of the 20th century, the Democratic Party made “full employment” one of its primary policy goals (the term was in party platforms from 1944 through 1988). But that was when a large share of the workforce belonged to labor unions, which fought against lay-offs and lobbied for such benefits as health insurance and sick days. Now the idea that you can achieve financial security by simply landing a job is as quaint as the notion of starting a college fund with a paper route.

The Republican Party may try to dismiss Obama’s “middle-class economics” as nothing more than prophylactics against financial risk. Instead of subsidizing child care for working parents, why not encourage more Americans to make money by starting their own businesses or investing in the stock market? Opportunity, not financial security, has long been the GOP brand.

But even Republicans are feeling pressure to save the middle class.

On Tuesday, I previewed the speech by responding to a column by Ron Fournier on how Obama has "squandered" the opportunity “to rid the capital of pettiness and gridlock." An excerpt below:

Are Democats waging a "war on suburbia"?

No, but resentment toward prosperous big cities may be a problem for the Democrats in 2016, as I argue in my new post at America magazine. First, I tackle the silly theories of sprawl proponent Joel Kotkin:

Kotkin, a longtime opponent of smart-growth policies and champion of scare quotes, writes of the Democrats, “The progressive ‘clerisy’ and their developer allies may wish to destroy the suburban dream, but they will not be able to stay in office for long with such attitudes.” He argues that the Obama administration is alienating most voters by giving grants to urban developers and funding public transit as part of a “vision of getting Americans out of their suburban homes and cars and into apartments and trains.”

There may indeed be a backlash against Democrats outside of major cities, for reasons I’ll get to, but Kotkin’s theory doesn’t really make sense. Except for those in the construction and real estate industries, voters who already live in suburbia tend to oppose new housing (and traffic) near them, and I don’t know why they would object to squeezing more people into cities. If Kotkin is correct, urban dwellers should be angry at Democrats for not helping them to move out.

Satisficed with Hillary Clinton

My newest post at America magazine looks at the theory of "satisficing," or picking the first option that's good enough, and how it could help Hillary Clinton if she runs for president in 2016. I also express doubt that a breakdown in "civility" is what's causing a polarized Congress:

Naturally, voting with one’s party leadership is the first option considered by a member of Congress, and there’s a rarely a good reason to look past it, which means tinkering with the way we elect people isn’t necessarily going to change much in Washington. But through much of the 20th century, there was a counterbalance to partisanship. Democrats from Southern and rural districts, and Republicans from Northeastern and urban districts, represented constituencies at odds with their respective party’s national leadership. For these members of Congress — think of Ben Nelson in Nebraska or Olympia Snowe in Maine — independence from their party’s leadership was so essential that crossing party lines was often the satisficing option.

Read the whole post here.

Distressed suburbs may swing elections, if candidates notice them

In today's post at America magazine, I look at Richard Florida's theory that "distress 'burbs," or older white suburbs with increasing poverty rates, are the new political swing areas (between Democratic central cities and Republican affluent suburbs). An excerpt:

It makes intuitive sense that economically volatile areas will be unpredictable in their politics, though some individual communities may just be groping their way toward their assigned side of the density division. (See previous post on 800 people per square mile as the “tipping point” at which a city or town turns Democratic.) Florida says that the Democratic Party indeed may benefit from the increasing urbanization of what we’ve long thought of as suburbia.

But there are counterexamples. In an accompanying piece at Politico, Florida reminds us that Toronto’s annexation of its distressed suburbs gave it Mayor Rob Ford, who would hardly be at home in the Democratic Party of the U.S.: “A Canadian version of a Tea Party populist, Ford campaigned on putting the downtown elites in their place: ripping out bike lanes, cutting taxes and declaring war on waste and the ’gravy train’ of public spending.”

Read the entire post here.

Voters don’t switch sides during Katrinas

At America magazine, I urge people to resist the "game change" view of American politics:

[...] most adults have stuck with one party for many years and that those who switched mostly did so for personal reasons. Some might have moved to the left because of a child in an underfinanced public school, or the inability to get health insurance because of a pre-existing condition, or a relationship with a gay person who wants to get married. Others may have moved to the right because they’re small-business owners exasperated with regulations, or their tax burdens has increased, or their neighborhoods have high crime rates. But I rarely talk to anyone who’s gone from hating to loving a party (or vice versa) because of the way a president or congressional leaders have handled a crisis.

Sure, a long pattern of behavior—the Republicans repeatedly shutting down the government or the Democrats continually changing the rules on health care—can change perceptions of a political party. But that change occurs over months and years, not during the few days of an exciting story in Washington.

America's worst-run government program: Election Day

At America magazine, I note the coverage of the malfunctioning Obamacare websites and wonder if we can pay a little attention to a more frustrating bureaucracy. An excerpt:

When it comes to election law, the United States has a patchwork of rules and regulations that are constantly changing and often fly against constituents’ wishes. Forms are often badly designed, as noted by Next City: "shoddy design helped explain why a full quarter of the million-plus New Yorkers who voted for mayor didn’t vote for even one of the six measures on the ballot’s back side." People moving from one jurisdiction to another often face unfamiliar requirements (“deadline shock”) in order to exercise a constitutional right, and many local governments show a lack of concern when residents have to spend hours on what should be a simple task. Can we spare some outrage for this debacle?

Read the whole post here.

What's so great about being a battleground state?

US Rep. and former GOP vice-presidential nominee Paul Ryan gives a kick to the dying idea of awarding Electoral College votes by congressional district, telling a newspaper that he prefers candidates to campaign all over Wisconsin:

"I've always kind of liked the idea of being targeted as a state," Ryan told the Wisconsin State Journal editorial board on Tuesday. "I'd hate to be a flyover state. I'd like to be in the hunt for being a targeted state. I think it's good for us."

Politicians always say this, but how is being a battleground state "good for us"? It's good for TV stations that run campaign ads and for local political consultants, certainly. As for the general population, we seem to be past the days when presidential nominees promised to put military bases and public works programs in closely contested states. (And Ryan is supposed to be a budget hawk anyway.)

The diabolical genius of the GOP's anti-densite plan

A devilishly clever Republican Party plan to circumvent the popular vote for president in certain states — by awarding electoral votes by congressional district — is moving out of crackpot territory. Yesterday a subcommittee in the Virginia Senate recommended a proposal that would have given Republican Mitt Romney nine of the state's 13 electoral votes, even though he lost the statewide tally. Similar proposals are being floated in other states where Romney lost the popular vote but carried most congressional districts, including Michigan, Ohio, and Pennsylvania.

Jamelle Bouie explains why such a system weakens the votes of big-city dwellers (who, not incidentally, are more likely to belong racial minority groups):

Because Democratic voters tend to cluster in highly-populated urban areas, and Republican voters tend to reside in more sparsely populated regions, this makes land the key variable in elections — to win the majority of a state’s electoral votes, your voters will have to occupy the most geographic space.

Electoral map blues

My quick take on the results of the 2012 election, and the map that's slowly changing to the disadvantage of the current Republican party, is at America magazine. A taste is below.

Coming soon to this blog: The return of posts about sitcoms!

A lot of today’s headlines refer to Obama’s sizable, even “landslide” victory in the Electoral College of 332-206 (again, assuming he keeps Florida). Technically, Mitt Romney only had to flip two states to win. But one of them had to be California, which was a hotly contested state in every close race of the 20th century and this time gave its 55 electoral votes to Obama thanks to a popular vote margin by more than 20 points. The GOP is noncompetitive in the biggest state in the US, with the biggest chunk of electoral votes in American history, because a negligible share of California’s population lives in overwhelmingly white small towns. It’s the same with New Jersey, which could have been the second flipped state and which also was competitive throughout the 20th century: Its almost completely urban and increasingly nonwhite population is a nonstarter for the GOP.

The importance of being an Ohio county

While we wait for Tuesday's returns, I'm experimenting with new ways to show election data, particularly with respect to the geographic bases of the two major parties. The charts below show the importance of major counties in Ohio to the Democrats and Republicans over the past century. Indicating both partisan leanings and population growth, they show which percentage of each party's total vote has come from a specific county.

For example, the electorate in Cleveland's Cuyahoga County has actually decreased over the past half-century, but it remains vital to Democratic candidates because they've been getting a bigger piece of the shrinking pie. In contrast, suburban Butler County, outside Cincinnati, has become more important to the Republicans because they've maintained a lead throughout a period of fast population growth.

I hope to update and create charts to reflect the 2012 results, so feedback on their content and presentation is welcome. And thanks to the Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections for being a chief data source.

Victory margins in presidential elections: Illinois, 1856-2008

From bellwether to blue heaven.