The Demographic Underpinnings Behind America's Blue Shift, Illustrated with Interactive Maps

[DebJ]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/03/09/1282700/-The-demographic-underpinnings-behind-America-s-blue-shift-illustrated-with-interactive-maps?detail=email

Several weeks ago, I wrote a post based around an interactive map that looked at how the presidential vote had changed at the county level over the last two decades, not in terms of percentage change like usual, but in terms of the raw number of votes. This showed how the changing geographical pattern of votes—huge numeric gains for the Democrats in the nation's most populous counties, while smaller gains for the Republicans were spread out across the nation's rural and exurban areas—is a huge boost for Democrats' chances in presidential elections but also (thanks to the increased consolidation of more and more Democrats in fewer and fewer places) makes control of the House more difficult.

While it looked cool, I later realized that it was missing an important component: the "why" aspect, explaining who moved into or out of those various places (or, just as importantly, aged into the electorate or died out of it). It occurred to me that I could use the exact same method, looking at the net change in, say, white residents versus non-white residents, or college-educated residents versus non-college-educated residents, over the same two-decade period. Most likely, it would show that the places that had tremendous growth in non-white residents or college-educated residents would be the same places that showed tremendous growth in Democratic votes. Did it? Follow over the fold to find out ...

[Cirque du So-What]

1. Bookmarked, for sure

I can't digest all that info in one sitting, but I will definitely read it all.