An enterprising soul has drawn up a county-by-county electoral map for the 2008 Democratic primary between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. It’s most interesting because it allows you to look at where each candidate has concentrated support without regard for state borders.
Click on the link for a larger map
The map is imperfect because different states vote at different times and in different formats, so you see things like Clinton shoring up support in Northern and SW Missouri vs. their demographically similar counterparts in Southern Iowa and SE Kansas. Still, it’s striking how Obama dominates the Missippi Valley, except for parts of Missouri, especially the Bootheel. Even in Arkansas, the only state where Clinton broke 60% of the vote, Obama managed a majority in a few counties on the Mississippi.
Maybe I’m not seeing it correctly but I can’t see any Mississippi Valley domination. I do remember the primary map of Mo. Most of the rural map was Clinton, Obama dominated; St.Louis,K.C.,Columbia and Kirksville. Again, unless I am reading it wrong it looks to me like the states that can be counted on to vote Dem in the fall are dominated by Hillary.The most recent Survey USA poll has McCain dominating Mo with Hillary as the most competitive against him. In fact Obama’s competitiveness with McCain is collasping all through the midwest and in parts of the southwest, McCain is even showing as competitive in Kennedy and Kerry land of Mass. I’m not trying to pick a fight but I read a pretty good analysis on this today.
bloggers are so enamored by this map.I don’t find it very useful. I don’t see how it tells you anything about concentrated support. It tells you by what percentage a candidate won a county. But it doesn’t tell you that in one county only 100 people voted and in another county 100,000 people voted. THAT would be useful to see concentrated support. imo
I think people just like the pretty colors.