[extropy-chat] Enlightenment and the election

[J. Andrew Rogers]

Patrick Wilken <Patrick.Wilken at Nat.Uni-Magdeburg.DE> wrote:
> I keep hearing that urban voters would be more likely to 
> vote of Kerry, but it would be much simpler to see if there was an 
> actual graph comparing population density with voting patterns.


Actually, urbanization and population density does not lead to voting
for Kerry, though it is a very popular myth.  In fact, there seems to be
only a weak correlation at best and probably none at all.  The problem
is that most people have no idea how urbanization is actually
distributed among the population geographically.  It is hard to
interpret these facts by looking at maps, which tend to show density by
county, primarily because counties in the west are as large as entire
States in the east.

I looked at this in detail a year or so ago, and there were some
surprising facts. I do not remember where I got the demographics and
stats, but they are out there.

The mountain west is the second most urbanized region of the country,
with urbanization in the ~80% range, with the New York area being the
most urbanized.  The mountain west went almost exclusively for Bush.  It
is also important to note that the mountain west has the greatest
percentage of third-party voters as well, and is demographically the
youngest region of the country.

The urbanization bit throws many people for a loop, considering that you
have huge States and average populations.  Unlike either coast and just
about every place east of the Rocky Mountains, the mountain west has
very few communities -- 40 to 50 miles of nothing between small towns is
normal.  But many of the ones they have are major metros that exceed a
million people and are among the largest cities in the US.  When you
consider that almost the entire population of the state lives in one or
two large metros in these States, it all makes sense.


j. andrew rogers