This is pretty much exactly what I was hoping for when I went to bed last night -- big NC margin, small IN margin. (2 points!!! Wow.)
nimh wrote:Hey, you cant be right every time!
2008 Indiana Democratic Primary Results Map
As you can see, Barack Obama did much better in Indiana than he did in Pennsylvania or Ohio. It's rural areas look much more like Missouri than the Lower Midwest. Outside of Indianapolis and Gary, Obama fared much better in the modest size towns, winning Fort Wayne and Eklhart, coming close in Evansville, and not getting blown out in Muncie, Terre Haute, Marion, etc. The two counties just North of Indy is a set of well-off suburbs. And of course there were big wins in Bloomington and Lafayette.
2008 North Carolina Democratic Primary Results Map
Here's a map just for the actual results in North Carolina. The two Obama counties in Western NC are Asheville and the college town of Boone. Outside of that, the race breaks down more-or-less on white-black and urban-rural lines, with urban whites more likely to vote Obama and rural whites more likely to vote Clinton. To the east of Raleigh-Durham-Chapel Hill you have part of the "black belt" that extends into Southern Virginia.
It's worth noting that Obama did much better in Western NC than he did in Southern Ohio, Western Virginia, Eastern Tennessee, etc. Part of this is due to an influx of retirees, but it does seem that Appalachian voters are at least slightly more receptive to voting for him now than they were earlier in the race.
Comments
I grew up in Western North Carolina (near Hayesville in Clay County, the second county from the left on the border with Georgia (where I live now) and it's a dang racist place. Obama is gonna have to work hard against the right to make much headway outside of the in-migrant communities (retirees, etc).
Posted by: MR. Bill |
Oh I don't think he can win there. But it may be offset by a huge increase in college educated voters from the RTP, etc. I'm just pointing out that he lost Clay County 73-25, when he was losing similar counties in East TN, Western VA, something like 90-10. It's small progress, but it's progress.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot |
In March, I posted this link to a Google Maps application for the primary results by county for each state.
Since the maps show only one state at a time, I went to Photoshop and painstakingly put together a composite map, because I'm a nut. The fine-tuned version of that map was here.
It laid out what the surrounding landscape looked like for the primaries in Pennsylvania, Indiana, North Carolina, West Virginia and Kentucky -- and the regional trends that crossed state borders already suggested that Obama "ha[d] a shot in Indiana, and especially North Carolina should be more do-able."
Well, three of those primary states are in now - PA, IN and NC. So it's time for an updated map.
Here's the small version - should give a nice feel for the overall patterns. But the details are pretty illegible, so to see the full-size map click on the picture (and when a new window opens, you probably will need to click the image there again to get it in real size).
