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The Great White Sort

By razib on November 5, 2008.

I suggested below that though on average whites did not move toward the Democrats, regionally there might be differences. I inferred this from the fact that areas where blacks are thin on the ground in the South it looks as if John McCain did better than George W. Bush in 2004. So I compared the voting patterns of whites in the 2008 and 2004 elections; and there are regional differences.

2008 Democratic presidential white vote declined 15% or more vs. 2004
2008 Democratic presidential white vote increased 15% or more vs. 2004
i-252e1af8af79195275417f57cfdd0fbc-yeartoyeargrowth.jpg

2008 Democratic presidential white vote 10 pts or more below national white vote
2008 Democratic presidential white vote 10 pts or more above national white vote
i-72fc79fdf0b720e3b923eaaf0c621fad-deviatefromnation.jpg

Here are the raw data....

Kerry Obama 2008-2004 abs. 2008-2004 rel. Local vs. Nat.
National 41 43 2 5%
Alabama 19 10 -9 -47% -32
Alaska 33 32 -1 -3% -10
Arizona 41 40 -1 -2% -2
Arkansas 36 30 -6 -17% -12
California 47 52 5 11% 10
Colorado 42 55 13 31% 13
Connecticut 51 51 0 0% 9
D.C. 80 86 6 8% 44
Delaware 45 53 8 18% 11
Florida 42 42 0 0% 0
Georgia 23 23 0 0% -19
Hawaii 58 70 12 21% 28
Idaho 29 33 4 14% -9
Illinois 48 51 3 6% 9
Indiana 34 45 11 32% 3
Iowa 49 51 2 4% 9
Kansas 34 40 6 18% -2
Kentucky 35 36 1 3% -6
Louisiana 24 14 -10 -42% -28
Maine 53 58 5 9% 16
Maryland 44 49 5 11% 7
Massachusetts 59 57 -2 -3% 15
Michigan 44 51 7 16% 9
Minnesota 50 53 3 6% 11
Mississippi 14 11 -3 -21% -31
Missouri 42 42 0 0% 0
Montana 39 45 6 15% 3
Nebraska 33 39 6 18% -3
Nevada 43 45 2 5% 3
New Hampshire 50 54 4 8% 12
New Jersey 46 49 3 7% 7
New Mexico 43 42 -1 -2% 0
New York 49 52 3 6% 10
North Carolina 27 35 8 30% -7
North Dakota 35 42 7 20% 0
Ohio 44 46 2 5% 4
Oklahoma 29 29 0 0% -13
Oregon 50 60 10 20% 18
Pennsylvania 45 48 3 7% 6
Rhode Island 57 58 1 2% 16
South Carolina 22 26 4 18% -16
South Dakota 37 41 4 11% -1
Tennessee 34 34 0 0% -8
Texas 25 26 1 4% -16
Utah 24 31 7 29% -11
Vermont 58 68 10 17% 26
Virginia 32 39 7 22% -3
Washington 52 59 7 13% 17
West Virginia 42 41 -1 -2% -1
Wisconsin 47 54 7 15% 12
Wyoming 28 32 4 14% -10
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Politics

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Great maps. May I point out, though, that
1. The legend definitions are flipped.
2. I'm more impressed by Montana moving from 39% to 45% than South Carolina moving from 22% to 26%.

I'm surprised there wasn't a bigger native son swing in Illinois. You had big swings in Hawaii and Delaware.

You write in blue: '2008 Democratic presidential white vote declined 15% or more vs. 2004' when you mean 'increased'.

Also in blue: '2008 Democratic presidential white vote 10 pts or more below national white vote', when you mean 'above'.

Anyway, thanks for crunching the numbers, I always knew that Sailer's 'affordable family formation' formula was only half the story. The other half is White Southern Identity Politics.

i think our browsers render the styles differently. what you say is blue i see in red. who else sees things like danny? i checked all my browsers.

Yeah, there's are discrepancies in the White vote in Illinois. Other tables (Race &Gender, Race & Income) it's around ~54%.

Weird. My Firefox messed it up, don't know why. On Chrome & IE it's fine.

I vote in Illinois. I voted against Obama because I just can not vote for a Chicago machine pol for any office. Now the rest of the US will get to enjoy the benefits of the Chicago machine. Oh, joy.

I don't get it - upper map (coloring) should be pure subset of lower map. (Checked in Firefox 3 and IE 7 - both render the same for me)

Utah should not be blue in the top map (-11 shift per the table).

Michigan should be uncolored in top map.

South Carolina should be red in top as well as bottom.

VA and NC should be uncolored in top.

etc etc

Utah should not be blue in the top map (-11 shift per the table).

utah is a very red state; it's got a really low proportion of dems compared to the nation. OTOH, from that low base the % of dems increased a lot from 2004 to 2008. the top map is interested in variation (growth, decline) over time. the latter map is interested in variation across space. does that make sense, or am i missing something?

(all these data are from whites)

aargh, once again I'm an idiot. Misread your legends. Sorry.

Interesting. Taken together the two particularly suggest that Wisconsin and Colorado are flipping big time in teh socialist American hating mindset (white people overvoting for the half-african guy).

Not so surprising about Colorado, but interesting in Wisconsin - not at all long ago Milwaukee was (by some plausible index I've forgotten) the most segregated major city in the US.

I don't suppose you have similar maps for county by county? I'm interested in seeing any voting shifts by county in the south.

Being from the deep south (Birmingham) I am interested in seeing if the demographics of the deep south in anyway resemble the overall demographics of the nation. Specifically, voters in bigger cities were more likely to vote for Obama, etc., and I want to see if that trend is true in the south as well.

Naturally I would like to believe that the vote in my hometown (Birmingham) that went for Obama over McCain was helped at least somewhat by white voters though I admit it's a stretch to hope so.

My best hope is that after seeing that the world isn't going to blow up because we have a black president, the scared whites will realize they can let go of their fears. I say this as a white person living in Alabama because I've actually heard such fears voiced by seemingly rational people.