Comments on: The white vote for Obama, by county & correlates

By: vic

vic — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 23:59:34 +0000

Jay Cost has explored somewhat similar stuff

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/horseraceblog/2009/01/

By: Lyle

Lyle — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 19:15:07 +0000

Partly one has to recoginze that there was a severe event that de-germanized the population WWI. My great grandfather had never gotten his second citizenship papers, so when the newspaper published a list of aliens his name appeared and his door got painted yellow (he came to the us at age 1 or 2 and was in his 50s in 1917). Perhaps a better example on a gravestone in Darmstadt Indiana, the husband who died in 1914 has a german inscription the wife who died in 1921 has an english inscription. Its only in the 1980s that german heritage came back to be allowed. The whole event was IMHO a very traumatic one for those of german heritage. This may also be a factor, since a a large number of folks came over to avoid religious differences or the draft (german not us). I might put it that the german group was less puritian than other groups (in the sense of I know whats better for you than you do for example prohibition.)

By: John Emerson

John Emerson — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 11:53:45 +0000

I don’t think that many would have predicted that Germans and Iowans would be two of Obama’s best white demographics, but so it apparently was.

Germans have generally been a less-conservative communitarian force in US politics. (Also anti-prohibition, back in the day). I believe that this may be partly because of 19th c. German motives for coming to the US after 1848.

By: razib

razib — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 01:03:43 +0000

houston several times. new orelans, baton rouge and nashville too.

By: Donna B.

Donna B. — Sun, 29 Nov 2009 00:41:52 +0000

I’m curious… Razib. Have you had the opportunity to travel much in the South?

I don’t have a point to make from the answer either way, it’s just that I found it odd that anyone would ever think Texas was like the ‘stereotypical’ South other than a few counties in far East Texas.

By: razib

razib — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:37:58 +0000

Not sure what you mean by this - that the white Obama vote in TX is less than predicted simply based on the black fraction of the Texas population? Well, as you well know, Texas and Florida are unique in having (to the first order) three-cornered ethnoracial breakdowns rather than bipoloar, so I'd expect things to be different.

i mean that very white areas of texas are more republican than very white areas of south. IOW, texas has some far west/great plains tendencies.

By: bayesian

bayesian — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 20:25:36 +0000

Texas isn't quite like the rest of the South

You can say that again. Neither is Florida, in a different way (though Florida north of I-4 feels pretty generically Deep South to me - I've only spent extended time in Jacksonville and Ft Walton Beach, so YMMV).

It is more Republican on the federal level than racial polarization into a white and black party would predict.

Not sure what you mean by this - that the white Obama vote in TX is less than predicted simply based on the black fraction of the Texas population? Well, as you well know, Texas and Florida are unique in having (to the first order) three-cornered ethnoracial breakdowns rather than bipoloar, so I'd expect things to be different.

Also, blacks in Texas and Florida are much more concentrated in the urban areas compared to the rest of the South (not surprising since both those states had much higher rates of immigration post Civil War) - I can probably dig up some quant indices on this.

Indeed, I'd be very interested in regressing white Obama vote versus urbanization controlling for income/house price. Bet there would be a pretty consistent positive correlation. Note sure what the right index of mean urbanization for counties is ...

Re the Latino majority counties (Rio Grande valley, more or less) in texas, unsurprising that they would be quite different than the rest of the country in that those places have a substantial, longstanding landowning class, which gave a different political and cultural trajectory (can't find historical demographic data at the moment, but my content-free guess is that the population growth rates in the Rio Grande counties over 1846-mid1960s are probably much less than the other substantially Latino counties of the Southwest, but maybe not New Mexico).