November 5, 2004
9:46 AM
9:46 AM
America is purple.
All right, you guys have to see this.
Robert J. Vanderbei at Princeton has very effectively put what I was saying into graphic form. Check it out:
What Dr. Vanderbei did was color the Republican counties red, the Democrat counties blue, and the 50/50 counties purple. It's pretty obvious that the majority of America is pretty evenly split. If everyone were as violently frothing at the mouth as the pundits would have us believe, then people would have been rioting in the streets with torches, pitchforks and spades on Tuesday night. We weren't. Instead, this means that America is a pretty moderate country right now -- granted, 51% is leaning more right than left, but all told we're still pretty middle-of-the-road.
There's hope.
While I think the exercise is instructive, I do question your assertion that this demonstrates that "we" are truly more "middle of the road" than one would believe.
Geographically, one can see that the nation is not so strictly divided along partisan lines, yes. But within these divisions -- whatever the specific divisions may be -- it would still appear (anecdotally) that people are bitterly partisan. A particular district may appear fairly "purple" in this example, but still be populated by individuals who are sharply "red" or "blue."
As for me, I'm still sharpening my pitchfork... ;-)