Dems Can't Keep Losing Dixie

[muon2]

The four region model of the US is useful for keeping statistics, but it's not very helpful in defining political and cultural geography. A better reference is Joel Garreau's work Nine Nations of North America which goes into the details about what makes up the culture of each region and where to best draw the lines. Here's his boundary for Dixie from the Atlantic Ocean west to Louisville.

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As to the DE debate, my best man lived in southern DE for twenty years, and I had many visits to the area. I agree with Garreau that southern DE and the Eastern Shore of MD fit in more with the Carolinas than they do with Long Island (where I spent much of my grad school research time).

[muon2]

The four region model of the US is useful for keeping statistics, but it's not very helpful in defining political and cultural geography. A better reference is Joel Garreau's work Nine Nations of North America which goes into the details about what makes up the culture of each region and where to best draw the lines. Here's his boundary for Dixie from the Atlantic Ocean west to Louisville.

You must be logged in to read this quote.

As to the DE debate, my best man lived in southern DE for twenty years, and I had many visits to the area. I agree with Garreau that southern DE and the Eastern Shore of MD fit in more with the Carolinas than they do with Long Island (where I spent much of my grad school research time).

Of course not using the four region model, they can certainly be grouped in with rest of the coast. My point was that the majority of their population is more culturally intuned with the northeast than with the south. To use another example, DE is closer to NJ than to GA.

I'm not merely suggesting that southern DE be grouped with the coast. I'm claiming that DE is culturally divided with Kent and Sussex counties belonging in Dixie. The chicken farms and NASCAR presence there are more like GA than NJ. However, over half the population of DE is in northern New Castle county, which is definitely not Dixie, so if one wants to assign the state as a whole to a region it is not Dixie.

Splitting states by county is often more helpful since it reveals those cultural splits. No one would put IL in Dixie, but few would not recognize that the counties south of I-70 in IL are culturally part of Dixie. At the presidential level the totality of a state's vote matters for the electoral college, but counties matter in understanding congressional elections.