Presidential Preference Average By County, 2000-2008

[Adam Griffin]

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A pretty good snapshot of the evolving trends over the past decade. We've seen elections with two white Southerners, a liberal Northerner versus a conservative Southerner and a Westerner versus a Midwesterner. On top of that, we've seen swings for both conservatives and liberals as well as a dead heat. Obviously, some counties have had such rapid shifts that have not shown up yet (some of the Appalachian counties that have shifted 20 points more Republican, for example).

[Adam Griffin]

Wow, I thought this would be more interesting to some people. What a waste of work.

[Adam Griffin]

Thanks, guys. I should have just guilt-tripped from the start, LOL. Here's the same map, with Democratic contiguous areas "united".

 
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A Republican county in Vermont?

I was shocked too.

To me, the D>40% and D>50% are almost identical in color; I checked the RGB and they are in fact separate colors. Maybe I need to adjust my monitor.

Its really interesting how MN has a ton of R >40% counties.

Yeah, the area as a whole seems to be growing into one big Democratic bastion.

Amazing to see just how strong Republicans are in the center of the country.

This made me more excited about making the map than any other part.

[Adam Griffin]

So this map = (2000 + 2004 + 2008 votes) divided by three and the average is reflected in the color shades?

Yep.

[Adam Griffin]

so, I hate to nitpick, but it looks like some of those MN >40% counties voted GOP by more than 50% all 3 times.  You might also check Chesapeake VA - the margins were greater the two times Bush won there than when Obama did.

Oh, wow. I just fixed the contrast on my monitor and I see the immediate issue with Minnesota. I must've selected R>40% and thought I was coloring with R>50%. I'll fix those here shortly. I'll take a look at VA, too; out of 3,143 counties, I'm sure I've made some mistakes so if anybody else finds any errors, let me know.

[Adam Griffin]

I updated those errors. It looks like in the Atlas, Chesapeake County is displaying results for Chesapeake City, so that's why it was off. I'm going to look into some of the bordering WI counties just to make sure they weren't off, too.