2012 White Obama Lovers Map by County Project: COMPLETE!

[Sol]

KY has been added.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 31.5%

I'm not sure of some of these numbers. I'm sure Campbell County was over 35%, since Obama did a bit better than that overall, and the county is very, very heavily white. (Most nonwhite people who I knew growing up lived in other counties.)

Well, unfortunately I can't see the chart, but I suspect that the white vote for Obama in Campbell county wasn't much greater than that--Obama only got 37% of the vote there and the county is about 3% minority.

[Skill and Chance]

Really surprised at KY and TN coming in ahead of NC.  That suggests that if/when the current coalitions cement themselves, KY/TN/AR could easily be 70%+ Republican. 

Also will be interested to see if VA or FL is the most moderate.  The exit polls showed a tie between the two at 39% if I recall correctly.

[ElectionsGuy]

For how white Kentucky is, I'm surprised how Republican white voters are, especially in comparison to Tennessee, which is much blacker.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

For how white Kentucky is, I'm surprised how Republican white voters are, especially in comparison to Tennessee, which is much blacker.

Most of Obama's worst counties in Kentucky have hardly any people, and are losing population.

[Hydera]

Whats the story with south-central kentucky? Its been almost near reliably republican since forever.

[Torie]

Whats the story with south-central kentucky? Its been almost near reliably republican since forever.

It was pro Union, and thus pro Pub after the Civil War (no slaves in this mountainous, subsistence agricultural backwater), given that it was subsistence agriculture, and had no coal,  its economy was not much affected by the Great Depression, or its politics by the miners' union, it's all white and has almost no Catholics (and has had almost no immigration in since rocks cooled; it's almost all pre 19th century English stock), so the Civil Right movement had no impact, and the Catholic JFK really, really bombed there (one of the counties, Jackson, was at once the most pro Nixon and poorest county in the nation in 1960), and disliked the government coming in and bothering the moonshiners, and now has some tourist activity, and uber conservative retirees, who like an affordable, and culturally and ethnically homogeneous environment, in which to live. It's also quite pro military (Kentucky has a very high rate of military service). And now the Dems are waging a war on coal against its neighbors just to the east.

It is an incredibly beautiful place actually. I love it.

[Adam Griffin]

KY has been added.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 31.5%

I'm not sure of some of these numbers. I'm sure Campbell County was over 35%, since Obama did a bit better than that overall, and the county is very, very heavily white. (Most nonwhite people who I knew growing up lived in other counties.)

Well, unfortunately I can't see the chart, but I suspect that the white vote for Obama in Campbell county wasn't much greater than that--Obama only got 37% of the vote there and the county is about 3% minority.

I have it at 35%. Is the file too big for you to see?

Also, as I was making Kentucky, I could hear in the back of my head the future chants of Bandit claiming that I didn't have the whites in his state showing up as Obama enough, that the Tea Party is dead, that Obama actually won a majority of whites...

[Adam Griffin]

Virginia next?

Likely, but I'm really dreading those cities.

[Sol]

KY has been added.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 31.5%

I'm not sure of some of these numbers. I'm sure Campbell County was over 35%, since Obama did a bit better than that overall, and the county is very, very heavily white. (Most nonwhite people who I knew growing up lived in other counties.)

Well, unfortunately I can't see the chart, but I suspect that the white vote for Obama in Campbell county wasn't much greater than that--Obama only got 37% of the vote there and the county is about 3% minority.

I have it at 35%. Is the file too big for you to see?

Also, as I was making Kentucky, I could hear in the back of my head the future chants of Bandit claiming that I didn't have the whites in his state showing up as Obama enough, that the Tea Party is dead, that Obama actually won a majority of whites...

School computer blocks imgur.

[Adam Griffin]

Try this.

[Adam Griffin]

VA has been added.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 37.3%

[ElectionsGuy]

Virginia is fascinating, but I have to ask, how does Roanoke County only have 7% of Obama white vote? Its 87% white and 37% Obama. 

[7,052,770]

You should send this map to the Huffington Post. It could make the main page...

[Skill and Chance]

Virginia is fascinating, but I have to ask, how does Roanoke County only have 7% of Obama white vote? Its 87% white and 37% Obama. 

Also, Franklin County is 89% white and gave Obama 34% in 2012, and Bedford county is 92% white and gave Obama 27%.  These two are showing as 9% and 7% on the map.  Further to the east, Appomattox is only 75% white and gave Obama only 30%, so the 13% figure there seems to check out.  Maybe a "1" got cut off in a couple of places?

[Adam Griffin]

Virginia is fascinating, but I have to ask, how does Roanoke County only have 7% of Obama white vote? Its 87% white and 37% Obama.  

Also, Franklin County is 89% white and gave Obama 34% in 2012, and Bedford county is 92% white and gave Obama 27%.  These two are showing as 9% and 7% on the map.  Further to the east, Appomattox is only 75% white and gave Obama only 30%, so the 13% figure there seems to check out.  Maybe a "1" got cut off in a couple of places?

I ran into issues with VA after I had started - the Census Bureau weirdly spitted out data that was completely transposed and had all sorts of incorrect figures for counties. With that being said, I did start over and managed to acquire the accurate data (or so I thought). I noticed in my spreadsheet that Richmond City and Richmond County were transposed in comparison to the order the Obama percentages had them, so I switched them to correct the problem (or so I thought). Bedford County was actually the one that made me notice the error in my first version; it'd be odd for me to screw it up again with the new data. I'll check this out later. I did think that some areas of VA looked rather odd, but there seemed to be multi-county correlations in almost all of the cases and I don't recall an instance where I had the city as substantially more conservative than the county with the same namesake.

Keep in mind that for states where there is no turnout by race, I have to acquire the Census data, adjust the counties with a formula based on the discrepancy between that and turnout, and then separately paste in the Obama percentages (sometimes, county likes with "Mc" and ones like this where there are "city/county" variations can cause transposition errors but I am nearly 100% sure I fixed all of those for VA). From there, I build another formula to plug and play in the white share of the vote, so there are some possibilities for less than small variance (though in almost all counties by default, everything usually looks accurate on the first go; I do manually adjust some counties that have large prison populations, huge/established Latino populations, etc).

[Adam Griffin]

You should send this map to the Huffington Post. It could make the main page...

We'll see! I think I'll have to make a better rendition of the map before I do that. The problem with this map is that it's kind of ugly close up, and I'm making it by hand. I do plan to do a Google Fusion Tables map (like the 2008 presidential precinct project one) when I'm finished.

[dpmapper]

Loving the map - keep up the great work!

Are you assuming that Hispanics and Asians have the same voting patterns across counties?  It would definitely be hard to model, but I would suspect that non-white, non-black voters in Dem counties are significantly more liberal than those in (relatively) conservative counties.  (Consider an Asian voter in Charlottesville vs Asian voter in Loudoun, for instance.)  Not sure how much of an impact that would have on the numbers, though. 

[smoltchanov]

This is depressing... in NC, only 30% of whites voted for Obama.

Why? Much better then 11 in Mississippi or 14-15 in Alabama and Louisiana. Southern (REALLY Southern) whites generally (of course, there are exceptions) don't like Obama. It's a FACT. And among many reasons main reason is obvious..

[Adam Griffin]

WV has been added.

2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 32.8%


I'll answer questions some of y'all asked in just a bit.

[smoltchanov]

Excellent! After Oklahoma and (sigh) Texas with it's myriad of counties will be added - all South will be done))) And in some aspects this is the most interesting part of the project...

[Adam Griffin]

Excellent! After Oklahoma and (sigh) Texas with it's myriad of counties will be added - all South will be done))) And in some aspects this is the most interesting part of the project...

Personally, I don't consider TX nor OK to be part of the South. I almost don't even care to do the rest of the nation; as you said, the South really is the most interesting element. Speaking of areas that aren't the South...


DC & MD have been added.

DC 2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 87.3%
MD 2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 45.7%

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

OH and PA would be interesting despite not being the South.

[Bandit3 the Worker]

One thing that might be interesting sometime would be a "bivariate" map that shows each county's urban percentage and Republican percentage together.

[smoltchanov]

Excellent! After Oklahoma and (sigh) Texas with it's myriad of counties will be added - all South will be done))) And in some aspects this is the most interesting part of the project...

Personally, I don't consider TX nor OK to be part of the South. I almost don't even care to do the rest of the nation; as you said, the South really is the most interesting element. Speaking of areas that aren't the South...


DC & MD have been added.

DC 2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 87.3%
MD 2012 statewide share of the white vote for Obama: 45.7%

It's an eternal question - whether Texas and Oklahoma are South or West? IMHO - both. But they are no less southern then Maryland is)))

[Ebsy]

I would like to see Missouri if you are planning on continuing.