Ancestry

[Lunar]

This map is a bit deceiving since it lists the plurality result for each county and hides the actual results.

But could there be a causation for some of these shifts in the white vote beyond simple Appalachian-locationocity?


I'm not sure if there's anything to say of the Finns, for example (trend 2008):

[Alcon]

To point out the obvious, "American."

[Lunar]

To point out the obvious, "American."

Indeed, I alluded to it with my Appalachian reference.

But are "Americans" more likely to support McCain outside of that Appalachian zone?  Or does that just represent areas of the South where there are whites-a-plenty?

[Alcon]

I think "Americans" are disproportionately (but not nearly exclusively), um, "patriotic redneck" sorts.  I've always wondered whether Scots-Irish vs. Scottish vs. Irish "vote splitting" affected this.

I'd imagine that "American" everywhere = much more Republican.

[Hash]

There a few ancestry-group specific maps on the American Ethnic Geography website, but they don't seem to have a map of "American" by county. But maps for other ethnic groups are more useful (for example, on the Finnish topic, the top seems to be only 38%).

[Nym90]

As far as the Finnish vote in my neck of the woods, we'll have to get city/town maps for Michigan to be able to analyze much further. From looking at those county trends, Finns who are still employed directly in mining went more strongly for Obama than those that aren't (all of the Finnish counties were at least at one time heavily dependent on copper or iron mining), as the three Finnish counties that trended McCain happen to be those that the mining industry left decades ago.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I remember that map. My county is the only one to have Chinese as the most common ethnicity.

[Sam Spade]

In the South, African-American becomes dominant in this map when black % gets above 25%.  Anything below that is going to be American, except when we get to places like say, the northern suburbs of Dallas, where most of the settlers are actually German (through other parts of western Texas or other parts of the country.

Anyway, in the South this occurs, because as Alcon notes, too many whites will identify as Irish or Scottish or Scots-Irish to screw up the numbers. 

Actually, I should note that Montgomery and Galveston counties are not dominant German as an Anglo group (or Brazoria County being dominant Hispanic).  Also affects a number of counties west of there, though Germans are more dominant there than in east Texas.  Anyway, that's also because of vote-splitting.

One other Texas thing.  Just do a visual comparison for a second...

[nclib]

To point out the obvious, "American."

Indeed, I alluded to it with my Appalachian reference.

But are "Americans" more likely to support McCain outside of that Appalachian zone?  Or does that just represent areas of the South where there are whites-a-plenty?

I think "Americans" are disproportionately (but not nearly exclusively), um, "patriotic redneck" sorts.  I've always wondered whether Scots-Irish vs. Scottish vs. Irish "vote splitting" affected this.

I'd imagine that "American" everywhere = much more Republican.

I haven't tallied it, but I would bet that the vast majority (say >90%) of counties with an "American" plurality voted for McCain.

[pbrower2a]

"American" ancestry suggests that people don't know what their ancestry really is aside from being white. Some of that ancestry is Scots-Irish, some English, some German...

It rarely implies a mixture of white ancestry, so someone like me (more English than anything else, Dutch surname that I long thought German, and much of what I thought German ancestry is really Swiss) must guess which ancestry predominates. There is no "Mixed European" which could account for many people.

Migrations in early America were largely from east to west, which fits the pattern that in Michigan around 1860 a majority was either from New York or New England or had parents from there. That was of course before the mass immigration of people from non-WASP areas. People rarely went from North Carolina to Wisconsin or from New York to Arkansas in pioneer days. Mormons know to an extent that many people don't that their ancestors were largely English, in contrast to people who have exaggerated estimates of other ancestry (especially German and Irish).

The people most likely to know where their ancestors come from is, of course, Utah; there the Mormons make much of genealogy so that they can save the souls of their non-Mormon ancestors and others... and nobody can do much of a study of genealogy without using the material that the LDS Church offers.

The "American" ancestry ties closely to connections to the American "Backwoods" as shown in David Hackett Fisher's Albion's Seed. The European ancestry of Americans is random in some cities, but not in rural America. Scots-Irish people whose culture was too wild for New England, the multi-ethnic Dutch settlements of the Hudson Valley,  Quaker-settled southeastern Pennsylvania and southwestern New Jersey, or the plantation regions of the South went to places that those people avoided: the Backwoods where they could be beyond the prying eyes of people with their own social ideas. They were even more tolerant of inequality than the slavemasters of the South; they had a proto-Fundamentalist Presbyterianism as their faith; they had little use for more than the most rudimentary education; above all else, they distrusted anyone alien. They disliked slavery not for its inequity but more because they didn't want anyone exotic in their midst. They were the ferocious Indian-fighters. Their culture became very libertarian and conservative, and much centered upon personal honor -- meaning that personal insults start nasty fights. That may have modified to some extent, but it is a fair assumption that the names in the phone books for Asheville, North Carolina and Knoxville, Tennessee are very different from those of such places as Rochester, New York or Cedar Rapids, Iowa.