"Guess what the map is about" thread

[Adam Griffin]

^^^ Gubernatorial elections in 1990 seem to be the anchor of the map, but chronologically, there doesn't seem to be an exact match for the rest (i.e. results for 1987-1991; results for 1988-1992; etc).

The only thing I can figure (if it's in fact representative of gubernatorial results) is that you've skipped around and are using various non-consecutive election cycles for the off-year ones.

[Adam Griffin]

Anything to do with the Confederacy?

No, but it does seem to be a Southern thing.  It has to do with school policy, particularly its enforcement. 

https://www2.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/school-discipline/images/2013-14-crdc-corporal-punishment-map-1200.png

Is it this?

Yep.  My map shows the percent of students hit in 2008.  It was at least 1.0% for each of the shaded states, 7.5 % for Mississippi.

Interesting to see how much the practice has faded in the peripheral states in the past few years. I made this map a few years ago but based it solely off of the county level (since I couldn't ever find a national school district map and the data-set I was using was based off of counties even in some states with multiple school districts per county).

It's dropped significantly in places like KY, NC and the Mountain West. What is even more unfortunate is that in many cases, the children who are punished this way are disproportionately mentally handicapped or minorities. I remember how big the numbers from 2009-11 were in Robeson, NC, for instance, and it doesn't shock me to see it's the only remaining county in NC where the practice was still being used in the latter map.

[Adam Griffin]

This doesn't have anything to do with electoral politics per se (though not too long ago, it rocked GA's).

Also, the fact that there are technically 25 states in each grouping is merely a coincidence.