Red State Blue State? How about Purple.

Some background, just like neo-neocon I grew up in the very blue state of New York and lived there for most of my life. Five years ago, my husband and I relocated to Atlanta, Georgia, for a job opportunity.  My husband had always wanted to leave New York, getting sick of the traffic and the taxes. I was a dyed in the wool New Yorker, and proud Long Islander. I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

But a 40% increase in salary, a promotion, and the chance to live in an area where the cost of living was less were too attractive to pass up. I commuted between Atlanta and Long Island for a few months (McArthur Airport became my best friend!), then made the permanent move in October of 2000. We actually drove down the same day as the first Subway Series game, catching bits and pieces on the radio.

This was prior to 911, prior to the 2000 election. Because we moved so close to Election Day, we couldn’t vote in Georgia, and did not have time to get absentee ballots for New York. No matter, I knew Gore would take New York easily and my lone vote for him in Georgia would not be enough to beat Bush here.

I remember watching the election coverage and breathing a sigh of relief when it was announced that Gore won Florida. I was about to go to bed when they said ‘wait a minute..’ and Florida was up for grabs. I stayed up till all hours waiting for the results that wouldn’t come that night.  After a few days it became obvious that Bush was the winner, even to me. I was in shock to say the least. I realized that Gore ran a very weak campaign, but really, who would vote for George Bush!

Unfortunately I seemed to be the only democrat that felt that way. Over the next few months I became increasingly sick and tired of the tirades of the democrats about the election. It was the beginning of my awakening. They sounded like spoiled brats, sore losers, how ever you want to put it.

It was about this time that I became aware of the blue state/red state issue. Of course as a New Yorker, I had plenty of times joked about the south and ‘rednecks’. Now I lived here. While Atlanta was not the cosmopolitan city I thought it would be (The Empire State of the South? Please!), I began to enjoy the laid back atmosphere.

There were adjustments, mostly to my attitude. I remember one of my first forays into a local supermarket. I became paranoid that the people working there were following me because they thought I was a shoplifter. When the bagger insisted on wheeling my cart out to my car and putting the bags in my trunk (no tips allowed!), I envisioned this nice young man whacking me over the head, stuffing me in the trunk, and taking me to an abandoned lot raping and killing me and dumping my body there.

Fast forward to the election of 2004. As things began to heat up during the primaries, I was a little lost. I supported the war, sure, almost everyone did. But I was still hoping the Democrats would put up a candidate that could beat Bush. His father was defeated after a successful war, and GWII was not going as well. The economy was still down and besides, who would vote for George Bush!  My early favorite was Lieberman. I prayed that Gore wouldn’t run. Howard Dean was interesting, but too obnoxious. I never liked John Kerry.

All this time I was on my favorite talk board, Guardian Talk Unlimited, or GUT. The Guardian is a newspaper in the UK with a decidedly left bent. I had become one of the ‘freeper invasion’ there, even though I still considered myself a democrat (I suppose my first user name, ProudAmerican, didn’t help). As the election debate heated up on GUT, there were many calls to ban red states from voting or allowing their votes less of a value.

When Kerry turned out to be the nominee, it became obvious to me that I couldn’t vote for him. I didn’t like him, I hated his wife. To me he stood for nothing but the same old same old. While I was still a ‘social liberal’, very pro-choice, etc, I had always been in favor of a strong foreign policy and was very pro-Israel. Kerry scared the crap out of me on both accounts. I had almost decided not to vote at all, but in the end came to the conclusion that I would vote my conscience and vote for Bush.

When I announced this on GUT (I have never spoken to my old NY friends and family about it), I was of course attacked. I had some credibility with the lefty crowd there because of my pro-choice views but that didn’t seem to matter now. I now became ‘Georgie’s Girl’.

After the election there was the usual uproar and the blue state/red state issue heated up. My sister even sent me the map showing the US during the Civil War and the Election results as an overlay. There was almost an exact match. On GUT there were calls for secession or a new civil war between the red and blue states.

But what does it all mean? Have you ever looked at a map of election results? There are of course large blue areas, mostly urban areas. There are large red areas, most of the sparsely populated west and the areas outside of metropolitan areas, even in the bluest state. But for most of the US, the map is purple. A good illustration shown here.
With a few exception (small state such as Idaho, Nebraska, Utah, Wyoming, DC) most of the percentages were between 50-56% of the vote for the winner. So is a state with 45% voting for Kerry a red state? And is a state with 45% voting for Bush a blue state?

In my old home state of New York, as I well know, once you venture outside of the big city, the percentages of democrats to republicans shifts. I grew up in Nassau County which borders on New York City, but was run by republicans for as long as I can remember. As more and more city dwellers moved there and the population aged, it became more democrat, but still not as much as the city. Once you go into upstate New York, it is a different story. While refugees from the city have made inroads there as well, for the most part these people are conservative and republican. Still, New York State went 57% Kerry, 40% Bush.

Now take my newly adopted state of Georgia. The City of Atlanta is overwhelmingly democrat. It is run by a democratic mayor and city council. It has a large African American population. Outside of the city we again have a different story. The county I live in, Gwinnett (named after the Georgia signatory of the Declaration of Independence) is overwhelmingly white and republican. In my congressional district, we didn’t even have anyone running against John Linder, republican. And there were no opposition to any of our state senators either. Bush took Georgia with 58% of the votes and we also now have a republican governor and two republican senators.

So it seems that the divide is not really by state boundaries, but more by urban/rural divide. If Atlanta was higher in population in proportion to the state of Georgia, as New York City is to New York State, then it’s likely the democrats would win Georgia. The biggest state margins of blue Kerry votes are in states with large urban populations. California, DC, New York, Massachusetts. And states that went largely for Bush are states that lack big cities, Utah, Wyoming, Nebraska, Kansas, Oklahoma.

So would dividing the country into two separate ones really help? Would the 42% of blues in New York be happy? Would the 40% of reds in Georgia be happy?

The answer of course is no. We may have blue and red areas, but the country as a whole is purple.


Some additional reading here.