The brightest red state in the Union is Wyoming, a state with virtually no history of slavery.
The second reddest is West Virginia, a state that exists entirely because of its abolitionist popular revolt against the slave owning rich men from Richmond.
You’re not wrong (cherry picking a little though), and I get that there is more nuance and some exceptions to the generalization. But there certainly is a lot of overlap between Slave Owning and Republican States. Enough that one would be justified in at least wondering if there was a correlation.
But there certainly is a lot of overlap between Slave Owning and Republican States.
Only in the last forty years. These used to be staunchly Dixiecrat territories prior to the Southern Strategy.
But I might point you to a different map.
A huge part of the D/R switch under Nixon/Reagan came through Gulf Coast O&G tycoons. That’s what gets us Wyoming and W. Virginia as bright red. It’s why Pennsylvania - home of the Gettysburg address along with some of the fiercest abolitionist activists and civil rights organizations - into the purple category.
The degree to which the country has become a Petro-State has revolutionized politics domestically.
So long as that industry endures, the GOP-aligned land barons are going to have all the money they need for revanchist political projects.
Urban areas tend towards D, rural tends toward R. Smaller population states have smaller, less populous urban areas, thus the discrepancy.
Why? My theory is that smaller communities can force out opposition, so they tend to have more uniform ideas (trends towards tradition) whereas larger communities have to compromise to make a healthy community, meaning more diversity of ideas and more empathy towards traditionally counter-culture groups.
There’s a lot of knowledge drain in republican states. People who go to university and lean left usually move out of the state, for 1. Being closer to like minded people 2. Lots of jobs and opportunities exist purely in cities
Basically people dont usually stay in red states if they lean blue
And then nobody wants to move back. At best you’ve got some purple cities like Austin starting to shift blue, but even then. I was in Austin for a few days this spring. I was infatuated. Started looking at home listings. Then I realized I’d be living in Texas. Who the hell wants that?
People who go to university and lean left usually move out of the state
That’s as much a part of the employment prospects as anything. States with large industrial and commercial centers tend to end up with the old “Blueberries in the Tomato Soup” effect. Austin, Houston, and increasingly Dallas in Texas, for instance. Atlanta in Georgia. Tampa and Tallahassee in Florida.
Basically people dont usually stay in red states if they lean blue
Some of the most populous states in the country still tilt red. Florida and Texas most notably, but Pennsylvania and Ohio and Georgia and North Carolina as well.
If the state has a lucrative industry, people move there regardless of the prevailing state ideology. That’s one thing Republicans do tend to get right. Attracting big corporate HQs to your state can make up for a lot of your shitty revanchist social policies.
Texas is gerrymandered to shit, and employs pretty nasty voter suppression tactics in populous (see: blue) counties by having very few polling stations per capita in those areas and making it a crime to give water/food to people waiting in line to vote. Big Texas cities are blue for the most part (maybe a few exceptions in the DFW area)
If you look at pretty much any of the cities within Texas on the latest map, you can see that they consolidate the core of the city into one or two solid blobs, then split the rest out to be diluted by rural areas. See Dallas/Tarrant County, Travis County, Bexar County, and Harris County for the most obvious cases of these.
On a population level, Texas is basically a blue state held hostage by a red state administration.
The State Senate is absolutely gerrymandered to shit, without a doubt. But from a gross popular perspective, Texas consistently turns out a healthy majority of conservative voters. We saw this play out after 2018, when Abbott’s campaign staff took to their own aggressive GOTV operations (along with assorted nasty tricks in blue urban centers). The GOP was turning out north of 6M Republican voters in 2020 and north of 4.4M in 2022. This is substantially more than the 2.6M they were managing going back to 2014 and before.
Beto’s thesis for winning in 2018 was interesting, and drastically increasing the Dem base in the years since has been great for municipal Dems. But the idea that Texas is a blue state given the 10-15 pt margins Republicans continue to win with in years with double the turnout of historical races really requires you to ignore all the Central and West Texas right-wingers who have been showing up in droves over the last ten years.
Yeah. And the problem is that that won’t change unless blue people move outside the cities and into the rural areas. And most have absolutely no desire to do so. Those that do, have no desire to be politically isolated.
Well yeah, do that too. But as long as we’re weighing votes based on land, Texas will remain a red state.
Fixing voter suppression tactics might help federal elections. Probably just Senate, actually. But state office elections…there are far more red counties and towns than there are blue cities and towns. And somehow that matters.
This is a pithy retort, but it does raise a disturbing question.
Why do Republicans dominate in smaller and more rural states?
There weren’t many slaveowners in urban areas.
The brightest red state in the Union is Wyoming, a state with virtually no history of slavery.
The second reddest is West Virginia, a state that exists entirely because of its abolitionist popular revolt against the slave owning rich men from Richmond.
You’re not wrong (cherry picking a little though), and I get that there is more nuance and some exceptions to the generalization. But there certainly is a lot of overlap between Slave Owning and Republican States. Enough that one would be justified in at least wondering if there was a correlation.
Only in the last forty years. These used to be staunchly Dixiecrat territories prior to the Southern Strategy.
But I might point you to a different map.
A huge part of the D/R switch under Nixon/Reagan came through Gulf Coast O&G tycoons. That’s what gets us Wyoming and W. Virginia as bright red. It’s why Pennsylvania - home of the Gettysburg address along with some of the fiercest abolitionist activists and civil rights organizations - into the purple category.
The degree to which the country has become a Petro-State has revolutionized politics domestically.
So long as that industry endures, the GOP-aligned land barons are going to have all the money they need for revanchist political projects.
Neat! That certainly does explain a lot!
Urban areas tend towards D, rural tends toward R. Smaller population states have smaller, less populous urban areas, thus the discrepancy.
Why? My theory is that smaller communities can force out opposition, so they tend to have more uniform ideas (trends towards tradition) whereas larger communities have to compromise to make a healthy community, meaning more diversity of ideas and more empathy towards traditionally counter-culture groups.
Isolation breeds xenophobia
There’s a lot of knowledge drain in republican states. People who go to university and lean left usually move out of the state, for 1. Being closer to like minded people 2. Lots of jobs and opportunities exist purely in cities
Basically people dont usually stay in red states if they lean blue
And then nobody wants to move back. At best you’ve got some purple cities like Austin starting to shift blue, but even then. I was in Austin for a few days this spring. I was infatuated. Started looking at home listings. Then I realized I’d be living in Texas. Who the hell wants that?
That’s as much a part of the employment prospects as anything. States with large industrial and commercial centers tend to end up with the old “Blueberries in the Tomato Soup” effect. Austin, Houston, and increasingly Dallas in Texas, for instance. Atlanta in Georgia. Tampa and Tallahassee in Florida.
Some of the most populous states in the country still tilt red. Florida and Texas most notably, but Pennsylvania and Ohio and Georgia and North Carolina as well.
If the state has a lucrative industry, people move there regardless of the prevailing state ideology. That’s one thing Republicans do tend to get right. Attracting big corporate HQs to your state can make up for a lot of your shitty revanchist social policies.
Texas is gerrymandered to shit, and employs pretty nasty voter suppression tactics in populous (see: blue) counties by having very few polling stations per capita in those areas and making it a crime to give water/food to people waiting in line to vote. Big Texas cities are blue for the most part (maybe a few exceptions in the DFW area)
If you look at pretty much any of the cities within Texas on the latest map, you can see that they consolidate the core of the city into one or two solid blobs, then split the rest out to be diluted by rural areas. See Dallas/Tarrant County, Travis County, Bexar County, and Harris County for the most obvious cases of these.
https://redistricting.capitol.texas.gov/docs/88th_Senate_Tabloid_2024_05_20.pdf
On a population level, Texas is basically a blue state held hostage by a red state administration.
The State Senate is absolutely gerrymandered to shit, without a doubt. But from a gross popular perspective, Texas consistently turns out a healthy majority of conservative voters. We saw this play out after 2018, when Abbott’s campaign staff took to their own aggressive GOTV operations (along with assorted nasty tricks in blue urban centers). The GOP was turning out north of 6M Republican voters in 2020 and north of 4.4M in 2022. This is substantially more than the 2.6M they were managing going back to 2014 and before.
Beto’s thesis for winning in 2018 was interesting, and drastically increasing the Dem base in the years since has been great for municipal Dems. But the idea that Texas is a blue state given the 10-15 pt margins Republicans continue to win with in years with double the turnout of historical races really requires you to ignore all the Central and West Texas right-wingers who have been showing up in droves over the last ten years.
Yeah. And the problem is that that won’t change unless blue people move outside the cities and into the rural areas. And most have absolutely no desire to do so. Those that do, have no desire to be politically isolated.
You’re telling me that the solution to systemic voter suppression is a massive urban exodus to spread out the voting population until it’s homogenous?
That’s the solution, instead of I dunno, forcing the Texas government to stop suppressing voters?
Well yeah, do that too. But as long as we’re weighing votes based on land, Texas will remain a red state.
Fixing voter suppression tactics might help federal elections. Probably just Senate, actually. But state office elections…there are far more red counties and towns than there are blue cities and towns. And somehow that matters.