What the election map would have looked like if only white men could vote

Jake0748

Scary. Proud to live in WA though.

silkox

I’d like an “I’m a White Male Obama Voter” bumper sticker to put over my “ObamaCares” bumper sticker.

Judas Peckerwood

So can we all agree that between this and voting in both marriage equality and legal recreational pot, my home state of Washington instantly became the coolest state in the Union last Tuesday? Yes, I believe we can.

niktemadur

the coolest state in the Union last Tuesday

The coolest white state in the Union. Or maybe just pale. What did the Seattle guy say to the Pillsbury Dough Boy? “Nice tan, dude!”
- Jake0748
  
  You have missed the point entirely. Good luck to you.
  - niktemadur
    
    Oh c’mon, I was just setting up the joke.
    I’ve been to Washington and it’s a great place.
    Also, I’m addicted to KEXP.

Ashley Yakeley

I’m feeling all smug about being a white man in Washington State (just to add to the chorus).

http://imcravingpresidency.tumblr.com/ SedanChair

I’m feeling all smug about being a white man in Washington State

Speaking as a nonwhite man in Washington State: I noticed
- Paul Renault
  
  You noticed his whitenicity, or his smugness?

Jake0748

Interesting about Massachusetts there too.

Judas Peckerwood

Not too surprising, nor much of a shock that four of the five states have legalized same-sex marriage.
Warren_Terra

The voters of Massachusetts knew Romney better than most.
- Alan
  
  They knew him better than that when he was governor, too. He didn’t run for a second term because he was way down in the polls, and knew if he lost the race he’d never have a shot at the presidency. So instead of facing the voters, he quit. That’s leadership!
Antinous / Moderator

During the 1972 presidential election, Massachusetts was the only state to give its electoral votes to George McGovern, the Democratic nominee (the District of Columbia also voted for McGovern). Following the resignation of President Richard Nixon in 1974, two famous bumper stickers were sold in Boston, one saying “Don’t blame me, I’m from Massachusetts,” and the other read “Nixon 49, America 1″.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politics_of_Massachusetts#Federal_elections
- cellocgw
  
  Yeah, and now we want Nixon back. He’s a heckuva lot more left-wing than Obama. (“we” being a representative crowd of one MA resident here :-) )
  - Heevee Lister
    
    I used to say that too. Then I realized that what I really want back isn’t that squeaky little crook. It’s the political climate of 1968, when anything and everything seemed possible, before Hunter S Thompson’s wave “finally broke and rolled back.”

hoffmanbike

Yay, I’m a White Male Masshole who helped keep Massachusetts for the better candidate.

Luke Sheppard

Um, dude, this is kind of insulting to white men. Stereotyping, even for fun, does not do anyone any good. Try something more creative. Anyone can poke fun at a race/gender group. Please try harder.

Judas Peckerwood

I agree. Unpleasant facts are awful and insulting.
- Luke Sheppard
  
  There are plenty of other sites on the web that use cold hard facts and verifiable truths, how ever useless, to belittle or degrade selected groups of people. BB doesn’t seem the place for it.
  - Gatto
    
    I think your premises are flawed. Sounds like you’re saying 1) the information is useless; 2) mark was going out of his way to find an obscure way to criticize people of his skin color and presumptive sex.
    
    As far as I can tell these are things you’ve brought to the table. How come?
    
    Statistics and graphics are BB-staples, and interesting ( except for Ann what’s her name ) especially when you consider the history of suffrage in the US ( as the linked post does. )
http://profiles.google.com/joshuabardwell Joshua Bardwell

This is not stereotyping. Stereotyping is the inaccurate over-generalization of traits from specific examples to a group. This is simply reporting facts about who voted for whom.
SomeGuyNamedMark

The cold hard demographic facts hurt
- http://www.facebook.com/holly.s.musick Holly Street Musick
  
  What would the map look like if only black men were
  
  allowed to vote?
  - Tynam
    
    I suspect “What would the map like if only women were allowed to vote” is a more relevant and interesting question.
    
    The Republican party has been the party of bigoted fear of non-white people for a while now, but the level of open misogyny has increased a great deal recently. (Correct me if I’m wrong; it could be a bias introduced by my distance from the US.)
    - Boundegar
      
      Nope, you’re not wrong.
    - giantasterisk
      
      Well, I was feeling pretty darn good about my state of Colorado, until I saw the 1920, post-women’s suffrage map that showed us once again in the Romney camp. I’m a bit shocked. Do conservative women outnumber liberal ones by such a significant margin in Colorado? Do a majority of women in Colorado vote against women’s interests? Geez.
    - Baldhead
      
      I’d say you’re right. The increase began about 4 years ago I’d also say…
  - vintermann
    
    Good question.
    
    I think it’s cheap to cast white men as the villains just for marginally, as a group, preferring one political candidate to another. Surely there are better reasons to damn white men if you’re into that! (After all, if women and men / blacks and whites were politically identical, it wouldn’t really matter if we denied one of them the vote).
    
    The lessons to take away from this map + the numbers is actually:
    
    * There is some difference in political opinion by gender (quelle surprise!)
    
    * The electoral college system + first past the post winner getting all electoral votes per state, means that this modest difference would be translated into a huge difference in the outcome, should one gender suddenly abstain from voting/not be allowed to vote.
    
    * This difference looks even more impressive when you visualize it with square miles rather than by share of population/electors.
    - http://twitter.com/kramski Kramski
      
      How is 62% marginally? Below 60, I might give it to you. But nearly 2/3 is not what I call marginally. And I do think this does indicate (and only indicate mind you) a larger problem, when all other races had less than 30% support for the Republican candidate.
    - http://www.facebook.com/holly.s.musick Holly Street Musick
      
      You make the assumption, full of hubris, that “all other” were somehow right. Statistically, 62% is a lot more near “marginal” than the 98% African-American vote enjoyed by Mr. Obama.
    - http://twitter.com/kramski Kramski
      
      Holly… no, I really don’t. I am not even a citizen of your country, so I have no personal stake in the voting turnout. But if there is such a clear, noticeable racial divide between voters, it does imply that a) one party (or both) makes policies that benefit only a certain group and repells the other and/or b) that there is a problem with racism.
      
      I don’t know why you accuse me of hubris. I am just pointing out that the marginal difference was not so marginal at all.
Antinous / Moderator

I’m unclear what part of this you’re unclear on. It’s not stereotyping. It’s reality as best we’re able to observe it.
- Shinkuhadoken
  
  For the sake of argument, there is some evidence to suggest that breaking down statistics on racial lines itself creates racial stereotyping. For example, the way the United States breaks down crime statistics based on the color of your skin reinforces a prejudice that blacks are more prone to crime and essentially becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Just like measuring the voltage in a circuit changes the voltage in the circuit, creating racially significant reports further enhances racial presumptions.
blueelm

You don’t think it is useful or interesting to note that while white men disproportionately voted Republican it was not enough to sway the vote? Because that seems interesting to me. But I don’t know, I don’t have my pride tied up in it.
Boris Bartlog

It doesn’t seem insulting to me. Suppose I were a Romney supporter. I’d look at this map and say ‘hell yeah, at least some of us got it right!’. Or something. If you made some other map that showed Obama taking the black vote in all 50 states, would that be insulting? I don’t see the problem.
dbergen

Uh, dude, look up “stereotyping” in the dictionary, this ain’t that.
wysinwyg

Where’s the stereotyping? What part of this isn’t just a statement of fact?

http://www.facebook.com/threeonefouronefiveninetwosix CJ Casey

Yay! Way to completely reduce a complex election (economy, health care, taxation, foreign affairs in Libya and with the Drone Program) to nothing more than a stupid question on race. Does the author of this graphic honestly believe that 48% of the country is racist? Or is it just frightening for him/ her to think of the reasons that people might have wanted to vote for the other side, so it’s easier to just paint those voters as Other? Come on… I know bOINGbOING is usually slightly to the left on issues that I as a libertarian/ fiscal conservative am usually slightly to the right on, but I expect more intelligent discourse from this site, one I’ve gladly followed in one form or another since first reading The Happy Mutant Handbook in the mid-nineties.

Shaun

Interestingly, I think we read this completely differently. I didn’t see it as a reflection on the candidates, more than “middle-aged white male” is the archetype of the Republican voter.
Rindan

This is pure truth here. It is what it is. You will notice the article doesn’t bother to leave a conclusion. Come to your own. Your conclusion is apparently that white men are bigots, which is why I assume you are so upset. There are other conclusions you could come to. Why do you think white men vote so radically different from the rest of the population?

Personally, I think the reason is because the Republican party has become a slave to white Christian males and are incapable of empathy for people who are not white Christian males.

I am actually a pretty good example. I could vote Republican. I want to see the growth of government reigned in. I’m skeptical of big government programs. I would have liked to have seen the states hash out the health care thing a little bit longer before deciding that the Massachusetts plan, AKA Romney care, which I current live under and am completely fine with, is really the right course for the entire nation. I am pretty solidly “moderate” in terms of my economic beliefs, and I am open to being swayed because I realize I don’t actually know the magic sauce to make the economy Work, I just have Beliefs.

I could easily vote Republican if… if… they were not such a fucking party of bigoted monsters. I have a LOT of gay friends, some of whom are married (yeah Massachusetts!). There is no fucking way I could look anyone of them in the eyes after having vote for some shithead who would strip them of the right to marriage.

If any of my female friends were raped, legitimately or not, I would want them to be able to get an abortion. Hell, I would want them to be able to get an abortion regardless if they were raped because becoming a mommy or daddy should be a choice, not something shoved on you by the State if your condom fails.

We spend more on our military than the next 13 assholes behind us. We complain about not having enough money while at the same time Romney promises he is going to piss more away on guns? We might need to reduce the growth of social welfare spending, but we should at least stop buying guns before telling grandma her social security check is going to get smaller.

We have more prisoners in the US than anyone else in the world, both per capita and in actual number. I think this is actually a bad thing and want to see it go down. We could start by getting rid of a large pile of fucked up drug laws.

Anyone who want to refuse amnesty to children who spent most of their lives in the US and are functionally American, and wants to ship them to what is to them a foreign country, is a fucking monster.

I could go on, but do you know what all of the above have in common? It is all shit that a straight white males, for the most part, doesn’t have to personally worry about. All of those brutal restrictions on freedom and liberty are not restrictions that a straight white male has to deal with, it is the suppression of someone else. Those people not only recognize their own suffering, but the suffering of others.

The Republicans could have a party that fights for people who are straight white males and also people who are not straight white males. I want a party that tries to hold a little fiscal discipline (not that Republicans actually do that, but in theory they could). I just can’t in good conscience vote for bigoted monsters.

The bigoted shit show that was the Republican primary is why they lost and why they are going to keep losing until they get their crap together. Abandon being assholes who isn’t a straight white Christian male, find your moderate libertarian balls, and tell the religious psychopaths go jump in a lake. Until then, not straight while males (and those who have not straight white male loved ones) will be voting Democrat.
- ocker3
  
  I agree that the size of the US Military (and the amount of the US economy reliant on weapons production, for domestic and international consumption) is perhaps too large for the actual needs of the USA, but my question is, what would you replace it with? Those dollars are creating jobs.
  
  Options:
  A paid version of the Peace Corps
  More space research, public and private.
  Green Tech research
  - Tynam
    
    The industrial benefit of those dollars is heavily slanted towards prison slave labour, so they’re destroying jobs as well as creating them. (Not to mention lives.)
    - ocker3
      
      Good point, which also perhaps answers some of the questions about why so many Americans are in jail.
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Nell-Anvoid/100002383626402 Nell Anvoid
  
  What he said.
social_maladroit

You seem a bit defensive about not voting for Obama.
http://www.facebook.com/people/Nell-Anvoid/100002383626402 Nell Anvoid

Whoa! Settle down, there Mr. Libertarian. Extrapolating popular vote demographics and correlating them to the the electoral college system hardly seems like saying that “48% of the country is racist.”

If that’s the interpretation you get out of this, then, I guess, the truth really does hurt. I see it rather differently though.
http://www.nathanhornby.com/ Nathan Hornby

In all fairness there weren’t any good reason to vote for ‘the other side’, unless you happened to have a boat load of money and not care about the rest of society.

I’m sorry, but that’s just the way it is.
Origami_Isopod

“Does the author of this graphic honestly believe that 48% of the country is racist?”

LOL. Racism is totes over because we have a black president, right?
cellocgw

I rather suspect a far larger percentage of the US is racist than that. You don’t think blacks hate Asians, Mexicans hate Haitians, Koreans hate Vietnamese, … ad semi-infinitum? And BTW, you can be racist but not use that as your reason for voting one way or the other. I would be interested in seeing the “White male” vote broken out by income level and education level as well, for examples.

http://profiles.google.com/spacewatcer Marios P.

I can’t believe that white men could be so deep burried in their asses to give this sort of result.
On the other hand I do not live in the US, so what do I know?

Jake0748

Not much, apparently.
- http://profiles.google.com/spacewatcer Marios P.
  
  ignorance is bliss !

Jake0748

For all you spoilsport, crabby, over-sensitive, liberals, libertarians and whatever stereotypes I can’t think of to make fun of right now… sigh… Did you even think about looking at the article that Mark was talking about and linked to in the post?

Its a history lesson. A primer on demographics.
http://www.buzzfeed.com/buzzfeedpolitics/what-the-2012-election-would-have-looked-like-with

Not really even that political. Quit whining and read an article once in a while.

Luke Sheppard

Well, now that the name calling has begun, you’ll have to excuse me. I have some funny kitten videos to watch.
- Jake0748
  
  Can you send me some links?
  - Luke Sheppard
    
    Well, he’s more cat than kitten, but Henri, the depressed existential black cat is the best I’ve seen. http://www.henrilechatnoir.com/. Oh ya, and just to keep this on topic, Henri has nothing but disdain for the happy go lucky (white) cat he lives with.
    - Jake0748
      
      Oh yeah. Saw that. Most excellent.

niktemadur

Ann Coulter wants women’s voting rights taken away

Well that ain’t gonna happen anytime soon, now is it? Go ahead and ignore the skinny witch, live in peace and breathe the free air even as she keeps on living up her own toxic ass.

ponzicar

I’m certain that she doesn’t believe what she says. She’s just fanning controversy for publicity and book sales.
- niktemadur
  
  What a horrifying way to bring home the bacon.
- snagglepuss
  
  Which actually makes her even worse. Particularly as she claims to represent a political party and a culture in which belief and commitment to the cause are held above all other human attributes.
- http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher
  
  Which is part of the problem, isn’t it? She sells a lot of books spouting things that, to be charitable, she doesn’t believe, because controversy sells.
  
  But even if she doesn’t believe what she’s saying there are a lot of people who do and for whom Coulter’s words are a form of validation. After all she’s a published author who sells a lot of books. Therefore the things she says must be true.
  
  It’s fine to say that she just says crazy things to sell books, but that doesn’t justify poisoning the well of American politics. And whenever discussions of this sort come up I know there’s always the “well, both sides do it” argument, but I can’t think of any liberal writer who is equally dishonest who gets the same amount of attention and respect that Coulter receives.
- Monkey_pants
  
  There’s a portion of people who sincerely believe that Coulter is a canny liberal plant whose purpose it to lay bare the rabid bigotry of the Republican right.

Petzl

There’s a whole group of people who want to take away direct election of the Senate (mostly Tea Partiers and severe neo-cons). (The constitution had state legislatures appointing senators until an amendment changed it to its current form in 1913.) They’ve even infiltrated and corrupted the wiki article on the Seventeenth Amendment making seem like reversion to the “old ways” is the only sensible option.

Jake0748

Awesome dude! Thanks for the lesson. I love learning new history stuff.

http://mlcastle.net/ mike

…but, even so, Romney wouldn’t be able to manage to carry the state where he served as Governor and where people presumably know him best.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

Looking at the electoral map as it is, not as it would be, I’m struck by the fact that not only did Romney lose Massachusetts, but both he and Ryan lost their home states.

Romney’s loss of Massachusetts isn’t that surprising, and maybe his loss of Michigan isn’t that surprising either, but Ryan’s loss of Wisconsin is probably something he should be thinking hard about when he goes back to Congress.

John Eikenberry

> What The 2012 Election Would Have Looked Like Without Universal Suffrage

Bullshit. Universal suffrage isn’t the only way to get more diversity in voting. If you like to stick with traditional rules you could always just stick with the landowner bit and you’d get plenty of women and minorities voting.

Anyways, the scary bit here is that they’d still vote for one of the 2 losers running.

Warren_Terra

Are you obtuse, a parody, or do you just delight in being wrong?

It might shock you to learn that very few people age 18-24 own property. It really ought not to surprise you to learn that before the subprime collapse Black Americans owned their own homes at about 2/3 the rate of White Americans – and Black Americans were hit disproportionate to their share of the population in the resulting wave of foreclosures. And don’t even get me started about the logical consequences on Women’s Suffrage when you consider the single vote you’d accord to married couples owning property …

And since when did property ownership become an uncontested good? If you work in a big city, you can easily be a productive member of society, and make good money (and the two are not the same), and yet never hope to own your own home. And if you retire to an assisted-living or other planned community, you may well not own your own home.

Why you’d think imposing a property requirement would do anything other than arbitrarily and unequally disenfranchise huge swaths of the voting public is quite beyond me.
- Boundegar
  
  I could be wrong, but I think he was just giving an example, not advocating it.
  - Warren_Terra
    
    I don’t know how else to interpret this:
    
    you could always just stick with the landowner bit and you’d get plenty of women and minorities voting.
    
    It certainly appears to me to assert that a property requirement would not unduly reduce minority representation at the ballot box. This assertion is just transparently wrong; also, it ignores effects that would discriminate by age, by income, by rural/urban lifestyle (which is surely linked to ethnicity, sexuality, faith, etcetera), and doubtless by still other criteria.
- wysinwyg
  
  Interesting…”2/3rds” is quite close to “3/5ths”.
Antinous / Moderator

Bullshit. Universal suffrage isn’t the only way to get more diversity in voting. If you like to stick with traditional rules you could always just stick with the landowner bit and you’d get plenty of women and minorities voting.

Because there’s no chance that the dominant landowning group would restrict landowning to their own demographic. It’s not like that’s ever happened.
chgoliz

You’re assuming that the “reasons” used to deny women and minorities suffrage would somehow not be put into play in denying them real estate ownership. And yet, they were, for many generations in many countries.

Warren_Terra

The related statistic I find fascinating is that 88% of Romney’s voters were White, compared to just 54% of Obama’s.

You could see this looking at the audiences for their election-night speeches. Both were in convention centers, with invited, accredited guests; you weren’t going to get the mix you saw in 2008 in Grant Park. Romney’s crowd was seemingly all older White folks (disproportionately men) wearing business attire; Obama’s crowd showed much greater diversity by all of those criteria.

FoolishOwl

It’s quite telling how commenters are rushing to deny boingboing’s accusation that many white men are racist, despite the fact that the accusation wasn’t actually made. The title simply describes what the map illustrates; Mark Frauenfelder’s only comment is to suggest that this is why Ann Coulter said she’s willing to see women lose the vote.

I’m tired of the denial. Many white people in the US, especially white men, are racist. This is a problem. We need to confront it.

amarx

It’s not just Ann Coulter — it’s also people like Fox News’ Dick Morris, who is back with another crazy prediction: http://hollywoodandswine.com/following-prediction-of-romney-landslide-fox-news-dick-morris-predicts-oscar-sweep-for-thats-my-boy/

http://www.facebook.com/DavidVanKeuren David Van Keuren

Uh, I’m a white, middle aged male and I not only voted for Obama, I was a volunteer when he first ran in 2008. Oh yeah, by being a white male I guess that automatically makes me evil and racist. Because y’know, ALL white males vote the same in this country. /sarcasm. EDIT: Why was I banned from making comments all across boing boing after leaving this comment? Did I offend somebody with my sarcasm? Did I violate some rule that I wasn’t aware of? Did I wear white clothes after labor day? What the hell? If I did something wrong, at least tell me what it was I did!

TheMudshark

All those things apply to Mark as well who posted the article, except probably for the volunteering. Don´t be so touchy dude, not everything is directed personally at you.
http://twitter.com/kramski Kramski

Uh, that’s also not what this implies at all. Just because the majority of white men voted for Romney, doesn’t mean that ALL white men voted for Romney. 62% of white men voted for Romney and 35% for Obama. All that that means is that you are one of the 35% voting for Obama. Still, if only white male votes had been counted, the election map would look as above.
Nobody ever said all white men are racist or all white men voted for Romney. I honestly don’t get where you got that from?
ocker3

It’s a graph showing White Males overall, not you or me in particular.
blueelm

oh for God’s sakes I live in a red state. it was always going to be a red state. I didn’t vote Republican, but I’m not going to go cry about it if some one says I live in a red state. You weren’t in the majority of your demographic. No one called you evil. But most white men in this country vote Republican. Instead of lashing out to tell the rest of us how good you are, try just being happy the rest of us have enough numbers and presence to sway the vote with you!

Geeez!
http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

As a fellow white male, I’d like to ask you to please relax. This was not, in my reading, an attempt to claim that “ALL white males vote the same in this country”.

If there was a point being made it’s that the majority of white males in this country are, in fact, now a minority.

Looking at the graphic above I now understand what Bill O’Reilly meant when he said, “It’s not a traditional America anymore.” When I first heard that remark I didn’t understand what exactly it meant or why it was a complaint, but now I do. He meant, “People who look and think like me are having a harder and harder time getting elected.”

Personally I don’t see that as a bad thing.
https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM

Oh yeah, by being a white male I guess that automatically makes me evil and racist.

I’m a white, middle-aged male and I not only voted for Obama, I was a volunteer for his Senate race and an Obama staffer in 2008, so I gotta ask you, “Who the hell said that?“

(hint: nobody)
- http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Drop/100000929402049 Robert Drop
  
  I find his defensiveness… interesting.
Origami_Isopod

TEH POOR WHITE MENZ, THEY’RE SO OPPRESSED AND DEMONIZED!!!

http://twitter.com/Pitchforkpress Teri Szucs

No wonder I’m still single trying to find a liberal guy in CA

cellocgw

Can’t resist: If you’re rich then I’m single :-) (but sadly, not living in CA or anywhere near there)

crayons

What’s really perplexing here is the rush of white male commenters defending themselves. If you’re a white dude who voted blue, then congrats! You’re probably great!

This post isn’t an insult or an attack, it’s just a graph of what a certain portion of the population *tends* to do. It also shows that some members of that group act differently. Instead of being offended that someone would dare to point out a trend in behavior in your demographic, can’t you feel proud of your own actions and express hope that others in the group will come around to your viewpoint?

Perhaps you could see yourself as one of the disobedient subjects in the Milgram experiment. The majority of your peers behaved more cruelly than you; take pride in your ability to make different choices.

CH

It seems to be the same phenomenon that happens when a woman complains about sexism. Suddenly you are accusing ALL men of being sexist and they sure aren’t all sexist and oh, my goodness, my poor little male feelings are so hurt and why are all you females so evol… waaaaah! Check for instance anything concerning the Elevatorgate and Skepchick, for instance here: http://boingboing.net/2012/10/25/its-not-okay-to-threaten-to.html

And from a comment to that post a comic that I had totally forgotten about (thanks for the link!) which also illustrates it really well: http://www.gabbysplayhouse.com/webcomics/sexism/

http://profiles.google.com/keithdtyler Keith Tyler

I am both in, and from, two of the good states, separated by 3,000 miles. I am happy with this.

It is worth a note, IMO, that the blueness of Washington on this map is largely due to a single very-populous Puget Sound county.

http://profiles.google.com/marc.k.mielke Marc Mielke

I find the 1970 map interesting in that it defies all the current conventional wisdom: Obama loses both Florida and Ohio, but still wins by a hair.

peregrinus

Fascinating. No-where in the charts can I gain traction on the inference that all the white men are racist. I believe that a statistically significant number are (what %? I don’t know). But just to challenge your thinking, what would the map show if filtered on non-whites, and then into major non-white ethnic categories?

I’m feeling an Obama sweep; but the point is, that wouldn’t indicate all non-whites included in the data were anti-white.

Few voters actually go through a process of analysis, weighing each candidate vs the other (shame there are only two), few challenge their own assumptions and sit in the other seat for a while. If white males have sociologically inherited positions that emphasise GOP traits like conservatism vs change, then you can work on that.

Ingrained and purposeful racism shouldn’t be confused with inherited bigotry, infused via conditioning. Not that the latter couldn’t drive an individual to commit disgusting acts, but it is that the latter can be swayed at the very least from passing on their legacy to credulous and unquestioning followers, be they children or adults.
I read into all of this the utter importance of all-inclusive voting rights and the high value of a free society.

For all the hair-pulling, screaming, shocking aspects of the US presidential contest, you guys are blessed with a society so far advanced over many, many nations – so blessed that you should be kissing the ground you stand on and weeping.

You’ve got a ways to go, sure.

But line yourselves up against say Malaysia, Indonesia, Burma, Greece (home of democracy!!), Austria, Nigeria … etc.

You all have the freedom to identify these patterns, and engage in active strategies to change opinions and preferences. The fact that the information is even available is amazing.

After all, imagine this map printed in Russia. Pretty soon there’d be bodies.

Antinous / Moderator

Strictly speaking, if only white men could vote, Obama wouldn’t have been running. And Romney still would have lost because the other candidate would almost certainly have been less of a prat.
- peregrinus
  
  Agreed – the parallel universes imaginable had no change in voting rights been made since … er … time began … are many.
  
  Maybe an MLK -ish figure would’ve run on an independent ticket. With a copy of “The Fire Next Time” under his / her arm.
CH

“No-where in the charts can I gain traction on the inference that all the white men are racist.”
What “all white men” are you talking about? The only ones mentioning it seems to be the poor white male hand wringers responding to this thread.

“you guys are blessed with a society so far advanced over many, many nations – so blessed that you should be kissing the ground you stand on and weeping.”
Since when has “other countries has it worse” been a defense for not looking at your own faults? And there are many, many nations where there is a much broader spectrum of who has been presidents or would have any chance of winning than in the US. For instance in my country we had a woman as a president for two terms (who had served back in the days as a chairman for our country’s main LBGT rights organisation), and although we now have a “white middle age man” as a president, the “white middle age man” who finished second is openly gay. We do have some way to go, though, before a non-white would have much of a change winning.
Origami_Isopod

“….you guys are blessed with a society so far advanced over many, many nations – so blessed that you should be kissing the ground you stand on and weeping.”

Dear Muslimah…

Boundegar

Am I the only one who looked at this and realized I need to thank some black people?

http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

And some women.
- https://twitter.com/misterjayem MrJM
  
  And a few white dudes.
  - Alan
    
    As a gun-owning church-going straight white male liberal, you are welcome.

Jaldhar

Even if you allow that this series of graphs were not making some insinuation about racism or anything like that but purely a statement on demographics they are still pretty useless.

There would be a lot more blue because 18th century Obama would not be running on the liberal assumptions of 2012 but on of those times. He would be out there pumping “Family Values” just like everyone else. He is after all religious, long-time married and monogamous. He wouldn’t have felt the need to “evolve” on Gay marriage because the whole concept would have been science-fiction (as would be evolution :-)

In 1920, Mormons and Catholics like Paul Ryan would also have been “minorities” and not even considered white by much of the population. (the Klan particularly in the North was as likely to be anti-Catholic as anti-black.)

I could go on but the point is you some commentators are attempting to draw conclusions about the future from what doesn’t even rise to the level of junk science.

Who is to say the definitions of White and Minority won’t change again? The Hispanic immigrants in their homelands have historical racial stratification as entrenched as anything over here. Or that African-American birthrates go into an even steeper decline then they already have? Is it hard to imagine a future married Gay politician criticising the immorality of singles Gay or Straight?

I don’t know and neither do you.

peregrinus

Your birthrate comment was interesting.

In Malaysia, since 1961 the Chinese population have been pushed into minority via a drive in the Malay population to increase births. It’s been massively effective for the Malays.

Does the GOP anti-abortion view get driven as hard in majority black areas as majority white?

I ask because of this little number: ”The continuation of a high abortion rate along with a significant reduction in the overall pregnancy rate among black women has brought about an unprecedented situation in which the level of black fertility is even lower than that of whites”
http://www.learninc.org/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=50&Itemid=26

Just askin’
- Jaldhar
  
  Anti-abortion isn’t a GOP view, it is a religious, particularly Christian view. It just so happens the GOP is more hospitable to Christians right now. It is not that Democrats hate them but being a believer especially a pro-life one is not the path to advancement in party ranks.
  
  I live in NJ in a very blue part of a reliably blue state. There effectively is no Republican organization here at the local level. It is majority Hispanic, Blacks and Whites are tied for second place, and it has some of Americas largest Hindu and Muslim populations. The Catholic church is the biggest denomination and most influential though somewhat on the decline it seems. It pushes the pro-life message. But its audience is mainly White and Hispanic. Hispanic evangelical churches also are pro-life but more interested in economic issues as their base are mostly immigrants. Hindus like me don’t go for abortion very much but neither are we particularly out to stop it. I assume Muslims think similarly.
  
  Black churchgoers from what I’ve seen are also mainly fundamentalist if you ask them but their faith is less doctrinal and more emotional. Plus they also have the economic issues Hispanics do. Also Blacks are more likely to come from single-mother families not well integrated into social networks. I think that probably explains their higher abortion rates more than any other factor.
  - Boundegar
    
    I disagree. There is nothing at all in Christian scriptures about abortion. Further, most mainline denominations leave the question to individual conscience, and poll strongly pro-choice.
    
    But for reactionary folks who feel that all modernism is a road to hell, and things began to disintegrate in the 1960′s, opposition to abortion is as natural as opposition to contraception, or the Civil Rights Act, or rock’n'roll. The GOP has chosen to go all-in on that demographic, giving them everything they want and reinforcing their feelings of fear and alienation. It began with the Southern Strategy, and seems to be ending with the Tea Party.
    
    Putting all that fear and hate in the mouth of Jesus doesn’t change the nature of the faith. And it just might make him angry.
    - Jaldhar
      
      I’ll take your word for it. I’m just reporting what the churches and Christians here say they believe. And remember I said I was talking about urban New Jersey not the South.
      
      By mainline I assume you mean Episcopal, Methodist etc. right? I’m sure there are some here but they’re keeping a low profile. Probably because they are old, white, and empty. Nationally you may be right.
      
      Also isn’t “There isn’t anything in the Christian scriptures” a particularly Protestant argument? Catholics have additional sources of authority.
    - http://www.facebook.com/people/Robert-Drop/100000929402049 Robert Drop
      
      See the recent BB article on how recent the Evangelical position on abortion really is (and it’s the evangelicals who are making abortion a political issue, far more than the Catholics who vote for Democrats with some consistency). So yeah, it’s a GOP issue first and foremost, not a religious one.
  - Antinous / Moderator
    
    Anti-abortion isn’t a GOP view
    
    Since it’s in their platform, your entire premise is unsupported.

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=619038280 John Tuffen

Um… here in the UK voting is anonymised – obviously not the same in the US; or am I missing something?

Otherwise how is the mapping from “voter -> ethnicity/gender -> vote” made?

(that seems to me to be the most worrying aspect here – erosion of privacy)

http://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=1674805833 Beryl MacLachlan

It’s data from private polling. In the past, usually exit poll data. This year, the media commissioned exit polls for fewer than all states (30 I think), so some other sort of private poll data must have been used for those states. As such polls are samplings and require the pollee to cooperate, the results aren’t necessarily perfect reflections of the way people voted. No privacy violations though.
- Rick Westerman
  
  According to the article they extrapolated the missing exit poll data from other demographic data. Now it is possible for exit polls to be close to the truth and it is possible for extrapolation to also be close to the truth however it is also possible for both to be mistaken. Especially when layered upon the binary all-red/all-blue coloring of states that the electoral college brings out. As you said, the results are not perfect reflections of the way people voted.
  
  There is no doubt that white males voted predominately for Romney. The CNN exit polls show a 35%/62% split and while they may be wrong they won’t too wrong. Perhaps plus or minus 5%? I couldn’t find their margin of error. It would have been nice to see the map colored “red”, “blue” and “shaded” with the latter indicating the given state was too close to call due to the margin of error.
- sarahnocal
  
  The individual county demographics could have been used.

jackrabbitslim

As a white guy in a red state who voted blue I’d like to chime in and say, SO. MUCH. BUTTHURT. You other guys need to simmer down. Since the election I just walk around, looking at people I work with and quietly revel in my satisfaction that their (very largely racially and sexually driven) votes DID NOT WIN. Even if my own didn’t really count because I live in (What’s the Matter with) Kansas.

http://www.youtube.com/user/Freethinkersanon Christopher

While I’m fully aware of What’s The Matter With Kansas I feel compelled to say that I love, love, love Lawrence, and visiting there was a valuable reminder to not judge people based solely on the voting trends of their state.

vintermann

Says more about first past the post voting than it does about white American men.

traalfaz

I’m a white male, and this just makes me sad that my peer group is this horrible.

http://twitter.com/ScytheNoire ScytheNoire

Only in America. It’s not like this in many other countries, at least not with the sub-40 population. Plus America is a far more racist country than most others.

Antinous / Moderator

If you think that the US is more racist, you must not read the international news. Some of the crap that comes out of the mouths of European politicians is shocking.

Alan

I’ve a feeling that if the only people who could originally vote according to the US Constitution (almost entirely wealthy or land-owning white males) had been allowed to vote today, all 50 states would be red.

Rick Westerman

Too bad they didn’t do a similar graphic only presenting the White Protestant vote. That map should be similarly colored. I wonder what types of comments would be expressed if we were talking about the religious divide?

The CNN data shows White Protestant vote going 30% Obama, 69% Romney while the White Male vote is 35%/62%. As a white male non-protestant I am glad to know that there is a group even more biased than mine. :-)

Henry Pootel

Prius versus Pickup vote breakdown would be interesting, since you can tell a lot about a person by what car they drive – just like you can by their race.

http://profile.yahoo.com/MYBH6N2I3XBT4CSQ5EYNDUW3LA Lauren

As a woman from Maine, I gotta say I love my Maine men!

urpBurp

Wow… great to see how our race relations in America have progressed so far. Reading these comments have filled me with such hope for the future…

I once heard a great man say,

“…I have a dream that one day this nation will rise up and live out the true meaning of its creed: “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal.”

I have a dream that one day on the red hills of Georgia, the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners will be able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood.

I have a dream that one day even the state of Mississippi, a state sweltering with the heat of injustice, sweltering with the heat of oppression, will be transformed into an oasis of freedom and justice.

I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character

I have a dream today!…”

But still people will read this and come away convinced that it supports their own personal racist viewpoints…

Why won’t we ever listen?

Richard Wolff

As a white male i must ask how much people actual care that “insert here” with internet is a white male?

mikey666

So lets chart black females, puerto ricans, or marxist lesbians.

Antinous / Moderator

Don’t let us stop you.

http://www.facebook.com/heather.cristofaro Heather Cristofaro

I saw this more as a history lesson— of how important it was to our democracy to give women and minorities the right to vote. Such a huge portion of the population now have a voice…

http://theladyfingers.blogspot.com/ Ladyfingers

This map doesn’t surprise me, what surprises me is that a whole 1 in 8 of Romney’s voters wasn’t white.

benher

Hurts to look at the ol’ data. Ow.
But once again, this whitish guy did his part and stayed at home eating Doritos.

FoolishOwl

Among many other examples, a much higher percentage of black people voted for Bill Clinton than for Bob Dole. It’s pretty obvious that black people don’t have a problem with voting for white people, historically.

Jake0748

Why don’t YOU do those pie charts? You got google just like the rest of us. And, can you explain how YOU are not being racist here?

L_Mariachi

Other commenters: PLEASE DO NOT FEED

http://www.nunoncastors.co.uk/ James

“white people are simply the least racist race on the planet”

Cite your sources, if you please. Conjecture does not a compelling argument make.

http://daniel.friesen.name/ Daniel Friesen

Bullshit.

What the election map would have looked like if only white men could vote

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