Jesse Jackson in Appalachia

In my exploration of voting in counties heavily dependent on government income, I've found myself digging deeply into the politics of Appalachia.  This region's political behavior seems to confound liberals' expectations that those who are among the poorest and most dependent on policies championed by the Democrats should reward that party with their votes.  As I've shown, that's rarely been the case over the past several decades.  In my last post, I suggested that part of the Democrats' problem is that they haven't always tried to connect with these voters and that some candidates--especially Bill Clinton--offer a blue print for future candidates in the region.

During the 2008 campaign, part of the narrative revolving around Barack Obama was that his race was the primary reason why he wasn't able to win downscale white rural voters.  While there might be some evidence of this, while doing some web surfing on Appalachian politics I came across this interesting article from the great site, Daily Yonder, about Jesse Jackson's 1988 campaign.  The more I read about Jackson's presidential runs, the more I believe they've been overlooked by students of elections.  Too often Jackson is dismissed as either a fringe candidate or one whose campaigns were exclusively about race.  Rather--as this story argues--Jackson was extremely successful in uniting downscale whites and minority voters.  For example, when I dug up the results of the 1988 Kentucky primary, I found some interesting results.  Kentucky was won overwhelmingly by Al Gore, who won all but one county.  However, Jackson ran ahead of eventual nominee Michael Dukakis in 18 counties, highlighted below:

Using Census data, eight of these counties had a population that was 95% or more white.  Only four have an African American population above 10%.  Thus, twenty years before Barack Obama's emergence, in an era much less "post racial," Jesse Jackson was able to perform quite well in an area we might expect to be hostile to his candidacy.  What seems to have helped him was that he didn't write these voters and these areas off.  Like the New Yorker piece I linked to last week argued, showing up, making an effort, and taking these voters and their concerns seriously can go a long way.

Some More Data On The Voting Of Lower Income Whites

As I hinted at in my post a few days back, the question of why lower income--or more governmentally dependent--white voters have shown a tendency to vote Republican has vexed many on the left for years.  Over at The Monkey Cage, John Sides provides some evidence--as produced by Larry Bartels--that white working class voters have not, overall, become more Republican:

Among whites without a college degree, income has become a stronger predictor of the vote over time. But actually it’s those with less income, not more income, who are more likely to support Democratic presidential candidates. And again, there certainly no trend by which whites with below-average incomes and no college degree become more Republican.

What shift to the right there has been seems to be confined to the south.  Thus, my highlighting of the Appalachian/Ozark region seems to have some confirmation.  When I was doing some Google surfing last night trying to track down some writing on this region, I came across this story that I remembered from back in the fall of 2008.  In it, you get a sense of the obstacles--and opportunities--that Democrats have among these voters.  While I noted the success of Bill Clinton in both 1992 and 1996, the New Yorker piece uses Virginia Senator (and previously Governor) Mark Warner as a more modern example of how Democrats can win in the hollers.  Here's a map of the 2001 Virginia Governor's race, won by Warner:

 
As you can see, Warner did exceptionally well in the southwestern corner of the state, allowing him to pad the large lead that he built up in the much more solidly DC suburbs.  Ultimately, Barack Obama wasn't able to duplicate Warner's success in this region.  Nonetheless, he became the first Democrat to win the Commonwealth since Lyndon Johnson.

In the end, as candidates prioritize where they spend their time and resources and how they put together a strategy, they must confront the reality of where they are likely to be successful.  Coalitions (and the size of their component parts) are cobbled together.  The math begins to take over.  Despite the fact that those voters discussed in the NYT story might seem like they "should" vote Democratic, so much history suggests that they won't, regardless of how much effort is expended.  In states like Virginia that offer large numbers of other more reliable coalition members (minorities for example), winning the state remains a possibility.  In other states--say Kentucky--there exists no realistic path to victory given the composition of the electorate.  Hence, a candidate like Obama turns his attention elsewhere. 

Why Don't People Who Benefit From Government Vote For The Democrats???

Since it was published last week, this story by the New York Times has been garnering a lot of coverage.  In great detail and nuance, it tackles a theme and a dilemma that has dominated our politics for at least the last generation.  As the story illustrates, and as their fantastic mapping shows, Americans have become increasingly dependent on government programs, especially entitlements--Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment insurance, veterans benefits, and other forms of income support.  At the same time, the willingness to pay for these programs has declined precipitously.  Hence, the current fiscal straits in which we find ourselves.  Ironically, among those most benefiting from these programs has been an attraction to anti-government rhetoric from the right.

In reading this story and exploring the corresponding map, I began to wonder just how those areas most dependent on government income voted over time.  While the story focused in on one county in Minnesota, I wanted to broaden the scope and see if any interesting patterns emerged.  What I decided to do was zoom in on those counties who had the highest degree of what we might call "dependence"--those who received more than 40% of their income from these sources--these are the counties colored dark red on the NYT map. 

In total, there are 82 counties nationwide that fall into this category (I excluded the Alaska census area because voting data wasn't available for it).  I produced a spreadsheet, seen below, that lists these counties--by state--along with their percentage of government "dependence" as well as two other variables that I thought might be revealing: their racial makeup shown as % white; and their poverty rate (both from Census data).  Oftentimes in our politics there has been an assumption that poverty and government dependence is concentrated in minority communities.  This data clearly refutes that.

Next, I wanted to see how each of these counties voted in recent elections.  Rather than code each election, I picked a few that I thought might be of particular interest.  I coded the two most recent presidential elections to see the most recent political behavior of these areas and to explore whether there was any noticeable short term change.  I then decided to look at 1992.  1992 is of note in that it, like 2008, was an election contested during an economic downturn and might produce similar "pro-government" sentiment in those areas of greatest need.  Similarly, I picked 1980.  Also conducted during economic difficulties, 1980 is notable for the rise of Ronald Reagan and the ascendancy of anti-government rhetoric.  Thus, as American politics began to transition away from the New Deal assumptions of the previous generation, we might wonder if areas strongly dependent on government resisted Reagan.  Finally, I picked the 1964 Johnson landslide.  The thinking here is that this election would probably represent the apex of pro-government voting.

In looking at the spreadsheet, very few clear cut trends emerge and there is certainly no correlation between government dependence and support for the Democratic party.  Things are much more complicated (and hence interesting).  Nonetheless, there are a number of things to take note of and explore.  In 2008, of these 82 counties, only 30 voted for Barack Obama.  This is the type of result that makes many Democrats' heads spin.  How is it, they ask, that those voters most benefitting from programs championed by Democrats vote "against their interests"???  This phenomenon garnered a lot of attention a few years back with the publication of Thomas Frank's "What's The Matter With Kansas?"  If we map this voting--coloring Obama counties Blue and McCain counties Red--we get the following:

The most interesting aspect of this map, I think, is the clustering of McCain counties in the Kentucky, Tennesse, Missouri region.  These counties are, as the data suggests, overwhelmingly white and poor.  They also tend to be mountainous, low population, counties in the Appalachian and Ozark ranges.  Looking at the voting over time, these are also counties that have remained, for the most part, consistently Republican.  Clearly, it seems as if there is more than just economics at play here.  Indeed, these areas have long had a political culture that has confounded Democrats' ability to compete, going back generations.  The one modern Democrat who performed well in this region, perhaps not surprisingly, was Bill Clinton.  Not only did Clinton win 60 of the 82 counties nationwide, he did particurly well in this cluster of KY/TN/MO counties--so much so that he won all three states in both 1992 and 1996.  No Democrat has won any of the three since.

How do we explain this change?  While these counties and regions have changed little over the past  decades, they were receptive to Clinton but not Obama (and Kerry).  Going back further, these counties also supported Carter and Johnson.  Is the shift a result of a broader movement against the Democrats, as hinted at in the original NYT story?  Is it the result of the fact that the most recent Democratic nominees were northerners who were perceived as foreign to this region's culture and people?  Clinton hailed from this area and both Carter and LBJ were southerners so there might be some credence to this hypothesis.

A few other observations. 1980 stands out as the year in which these counties' vote was most divided, with Reagan winning 42 and Carter 40 counties respectively.  Thus, the notion that this was perhaps a "tipping point" election may have some confirmation.

Looking at the race variable, while I've so far discussed the overwhelmingly white KY/TN/MO counties, there are a number of overwhelmingly African American counties represented in the data.  Specifically, Perry and Wilcox County Alabama, Marion County South Carolina, and Holmes, Jefferson, Humphreys, and Quitman Counties in Mississippi.  Here, as expected, there was overwhelming support for all of the recent Democratic candidates (back during the lead up to the 2008 election I did a series of posts on the interesting political geography of these regions--see here and here).  Also remember, when looking at the 1964 vote in these counties, that the Voting Rights Act had yet to be passed.  Next, there are a few counties with large Hispanic populations--see those in Texas as well as Mora and Guadalupe in New Mexico.  Finally, make note of some counties with a large Native American population--Apache in Arizona; Sioux in North Dakota; Buffalo and Shannon in South Dakota.  Like with the heavily African American counties, those with large Hispanic or Native American populations have voted as we would expect.

Perhaps the most confounding set of counties--and those that I will need to research more deeply--are those found in Michigan.  What is interesting about these counties is that they are overwhelmingly white, have high degrees of governement "dependence," but are not terribly poor.  Their poverty rates all hover near the statewide average of 15%.  So what explains this?  Going back to the original NYT map, you can separate out the different components of government support.  These counties show a heavy reliance on both Social Security and Medicare, suggesting a large elderly population.  At the same time, though, these counties also have large reliance on unemployment insurance.  In a lot of ways, these counties seem quite similar to Chisago County Minnesota which was the focus of the NYT story.

These are just a few observations based on a cursory examination of this data.  There's a lot more that I hope to delve into, especially focusing on individual counties or regions, in the coming weeks.  What does come through, though, is that voters and regions have voting histories and behaviors that don't fit into a simple narrative or explanation.  This is especially the case when it comes to the correlation between reliance on government and party support.  As the Times story makes clear, voters possess a series of often contradictory feelings and beliefs.  For those on the left who aspire for an electorate that will vote strictly along economic lines, this data is bound to frustrate. 



The Appalachian Problem Returns

The above map has been getting a lot of attention over the past day. It shows the counties where McCain actually overperformed Bush '04. We see a very clearly defined geographical region--Appalachia, especially the southern stretch--as the source of McCain's strength. During the Democratic primary, there was much discussion of Obama's "Appalachia Problem." For a refresher, the map below illustrates how deep Clinton's support was there (the more blue, the more pro-Clinton).

In a further examination of this, Ben Smith at Politico brings forward the final map below that charts American's self-identified ancestry. The same pattern jumps out as this part of the country is dominated by people who identify their ancestry as "American." In short, this is a region in which large numbers have family ties that stretch back multiple generations--very low levels of movement in and out. Thus, unlike parts of the neighboring states of Virginia and North Carolina, which have seen a much more dynamic population flow (especially Northern Virginia and Research Triangle of N.C.), this interior is perhaps more isolated from the trends and changes that have affected some of their neighbors. Virginia and North Carolina (and seemingly Colorado out west following a similar track) may have thus crossed the threshhold necessary to vote for a Democrat for the White House.

Kentucky & Oregan Primary Night Updates

KENTUCKY

It's not all bad news for Obama in Kentucky. Suburban Louisville's Oldham County, Kentucky's wealthiest and fastest growing in a state where many of its 120 counties are atrophying, gave Obama a respectable 41%.

Kentucky Coal Country went for Hillary Clinton in numbers as lopsided as those in neighboring West Virginia. The Coal Miner's Daughter herself, proud Republican Loretta Lynn's fabled birthplace, Butcher "Holler" went for HRC by a similarly landslide margin, 87% to 9%.

Johnson County is a historically Mountain Republican county whose partisan sentiments have roots in its Unionism during the Civil War. However, results there didn't differ by much from nearby Knott County, still a Democratic stronghold, where Obama only managed 6.5% to HRC's 83%. (A search for Knott's political ancestry came up fruitless, except for the nugget that the county is named for a Democratic governor who was nonetheless a "staunch Unionist." The county's fealty to the Democracy seems to predate the New Deal, whose programs challenged ancestral Mountain Republicanism in deprived Appalachia. No evidence can be found of Democratic landslides here due to United Mine Workers influence, either.)

OREGON

Retiring U.S. Rep. Darlene Hooley's (D-05) endorsement of Hillary Rodham Clinton seems to have made her competitive in the CD's counties. HRC didn't drop below 45% in any county in OR05 - outperforming her statewide total - and actually narrowly taking Tillamook. Detailed returns may indicate HRC strength in its rural dairy redoubts, and Obama winning the precincts that are displacing that agricultural heritage.

Sitting Gov. Ted Kulongoski saved some face today, despite endorsing Hillary Clinton. His endorsed candidate for the Democratic nomination to challenge vulnerable Sen. Gordon Smith (R), State House Speaker Jeff Merkley staved off an unexpectedly strong challenge by liberal activist Steve Novick, popular among Oregon's Obama acolytes, by a slim margin: 45%-41%.

Watauga Watershed?

Watauga County, deep in North Carolina’s Blue Ridge might be a chink in Hillary’s fabled “Hillbilly Firewall,” and a win here by Obama will indicate the Tar Heel State’s shift from reliably Republican to highly competitive.

Boone, the county’s seat, is a college town home to Appalachian State University. Obama has won or performed well in college counties even in Appalachia, winning Virginia Tech’s Montgomery County and winning 20 to 30% more in Ohio State’s Athens County than surrounding counties.

Watauga is a historically Mountain Republican county, a rare spot in the Old Confederacy where Republicans were competitive. Democrats have only carried Watauga four times since 1924, including only two out of FDR’s four wins. Another election that Watauga forsook the GOP was 1964, when historically Democratic counties voted for Republican Barry Goldwater and his opposition to civil rights acts. Like other Southern Appalachian counties, Watauga has an almost non-existent Afro-Am population, and racial appeals have found little resonance among voters here. Watauga was one of the worst counties for George Wallace in 1968 and Strom Thurmond in 1948. And Watauga voted for Harvey Gantt, the black former Charlotte mayor in his 1990 and 1996 challenges to former Republican Senator Jesse Helms, notorious for his racially divisive rhetoric. That’s good news for Obama.

Boone is booming, and turnout hit a record high of 24,000 in 2004, up from just around 15,000 in 1998. And, like a lot of booming, economically growing North Carolina – Asheville, the Research Triangle – Watauga is trending Democratic. U.S. Rep. Virginia Foxx lost the county her 2006 race, not regarded as competitive and in 2004, Kerry picked up four points over Gore in 2000, chalking up 47%.

If Obama can win these growing, Dem-trending areas, his campaign has solid evidence to counter Hillary Clinton’s contention that she would be stronger nominee, more likely carry the newly competitive swing states like Colorado and North Carolina.

"I was Born on this Mountain" Who's the "Hillbilly Firewall" Keeping at Bay?

Thursday marked the release of a chock-full-of-data Pew Research poll, and the attention that a stat tucked away on page 16 has garnered brought this week’s media chatter – the idle speculation over how much a continued Democratic presidential nomination battle might hinder the eventual nominee in November – to a deafening pitch. (To counter this conventional “wisdom,” let’s invoke WaPo’s incomparable Dan Balz)

The poll’s findings indicate that, thanks to the bad blood between the Obama and Clinton camps, around a quarter of each candidate’s supporters will refuse to support the other candidate, potentially defecting to presumptive Republican nominee John McCain. Of course, both sides are jumping all over this tidbit to argue that their opponent is the one who will dampen Dem turnout or drive their base to the GOP. Some commentators are putting a cultural slant on this notion. The Washington Examiner’s political editor, Chris Stirewalt relishes the irony that this Democratic primary season’s unlikely key demographic, Appalachia’s Scots-Irish “Hillbilly Firewall,” may well sustain HRC – that product of Wellesley and affluent Midwestern suburbs reborn as the coal miner’s champion - through the rest of the primary season. Not only in West Virginia is Hillary Clinton expected to fare well, but in the Appalachian regions of other remaining primary states: Eastern Kentucky, Western North Carolina, “Pennsyltucky” and southeastern Indiana. Stirewalt hints that if Obama wins, the cultural biases of his coalition of affluent Northern liberal and Afro-Am voters may drive Appalachia into the arms of the GOP, following the decades-old lead of the Deep South.

HRC’s has performed well in Appalachia(& like regions): from southern Ohio to Missouri’s Ozarks to East Tennessee. A glance at a few similar maps, however, indicates that the “Hillbilly Firewall” is skeptical of outsiders of all stripes – as Stirewalt suggests, Bill Clinton’s Arkansas roots may be the source of HRC’s appeal here – though it’s not necessarily due to animus towards Afro-America.

Note the uncanny overlap of these maps:

HRC racked up her biggest percentage in Appalachian Southwestern Virginia.

But this part of Virginia is home to smallest percentages of black residents.

And while George Wallace’s 1968 campaign expanded his base from the “Black Belts” of the Deep South to the Upper South and the Urban Ethnic North, for the honkies in the hills and hollers of Southwestern Virginia, his segregationist rhetoric had very limited appeal:

As for John McCain sweeping up this region, well, even though by the time Old Dominion’s primary rolled around, he was widely regarded the eventual nominee, SW Virginia counties rejected him, going for another former Arkansas governor, Mike Huckabee by 2 to 1 ratios and more.