« A Polling Crisis | Main | Maybe a Coverup Would Help » Washington Map11 Feb 2008 10:20 am
Nick Beaudrot made this map of Barack Obama's convincing win in Washington State. As you can see, in essence the pattern is for him to win everywhere. Though he certainly does win by more in some parts of the state. In Louisiana, by contrast, you saw a very strong dynamic of racial polarization with black areas going for Obama and white ones going for Clinton. Comments (43)
I believe that sole green county for Clinton is Chelan. Which is rather conservative. The other light pink county in the bottom right looks like Benton or Franklin County. That is home to the Hanford nuclear facility and oddly it is a community of highly educated scientists. It also has a large hispanic population. On second thought, it could be Yakima, which is an enormous hispanic population. Gosh, this is embarsssing. Growing up in Seattle, I would think that I would have the counties of WA state memorized. 
The green one is Douglass. Chelan is the county west of that.
It's Douglas County, home of Wenatchee. Franklin is the light purple county. Matt, you're going to have to link to my maps for Massachusetts and Connecticut, because they do the best job of showing the class divide.
That's a terrible map. How am I supposed to tell if the black areas are very dark purple or very dark green?
Are nearly all of the counties black? On the key, it looks like large victories for either candidate become black-ish, which makes no sense. Maybe I need my color vision checked.
Good post. Other states have similar data. In Utah (as one can see from the chart), Obama won everywhere across the state also meaning he didn't just win in liberal bastions but also in conservative bastions. I think similar results would be shown in North Dakota, Idaho, and Kansas meaning all of these states - North Dakota, Idaho, Kansas, and Utah - are in play if Obama is nominated.
Turn your brightness up. Or rotate your LCD downard a little bit.
Thanks for the corrections fellas. Yeah, Douglas County, I was close. Wenatchee has a large hispanic population. Interesting that Yakima was so strong for Obama, maybe the American Indian population overwhelmed the Clinton hispanic advantage? Because you can see that Franklin County, which is the home of Pasco and a pretty big hispanic population was not so strong for Obama. It looks however like Benton County, with Richland and Hanford went strongly for Obama though. Which is not surprising considering the education level in Richland.
It's true that the dark green and the dark purple are way too similar.
yeah, having two dark colors as the extremes makes it really hard to tell what's going on here. if there wasn't a comment about up above, i would've never noticed that 'green' county.
Do the Democrats have a primary next week too, like the Republicans do? If so, it would be interesting to contrast this map (of the caucus results) against the primary results. I question the extent to which caucus results are representative of anything.
The caucus results yielded delegates. The primary will yield none. That's what matters. I find it amusing that the Clintonistas are all of a sudden decrying caucuses as "undemocratic." I don't remember hearing that after they won the Nevada caucuses.
Agree that the color contrast becomes much clearer if you rotate your screen downward (so that the top of the screen is closer to your face than the bottom). This is much easier with a flat screen LCD of course...
Maybe it's elevation. Clinton wins voters who live above 2,500'?
1) What's hilarious is that the very light area (lowest degree of Obama support) is Franklin County, home of the Hanford Nuclear Reservation. The heavily irradiated area where the US Government produced plutonium for nuclear bombs from the beginning of the Manhatten project until the end of the Cold War. 2)To understand WHY the support Obama is low, one might look at page 214 of "The Manhattan Project" by Cynthia C Kelly. Some excerpts: "Dupont had been directed by the Manhatten Engineer District (MED), the organization within the Army Corps of Engineers responsible for building uranium and plutonium plants, to construct the Hanford Engineer Works as quickly as possible. In order to do that, Dupont aggressively recruited black and white laborers from the South. Dupont's managers believed jobs at Hanford would appeal most to Southern laborers, who received lower wages than workers in other parts of the country" "Before the war, racial discrimination had not been particularly acute in the Tri-Cities, in part because the black population was small." "Blacks and Whites arrived in the Tri-Cities with differing expectations about race relations. Blacks believed that moving north would improve their social status as well as their income. Whites came north expecting that blacks would be treated as they were in the South." "The Manhattan Engineer District ensured that blacks never constituted more than 10 to 20 percent of the employees at Hanford. MED officials deemed that number enough to mollify the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) but not enough to scare away white Southern laborers. Despite the need for workers , and the difficulty in finding them [due to WWII], the MED refused to exceed it own quota of blacks." "In addition, the city of Pacco reached an agreement with Dupont Officials that the company would pay to transport blacks back to the South after their work was completed." "And though DuPont had recruited many black women with promises of clerical jobs, it employed them almost exclusively as maids, waitresses, and cooks. Dudley challenged DuPont to explain why blacks were always reclassified from one menial job to another but never promoted to white collar jobs. Officials "evaded" his question." "Many of the Jim Crow codes that governed society in the South were also in place at Hanford, in part to please white southerners. Blacks were strictly forbidden from eating with whites." "One of the black barracks had a pool parlor and soda foundain so that black workers could relax and socialize away from whites. Most social activities at Hanford were segregated." "During his investigation, the NAACP's E.R. Dudley found housing at Hanford strictly segregated." "Those African Americans who sought housing offsite also faced a segregated and ,at times, hostile environment. Housing in the government town of Richmond was for permanent workers, such as those employed in production. Because blacks were hired only as construction workers, which were temporary positions, they were excluded from housing in the town. Housing in Kennewick was off limits to blacks because of racially restrictive convenants. In fact, the city was hostile to the mere presence of African Americans." "Pasco was the only one of the three cities that allowed black residents . However, because of racially restrictive convenants, blacks could reside east of the railroad tracks only...the city did not provide water or regular garbage service to the east [African American] side." "Dudley also found that Pasco businesses discriminated against blacks, reporting that there seemed "to have been concerted action on the part of all business to deprive the Negroes of cafe service, bar and grill service and most stores refused them the privilege of trying on" clothes before shopping. Dudley estimated that 80 percent of restaurants, soda fountains, and lunch counters in Pasco refused to serve blacks." "Blacks in Pasco faced dicrimination from law enforcement as well. The Pasco Police Department invented a new crime called "investigation", which allowed police to arrest blacks without charging them with a more specific infraction. Roughly 25 percent of all arrests of blacks in the 1940s in Pasco were for investigation." So there you have it, ladies and gentleman. A GENUINE slice of the pre-Civil Rights era OLD SOUTH -- picked up and transported to eastern Washington by the nuclear weapons establishment. Preserved in a time warp by isolation, government secrecy, and government contracts -- preserved long after the Civil Rights movement knocked heads in the South. Anyone ever wonder where the Aryan Nations got their start? You have other such time-warp archipelagos in the classified world. Don't like liberals? --write the guidelines for granting security clearances in such a way that only Baptists and other god-fearing people can qualify. No history of significant dope smoking , for example. Make adultry a reportable offense --in the case of the armed services, make it a crime punishable by court martial. Plus, of course, ban all the queers.
That is one awesome comment, Don.
The caucus results yielded delegates. The primary will yield none. What??? Then what the %$@# are they having a primary for? Man, the way delegates are selected is big time screwed up.
Every once in a while, Al really does sum things up nicely.
I would like to praise Matt for being the only Blogger of his demographic who seems to have noticed whats going on here. Everyone else just marvels that Obama only wins in regions where they aren't many black people, or where there are a lot of them. Gee, those statements the Clinton's started to make a few weeks ago really make sense now, don't they?
For what it's worth, many of Clinton's stronger counties have largish Indian reservations. There's a useful map here: http://nationalatlas.gov/printable/images/pdf/fedlands/wa.pdf
For what it's worth, the four counties on the Pacific are lumber country and very blue-collar. But the two northern counties (Clatsop and Jefferson) have areas of gentrification in their eastern reaches, which may account for Obama's better showing there relative to the lower counties (Grey's Harbor and (I think) Pacific). We aren't talking about very many votes in either case. The population is of course mostly clustered around the lower end of Puget Sound, in Seattle/Tacoma/Olympia.
Everyone else just marvels that Obama only wins in regions where they aren't many black people, or where there are a lot of them. Maybe I'm missing something, but isn't Washington State only about 3% black? How could you possibly have a racially-polarized election under that demographic structure? Since the WA turnout was only about 13%, I supposed it's theoretically possible that the Democratic vote was exceptionally different than the underlying population numbers, but I really tend to doubt it. And pace "mpowell", I've never claimed that Obama can never, ever win more than 35% of the non-black vote anywhere---the WA numbers alone would totally refute that. My claim is just that, on average, his national percentage of the non-black vote thus far hasn't been all that much above 35%. If "mpowell" disagrees, he can do the arithmetic himself. That's why they call it an "average". As for the Louisiana being slightly more "racially polarized"...well, with a huge 40% Democratic turnout, Obama won the black vote by about SEVENTY points and lost the non-black vote by about FORTY points. Yep, I think you could call that "racially polarized"...
RKU sez: My claim is just that, on average, his national percentage of the non-black vote thus far hasn't been all that much above 35%. If "mpowell" disagrees, he can do the arithmetic himself. That's why they call it an "average". Is it even worth talking about national averages anymore? More than half the population has already voted, so even if Obama were to dramatically increase his percentage of the white vote in the next week or two (which seems to have begun in this weekend's contests, and will likely continue through Tuesday's) it won't move that national average much. It's just not that relevant a number at this point.
"The caucus results yielded delegates. The primary will yield none." What??? Then what the %$@# are they having a primary for? Washington's Secretary of State (supported by Washington's generally anti-partisan voters) wants both the Dems and the Repubs to allot their delegates via primary. The parties, being private organizations with the First Amendment right to control their membership, disagree. The State of Washington instituted the primary election on Feb. 19 in the hope that the parties would change their mind. The Dems called their bluff and assigned all their delegates via the Feb. 9 caucuses. The Repubs, being a minority, have allotted half their delegates to the primary and half to the caucus (so expect the donnybrook surrounding the Republican halt of the vote-counting to be repeated in a week). The Repubs have spun their half-measure as being "more democratic." Given that the majority of Washingtonians have repeatedly demonstrated a willingness to split tickets and "sabotage" the opposing parties' primaries, it's beyond me why the parties let anyone participate at all. Rather than having the public foot the bill for a useless poll, let the parties rent a room in Olympia for a weekend and come up with their delegates then. It'll be cheaper for everyone.
Yep it was the 90% black vote..
It would be nice to have a map that had different colors for the major Obama and Clinton wins instead of black for both. This one is incomprehensible. I have no idea what it means that the map is mostly black. And yes, I have my brightness turned up and I tried rotating the screen.
Ugh... this makes most of the state just look black, which could be strong Clinton or strong Obama. I have an LCD screen; I tried fiddling with the brightness, I tried fiddling with the angle, and no, I'm not color-blind. Fix the colors. Dark purple here looks just like dark green.
Outside of Franklin County, rest of the state looks solidly for Obama. They couldn't hold caucuses in the Congo and get a map this dark.
Although the use of pink to highlight Hillary supporters seems kinda sexist.
It looks like the least Obama friendly counties were largely in the east part of the state, and follow the Columbia basin pretty closely. Nowadays, this is a largely Republican stronghold in the state, but remember that this part of the state was populated not only by Hanford workers (and thanks for that great comment above) but also New Deal era FDR public works projects aimed at irrigating eastern Washington - think Grand Coulee. I'd love to see a generation based demographic breakdown on those counties because it occurs to me that many of the folks still voting Democrat in those area are likely to be older and likely to still consider themselves "FDR" style Dems. The Rump of Dems in those areas would tend to be of an older generation and more likely to vote Clinton.
The reason you folks can't tell the difference between green and purple or as you call it they're both black is that the Clintons had NO significant showing in any other county than Douglas. So all the *black* is Obama...in short the whole state. The number are astonishing:
Mea culpa -- at 11:46 I referred to the northernmost county on the Olympic Peninsula as "Clatsop." It's Clallam County. Clatsop County is in Oregon. (Feeble excuse: They're in the same relative geographic position.) Looking at the numbers linked to by G. Davis, I see that Clinton indeed got twice as much support in Grays Harbor and Pacific as in Jefferson and Clallam. Looking at the other counties I know anything about seems to confirm that Clinton was relatively stronger in the blue-collar places. Obama totally killed her in the counties I think of as upscale and/or hippieish -- San Juan County, 81% to 18%!
There is some racial polarization here. The counties where Obama won by a smaller margin (especially Franklin county) are rural agricultural areas with significant Latino populations. Clinton also did well in Yakima City, which has a heavy Latino presence.
1) To understand how the classified world's time warp works, look at how Richland --one of the 3 Tri-Cities of Hanford Nuclear Reservation --was set up: "Richland was a small farm town until the US Army purchased 1660 km² (640 sq mi - half the size of Rhode Island) along the Columbia River for the war effort, evicting the 300 residents of Richland as well as those of the now vanished towns of White Bluffs and Hanford just upriver. The army turned it into a bedroom community for the workers on its Manhattan Project facility at the nearby Hanford Engineering Works (now the Hanford site). The population increased from 300 in July and August of 1943 to 25,000 by the end of World War II in August of 1945. [NOTE>>>] Richland became a closed city (federally controlled Atomic Energy community), with access restricted to residents and others authorized by the U.S. Army. Mail was postmarked Seattle and many addresses were misleading. All land and buildings were owned by the government. Housing was assigned to residents and token rent was collected; families were assigned to houses or duplexes; single people were placed in apartments or barracks. Everything necessary was provided, from free bus service to light bulbs, and trees were planted in people's yards by the government... Current population stats: ah,yes: Ref: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richland%2C_Washington
I spent some time in Richland/Pasco/Kennewick a few years back. The irony is that the housing the Manhattan Project built for the scientists and engineers at Hanford is today the nicest in the area, largely bought & rehabbed by young professionals. The people I was visting had combined the two halves of a duplex into one. A lot of poor people live in Pasco, most but by no means all of them Hispanic. The city is run by an old guard of Anglos that has somehow managed to exclude the Hispanics from political power. They have a deep, deep resentment of being stuck with all the poor people and want badly for them to leave. I was there because the City Council had passed a law prohibiting any new social service agency or any business perceived as catering to poor people (thrift shops!) from opening in the downtown area. Which they envision as a resurrection of Pleasantville, 1954. The irony is that the Hispanic businesses are thriving while the Anglo downtown is like a ghost town. The people in power simply ignore their existence. The Chamber of Commerce hired a consultant to come up with a downtown redevelopment plan. He proposed that the city play up the area's Hispanic character. I don't know if he got out of town without being tarred and feathered, but the study was buried quickly.
Gentrified? That's one word I would never apply to the eastern part of Clallam County. Geriatric, for sure. It's retiree heaven. But it's a pretty conservative bunch, with a big proportion of military retirees. Now, Jefferson is a different story. Port Townsend even went for McGovern in the 1984 caucus (the only precincts he won in the whole state, I think).
Today the Wa Democratic Party fessed up to an error in posting the results and Douglas County -- which had been reported as the only WA county to go for Clinton -- actually went 60-40 for Obama. It is a pretty conservative county, as most of Eastern Washington is.
The other comments on the problems with the colors on this map are on target. Nick's using the same misguided coloring scheme for all the maps he's producing --- light green or purple for close counties and darker and darker green/purple for more lopsided ones. The problem is the the dark green and purples tend toward the same color (black). The colors should start from a common starting color and diverge away from each other (think the red/purple/blue continuum), not converge on a common color. Geez, it must be a ton of work to produce these maps and they provide great information if you can only get past the wrongheaded coloring scheme.
“picked up and transported to eastern Washington by the nuclear weapons establishment.” From your quote: “In addition, the city of Pacco reached an agreement with Dupont Officials that the company would pay to transport blacks back to the South after their work was completed...” Along with some other paragraphs in your quote, it's clear that in the case of the town of Pasco, at least, the racism and Jim Crow attitudes were already there. I'm the last person to echo the traditional Southern plea that “racism is just as bad in the North”. But it's certainly true, and was especially true in the 40s and 50s, that racism existed in the North and West and was just dormant until awakened...as we see in Pasco. The DoD didn't import racism to Washington, it was already there.
Re Keith Ellis's comment "that racism existed in the North and West and was just dormant until awakened...as we see in Pasco. The DoD didn't import racism to Washington, it was already there." 2)One of my excerpts above noted that "Before the war, racial discrimination had not been particularly acute in the Tri-Cities, in part because the black population was small." "The Manhattan Project", p. 214-218, that I cited above also notes: 3) What were the forces involved? A police force in a large town/small cities knows where its pay checks come from -- it enforces the prejudices of the local population and the economic/political agendas of the wealthy elite. 4) In 1940, the COMBINED population of Richland, Kennewick, and Pasco was only around 7000. By 1950, that population had increased 600 percent That Southern influx had been even higher during WWII -- and it had stamped it's racist imprint on the Tri-Cities culture hard. 5) The work force at Hanford in WWII rose to 45,000 plus the families of the workers. Most of those workers were Southern crackers -- as noted above, Dupont kept the black percentage of the work force to around 15 percent. 6) There was high turnover at the site -- and an exodus after the war ended. But the primary pattern was clear -- the Southern whites stayed -- the blacks did not. The Manhatten Project notes that 15,000 blacks were imported into the Tri-Cities in 1943-45 but the black population of Pasco (the only town where they were allowed to permanently reside ) increased from 27 (1940) to only 1000 (1950). 7) In contrast, Richland had 300 people circa 1943 -- by 1946, it had 25,000 (as noted above.) Almost all of those residents were white. 8) Kennewick also exploded in size -- most of the population growth from Hanford was concentrated in Richland and Kennewick -- and like Richland, Kennewick was almost all white. (The Manhattan Project notes an incident in which the Kennewick police --seeing a black Hanford worker riding in a car with two white men, stopped the car, pulled the black man out, tied the black man to a telephone pole, and called the Pasco police to come pick him up. They evidently didn't even want black people in their jails. ) 9) So the native population was only a small fraction of population compared to the Southern whites imported into the Tri-Cities. Who do you think was establishing the local culture and its prejudices? 11) Nor did the US Army do anything about Southern prejudice. In part because it had an overriding focus on quick success/high production -- and wanted calm labor relations. Also , the Army was out of the nuclear business after WWII -- the distant AEC in Washington DC took over. Plus it was hard for "outside agitators" like the NAACP to intervene when they couldn't even get into the closed atomic city of Richland because they didn't have the security clearances. 12) You had a tailored made, isolated incubator for creating and protecting a racial community that would have made the Ku Klux Klan seethe with envy. An incubator protected by isolation, by intense government secrecy, by high barriers to entry, and sustained year after year by huge government contracts with only one requirement: the plutonium must flow. 13) Today --65 years later, what is the result? As I noted above, the population stats for Richland are: "As of the census[4] of 2000, ...The racial makeup of the city was 89.55% White, 1.37% African American, 0.76% Native American, 4.06% Asian, 0.11% Pacific Islander, 1.85% from other races, and 2.31% from two or more races." 14) That's not just White -- that's LILY WHITE.
aretino, I yield to your superior knowledge about the demographics of Sequim and environs. I was just going on the fact that I have spent several hours there on various occasions without seeing anybody who looked like he wore caulk shoes to work.
roac, Well, you're right that there aren't a lot of blue collar workers in Sequim. But there isn't much office work, either. Pretty much the only work is in retail, serving the 50%+ of the population there that's retired. And those retirees were mostly from the military services or blue collar jobs. College degrees there are at about two-thirds the state average.
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Heads in the Sand
I'm just waiting for RKU to show up and explain how this is impossible b/c Obama could never win more than 35% of the non-white vote.
Posted by mpowell | February 11, 2008 10:27 AM