Goose the Blog 2.0

When I was looking at the USA map this morning, I was struck by how divided it is. Blue in the Mid-Atlantic and N.E., blue on the Pacific coast, and red everywhere else.

A lot of people would like you to think these are the real divisions between Americans. That the liberals live on the edges, and the conservatives live in the middle. But that can't really be the case, can it?

So I made the following chart (clicking makes it bigger). The blue and red bars represent the traditional binary representation of the electoral split - all or nothing for Kerry and Bush, respectively. The grey represents the actual difference in the popular vote. Anything greater than +25% for Bush is black, and greater than +25% for Kerry is white. Lots of grey in the middle.

I made a map, too (click to enlarge).

I didn't supply a color bar, but the four darkest shades correspond to >25% Bush, 20-25% Bush, 15-20% Bush, and 10-15% Bush (22 states). The middle four are 5-10% Bush, 0-5% Bush, 0-5% Kerry and 5-10% Kerry (21 states). The lightest three are 10-15% Kerry, 15-20% Kerry and >20% Kerry (7 states + D.C.).