Huntingdon College: Political Science Program | Courses | Club News | What's New?
PSC 311 and PSC 305 Outlines:
County Map, 2000 Election.
by Jeremy Lewis.

This material was received via email.
A search by researcher Daniel Hickman (thanks) reveals it was probably found in the same location was the material from this link:
 http://www.lagrange.lib.in.us/elect_county.html
Note that most counties are rural and poorly populated.
Therefore, county maps grossly over-represent rural conservatism and hence the Republican vote.
State legislatures over-represent the rural districts, and so does the US Senate, hence the electoral college vote for the presidency.
It is common in other countries also to over-represent rural conservatism.

THE BUSH - GORE ELECTORAL MAP, 2000!
Here it is, from USA Today, a County-by-County map of the United States showing who won what!
Gore is in Blue, Bush is in Red
(read on after you look at the map)

 
 

NOW --- WHAT'S THIS ABOUT A POPULAR VOTE?
OK … here are some facts on this week’s vote from this map and USA Today.
Counties won:
Gore – 677
Bush – 2,434.

Square miles won:
Gore – 580,134
Bush – 2,427,039

Population of counties won:
Gore – 127 million
Bush – 143 million

And what was the only state that did not have one single county vote for Al Gore? Hint. It was the only state that Bill Clinton never visited during his presidency.

If we were to move to a popular vote in this country those counties up there in blue would be the counties that our politicians would concentrate on. Nebraska (the only Clinton-Free state) would, for all intents and purposes, cease to be a part of this country insofar as presidential politics is concerned. After all, there's a reason Bill Clinton never went to Nebraska while making dozens of trips to California.

Also --- think about this! My bet is if you took those blue counties and compared them to the red counties in terms of federal government spending, you would find out that much more federal money is spent in those blue counties than those red counties. Also --- look for concentration of government workers. Again -- you'll find them in the blue counties.

You want a popular vote for the presidency? I'll assume you don't live in one of those red counties.