Saw this map (from Regional Plan Association) of emerging megaregions and it got me thinking about election data. Because of recent (and continuous) Democratic victories in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, Los Angles, San Francisco and Seattle, common wisdom has it that Democrats win the urban center. Well, what about the “Megaregions”? While on some level, this simple map overlay seems to suggest the megaregions fall into the Democrats column, I think what’s interesting is how divided the Great Lakes is and that Democratic gains in the south are outside of the Piedmont Atlantic megaregion. I would have expected more of an alignment in the south with Democratic gains and urban clusters. Not so, it seems. The clearest strong hold for Republicans is the Texas Triangle, though the blue encroachment in southern Texas is something to be worried about for them. My gut says that as Texas trends blue, the Great Lakes will trend red.This was just a simple little overlay of two data maps, but I want to play around with this some more and see what else I can come up with. I’d like to build a real trend map of election data over the past 10 years and merge that with the Megaregions data. (big map)

Saw this map (from Regional Plan Association) of emerging megaregions and it got me thinking about election data. Because of recent (and continuous) Democratic victories in Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Denver, Los Angles, San Francisco and Seattle, common wisdom has it that Democrats win the urban center. Well, what about the “Megaregions”?

While on some level, this simple map overlay seems to suggest the megaregions fall into the Democrats column, I think what’s interesting is how divided the Great Lakes is and that Democratic gains in the south are outside of the Piedmont Atlantic megaregion. I would have expected more of an alignment in the south with Democratic gains and urban clusters. Not so, it seems. The clearest strong hold for Republicans is the Texas Triangle, though the blue encroachment in southern Texas is something to be worried about for them. My gut says that as Texas trends blue, the Great Lakes will trend red.

This was just a simple little overlay of two data maps, but I want to play around with this some more and see what else I can come up with. I’d like to build a real trend map of election data over the past 10 years and merge that with the Megaregions data.

(big map)

Posted on July 14th, 2009 at 12:35 pm.

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