Thoughts on the Electorate

We've got some trouble, not unforeseen of course, but trouble nonetheless

This is a map from the 2012 presidential election, Barack Obama vs Mitt Romney, showing Republican (red) or Democrat (blue) by county.

I wasn’t involved in politics, even to the exclusion of voting, for much of my adult life. At some point it seemed necessary, however distasteful. Anyway, we’ve all heard of “flyover country,” as I suppose a disparaging term, though I would just as soon it stayed that way. As it turns out, flyover country is most of the nation, less the cities and their suburbs. Clearly, the rural | urban divide is real, and perhaps the most pronounced of all divides. Sure, their is racial division, gender, age, and we could go on and on, but certainly none of those groups individually is bigger than the urban group. According to Statista, “In 2020, about 82.66 percent of the total population in the United States lived in cities and urban areas.”

I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries; as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities, as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.

Thomas Jefferson

Of course Jefferson saw this coming, among others no doubt. I don’t know about “many centuries,” because here we are just 240 years into it and facing the problem. Not everyone is corrupt, in fact most of the electorate are not, it’s the governments of these large entities that become corrupt. So I thought I’d have a look at some maps coming out of yesterdays midterm elections. Let’s look at Michigan first, since we live here.