it<u+2019>s not just a map. history, race, religion, culture, ethnicity, geography: the 2012 presidential election county-level results map has many stories to tell. nate cohn , the upshot<u+2019>s elections analyst, and toni monkovic, an upshot editor, discussed some differences we can expect for 2016, and posted a lightly edited transcript of their written exchange. toni some readers complain about this map format because it makes it seem that almost all of america is conservative. they<u+2019>d rather see a map that reflects population and not real estate. you can see an example of that type of map here . do you have a preference? the real map doesn<u+2019>t bother me because i know there are vast areas of low population in rural america and tumbleweeds in some parts of the country, and i adjust to that. nate well, i<u+2019>m sympathetic to the point, but i prefer a standard map. why? i think that election patterns have important spatial and geographic elements that can<u+2019>t really be analyzed without a <u+201c>normal<u+201d> map. toni one way to understand blue america is to follow the water. the oceans, the great lakes and the major rivers were obvious places for small settlements to become major cities. and these big metro areas are where democrats dominate. the population of rural counties as a whole has been declining , and metro areas are growing. over time, this will help democrats, no? nate the democrats do tend to do best in metropolitan areas. all of the major demographic and cultural changes that have helped the democrats over the last decade are concentrated in these diverse and often well-educated areas. in this election, i<u+2019>d guess hillary clinton will fare even better in metropolitan areas than president obama did. whether the democrats will make out even better over the long term is another question. it<u+2019>ll depend on whether they end up with messages that alienate the rest of the country, or whether the republicans shift their message to do a better job of competing in metropolitan areas. toni our upshot colleague quoctrung bui wrote about <u+201c>the most detailed map of gay marriage in america.<u+201d> that map looks pretty similar to this 2012 electoral one. the gay population has tended to gather in big cities. but there is one major difference between the gay marriage map and the 2012 map: race, which is one of the biggest determinants of party affiliation. nate yeah, the gay marriage map is basically a map of white liberalism. and the map of white liberalism lines up quite well with where democrats do well <u+2014> except in the areas where democrats do well because of their strength with nonwhite voters. you can see a few areas like this: there<u+2019>s an arc of democratic strength across the interior south. this is the old <u+201c>black belt,<u+201d> named for the fertile soil that gave rise to cotton plantations. these areas are still populated by a high percentage of african-americans even 150 years after the end of slavery, and they<u+2019>re predominantly democratic today. the other area is in the hispanic and native american areas of the southwest. toni what about the differences between 2012 and 2016? one relatively sudden shift is that mormons have turned against donald trump . clinton now actually has a chance to win utah (as does the independent candidate evan mcmullin). and there are also relatively large mormon populations in some of the states neighboring utah. nate yes, i think you<u+2019>ll see a shift toward clinton in the mormon areas of utah, eastern idaho and a few adjacent counties elsewhere in the region. i would guess that clinton at least wins salt lake county (which includes salt lake city), summit county (an affluent, well-educated, relatively liberal county that includes park city), grand county (which includes moab, an outdoorsy town that<u+2019>s the gateway to all of the great national parks in the southern part of the state), and san juan county, which has a large native american population. and i<u+2019>ll be fascinated to see where mcmullin breaks though. can he win utah county, which includes provo? it voted 88 percent for mitt romney last time, and donald trump is just a terrible fit there. he got 9 percent there in the republican primary. toni the far bigger difference between now and 2012, as you<u+2019>ve written about extensively , is between the education levels of white americans . and it has a direct bearing on recent polls that show trump very competitive or ahead in states like iowa and ohio. president obama did better than a lot of people thought among northern working-class whites in 2012, and trump is taking some of those voters. nate yeah, there<u+2019>s this whole stretch where obama was very competitive among white working-class voters. you can see it from the coast of new england, and then stretching across upstate new york, the industrial northern part of ohio along lake erie, across michigan, northern illinois, wisconsin, iowa and minnesota. my sense is that clinton is struggling in a lot of these same areas <u+2014> whether it<u+2019>s northern maine, industrial ohio, eastern iowa or northern wisconsin and minnesota. she<u+2019>s certainly doing worse in these areas than obama did, who counted on them to make up his <u+201c>midwestern firewall<u+201d> at this time four years ago. toni we should probably mention the progressive tradition in states like minnesota and wisconsin. that probably still has some effect today in parts of the upper midwest. nate all of these places from new england to minnesota have a strong tradition that today we would think of as progressive or liberal. new england and the upper midwest led the charge for abolition, and they were among the most republican states in the country for a century after the civil war. they supported women<u+2019>s suffrage. they were the focal points for the big progressive movements of the early part of the last century, whether it was f.d.r. or robert la follette . toni there<u+2019>s a little pocket of red in maine. is that part of the second congressional district, where trump has a decent chance of picking up an electoral vote? nate there<u+2019>s one county in maine that romney won in 2012, and it is part of the second congressional district. the district includes most of the geographic area of maine <u+2014> basically everywhere but the southern tip near portland. obama won the district by 8.5 percentage points last time, and polls now show it as a very close race. so i suspect that there could be a lot of new red up there in a few weeks. it<u+2019>s very rural, very white, and very few people have a college degree. so it<u+2019>s a great fit for trump. toni trump has performed pretty well with italian-americans in the new york area. they<u+2019>ll be swamped by clinton supporters over all in the state. but it<u+2019>s interesting that one of his biggest bases of support among republicans in the entire country is staten island, an italian-american haven. nate you can also see this type of support in coastal new jersey and long island. a lot of these areas are also fairly diverse <u+2014> hispanics, african-americans, asian-americans <u+2014> so i doubt that trump will win those areas by a large margin, if he wins them at all. but he will win the white voters there. toni the places where whites tend to have more college degrees <u+2014> states like colorado, north carolina and virginia <u+2014> are moving in the democratic direction. nate yeah, it<u+2019>s a little hard to see on the map, but i<u+2019>d expect clinton to greatly expand obama<u+2019>s margins around denver, raleigh and washington, d.c. (in virginia and in maryland). most of these areas already voted democratic, so there aren<u+2019>t too many places where i<u+2019>d expect clinton to flip a county to her side in these states. you can find examples of places that clinton might turn blue farther south <u+2014> like fort bend county in texas, which is west of houston, or gwinnett county outside atlanta. toni there<u+2019>s a fairly big patch of blue in southern texas along the rio grande from 2012. is it purely a matter of a large hispanic population? nate those counties along the rio grande are overwhelmingly hispanic. toni the latest polls show clinton creeping closer in texas, within four points , according to one survey. and democrats are even spending some money on a one-week ad campaign in the state. that seems to be a major trump effect. a regular republican wouldn<u+2019>t have such problems. nate yeah, this is all on trump. it<u+2019>s not a demographic story. this is a white republicans <u+2014> especially well-educated women <u+2014> abandoning trump story. toni what is your favorite geographical quirk in this map? is there an example of where you think geography or maybe even climate played into what became party preference? nate some of the northern forested areas of the midwest were often settled by scandinavians, perhaps in part because the cold and forested terrain was reminiscent of their homeland. a fun one is the ski and resort towns of the rockies <u+2014> you can see the democratic enclaves stretching from taos in northern new mexico, up the spine of the rockies to breckenridge and aspen. and then there are a few other enclaves <u+2014> teton county, which includes jackson hole in wyoming <u+2014> or blaine county in idaho, which has sun valley. another fun one: you can clearly see the demarcation between northern and southern settlement along the iowa-missouri border. the border between <u+201c>north<u+201d> and <u+201c>south<u+201d> is much blurrier in the areas farther to the east, which were settled long before the civil war. influxes of northern and southern voters sort of mixed in a state like indiana or ohio. but the further west you go and the closer you get to the civil war, those lines get clearer. toni are there any other interesting patterns of historical migration, ethnicity or religion that catch your eye? (and we also ask readers to chime in and share their knowledge in the comments section). nate i think the continuity of migration to today<u+2019>s politics is pretty interesting. those scandinavians, for instance, subsequently settled western washington state <u+2014> coming along the railroad from duluth. those areas <u+2014> coastal washington and minnesota <u+2014> have voted about the same way since. i<u+2019>d make the same basic observation about the broader thrust of western migration from new england across the upper midwest, and then again to the pacific coast. you can see it in the names of certain towns <u+2014> the hometown of one of my upshot colleagues, lake oswego, ore., is named for a town in upstate new york. portland itself is named after portland, maine <u+2014> it won in a coin toss over boston. in this election, i think it<u+2019>s worth paying careful attention to the old industrial democratic towns of the midwest <u+2014> the whole northern stretch of ohio along lake erie, down through youngstown and into western pennsylvania, or the other industrial towns like scranton or throughout the old industrial heartland. democrats still do really well in these areas, and places similar to in britan it broke heavily for brexit. toni trump is trying to turn those places red, but even with the trump effect and with some of the differences we<u+2019>ve discussed, the map we can expect on nov. 9, after the election, won<u+2019>t be radically different from this one. the country has polarized along some basic divides of race and religion and urban-versus-rural. in broad strokes, the south flipped from blue to red starting in the 1960s over race, and democrats eventually took over the northeast, the west coast and the upper midwest. and here we are. nate a lot of the biggest changes, like democrats running up the score in metropolitan areas, won<u+2019>t be very obvious on the 2016 map in comparison with the 2012 map. those areas will stay blue and, yes, they won<u+2019>t even take a lot of space visually. but they<u+2019>ll make a huge difference in the final count. the upshot provides news, analysis and graphics about politics, policy and everyday life. follow us on facebook and twitter . sign up for our newsletter.
what this 2012 map tells us about america, and the election
nate cohn and toni monkovic