Wanna see something interesting? Open these three maps in new windows:
1. Election 2004 Results
2. Set this map to show rivers
3. Purple America
My daughter Laura is home from Germany. She's a geographer. We were looking at election results and she noticed that you can see the Mississippi river system in the "blue." (for Kerry).
That makes intuitive sense in that this country is more populated along the river systems, and the more populated areas (more urban? more international?) tended to go Kerry.
But the red/blue shift doesn't hold true about ALL river systems. Eyeballing it, I see a correlation between the direction the rivers flow and the voting percentages. By and large, areas with only east-west river systems are reddish. Areas with north-south river systems are more blue.
Offhand, the only things that come to mind are:
* rivers = people who travel more, meet more people vs. those who have less varied experience
* North/South = Union/Confederacy, thereore people who travel (or meet travelers) across north/south areas get more experience beyond whatever cultural mores are leftover from the Civil War divide, whereas travelling east-west would leave the person within whatever of that particular cultural mix he/she already lives in
* Population appears to be less (by my eyball) in those areas that were largely red. Again, less cross-cultural experience, just from meeting fewer people
???????????
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