New Geography

Author: Richard Morrill

  • United States Map of Natural Population Gains and Losses by County, 2000-2007

  • United States Map of Net Internal (Domestic) Migration by County, 2000-2007

  • United States Map of Immigration by County, 2000-2007

  • United States Map of Population Change by County, 2000-2007

  • Seattle Joins the Recession

    At the time of the election, less than 3 months ago, Seattle seemed to be riding above the fray, escaping the worst features of the recession, such as mass layoffs, even despite weakness in the housing market. Seattle area voters even approved a series of huge tax measures, including $30 billion for rail rapid transit, befitting what folks here like to consider a world-class city.

    The story recently is much more somber, reeling somewhat from a series of high-level hits to the economy. In contrast to neighboring Oregon, unemployment is not yet severe, about 6.3% for the metropolis, but there remains a degree of denial that the Emerald City is in for an actual decline! Giant Amazon actually did well over the holiday season and Costco reasonably well, considering its dependence on national consumption.

    The largest layoff, reminiscent of past recessions, was to Boeing which might drop as many as 10,000 jobs, and a yet unknown number to PACCAR, maker of Kenworth and Peterbilt trucks and the stalwarts of Seattle’s unionized and well-paid manufacturers. Starbucks is closing many stores and contracting at the headquarters. Mighty Microsoft will not occupy expected space, as it has also been hit by the recession and will experience selective layoffs.

    The decline in the housing market and new construction, residential and commercial, has collectively impacted hundreds of firms in finance, architecture, and construction. The Seattle housing market, like that of Portland, which held up longer than California’s now may experience serious declines.

    Perhaps the biggest loss, however, is the collapse of WAMU (Washington Mutual), a pacesetter in the bad practices that brought on the recession. WAMU’s demise is hurting many local investors, charities, tax revenues, as well as employment at all levels, probably leading to a downtown job loss of 20,000.

    Another casualty is the port business. A substantial part of Seattle’s growth and wealth is tied up in international trade. Container traffic has slowed markedly and is at further risk, especially if there is a rise in protectionism in Congress. Overall, the eventual losses in the in the finance, housing and perhaps even high-tech sectors of the “new economy” may be greater than the more visible problems of Boeing, PACCAR and even Starbucks, whose output and income will recover as the world economy recovers (but not until). Hard times are coming not just for Joe the Plumber, but the vaunted “creative class” as well.

    Other soft indicators are that 30 percent of homes are selling at a net loss, and that the current forecast for the next three months is for a 3-percent decline in regional product and a loss of 50,000 jobs. The recession is viewed as having “officially arrived in Seattle” in December 2008, following the layoff plans of Seattle’s iconic firms and recognition that construction employment has dropped like a “piece of concrete,” in the words of Dick Conway, a well-known Puget Sound Economic Forecaster.

    The imminent closure of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer fits into this bleak picture. This is the story of an economy that is decelerating after convincing itself it was all but recession-proof. In Detroit or even LA, they expect hard times. Up here we have all but forgotten that our economy is also cyclical, and has much vulnerability. The question is will we see again the famous billboard erected in the 1973 recession, which asked “Will the Last person leaving SEATTLE – Turn out the lights.”

    Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)

  • A Sober Look at the New Year for Obama

    Personal experience made me a skeptic about racial progress. When I was 8, I was upset when our Japanese neighbors in Los Angeles were sent off to internment. In 1963, I traveled across the Deep South, awed by the totality of poverty, segregation and discrimination.

    But the election of Barack Obama restored a degree of faith in the American experiment, and hope for an economic and social turnaround. I was inspired by the inauguration and am encouraged by initial and intended actions. I’m reasonably sure that significant reforms will occur.

    But my skepticism about more fundamental change remains strong. The Democratic Party is of the intellectual rich, not of the worker, and not very inclined to deep change. The most critical political story of the election was the 12 to 15 percent shift of the rich, educated and suburban to the Democrats, offsetting the shift of about 6 percent of the less educated or professional, but more religious and rural to the Republicans.

    Karl Rove’s strategy of combining affluent economic conservatives and social conservatives ultimately failed. He thought tax cuts would keep the rich loyal, but they defected. But at the same time, the shift of the affluent has, in my mind, weakened the historic mission of the Democratic Party.

    By far the greatest issue before us, one barely on anyone’s agenda, is the astounding degree of economic inequality, perhaps approaching the levels of 1929 or even 1913. This obscene outcome, an astounding concentration of wealth by the super-rich, is a consequence of market failure – the capacity of those at the top to exercise monopoly power over the economy, and whose tax cuts and deregulation contributed to the current financial crisis and deepening recession.

    Not unrelated to this process are deindustrialization, over-globalization and overdependence on other nations for resources, products, and credit. The story of the rise of the United States to world power was based on production. Our success over Germany and Japan depended on massive production of war materials (yes, from the likes of General Motors, Ford and Chrysler) and our capacity to destroy the productive capacity of the enemy. Now we are willing to bail out the bloated financial and service sectors, and let industry die. Trade is overall beneficial and it is in our interest to aid in the economic development of all countries, but it is irresponsible and false savings to outsource basic production (and increasingly, even services). It is absurd to believe that we can safely prosper by trading, packaging, moving, storing, advertising, insuring, selling, brokering information, but not MAKING STUFF!

    This system of import dependence has accentuated our growing class divide. We create high-end jobs for some, but very few of the middle class opportunities long associated with production. Production also creates a wide range of higher end service-related jobs. When you are selling things made in China, much of the non-production value added is also exported.

    The increased bifurcation of our society can be seen in other fields. While the United States may have the “finest” education at the top, the general level of education is amazingly mediocre with astounding prevalence of ignorance and superstition, especially about science, economics and geography. I do not see even a hint of a turnaround here.

    I suspect the power of the medical insurance and hospital sectors are sufficient to prevent serious reform of the dysfunctional health system. Nor are we close to abandonment of the hopeless war on drugs, or to real reform of criminal justice, and – despite the election of Barack Obama – the integration of millions of Black males into mainstream society. Do the ivory tower economic theorists, Democratic as well as Republican, have a clue about the disaster potential of 100,000 more unemployed workers in Detroit? Does no one remember the race riots in Detroit or Watts, and the long history of labor unrest in America?

    This sad economic and social restructuring began around 1976. Believe it or not, the lowest level of economic inequality in US history was 1974 in the Nixon administration. Those of us at the top surely believe we earned our way there, but are in denial about the immense cost to the majority left behind.

    I just hope I’m as wrong about prospects for real reform as I was about the election!

    P.S.
    A guy (Obama) who could do the Bump with a 9 year old girl at maybe his 10th inaugural ball is so cool that perhaps I’ll raise my optimism level!

    Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)

  • Understanding the Geography of the 2008 Election

    Scholars as well as pundits and politicians will study this remarkable election exhaustively. Many, including me, will use county data, because they are convenient and available. From a statistical point of view, counties are lousy units, because of huge variation in size and excess internal variability. But we can’t resist, so here are some at least suggestive findings.

    First, what correlates with the percent voting for Obama? By far the strongest variables are negative – characteristics associated with voting Republican: a county’s share of husband-wife families (-.64), the rate of home ownership (-.55), percent working in craft occupations (-.52), and religious membership (-.51) all work against Obamamania. Other high negative correlations were with percent rural (-.48), with percent white (-.47), other positive were median rent (.45) and percent foreign born (.45). These are not at all surprising, and are what the exit polls told us.

    The highest positive correlations for Obama lay in percentages of non-family households with 2 or more persons (partners, roommates, .50), percent in urbanized areas (.49), or using public transit (.48), and percent with a BA or higher degree (.46). What these figures highlight is the continuing basic polarization between large metropolitan (+ variables) and non-metropolitan (- variables) areas, and simultaneously between the more modern and diverse character of the big city and the more traditional and conservative values of much of non-big city America.

    But, you may protest, we thought race, ethnicity and age played a big role in this election? Indeed, they did, but the correct dependent variable should be the degree of change in the share voting Democratic. In other words, what helps distinguish the 2008 from the 2004 results? The largest effect, of course, is simply the quite large 5-6 percent shift in national sentiment because of economic uncertainty and disillusionment with the Republican regime.

    But beyond that, the pro-Obama variables tend to be the percent of women in the labor force, percent with a BA degree, median household income (yep, time to toss out the traditional wisdom of Republicans being the party of the ‘rich’), non-family households, professional-managerial occupations, and, yes, percent Hispanic, percent Black and percent aged 25-34. In contrast variables leading to a lesser shift, no shift, or even more Republican, were again church membership, percent rural, percent in crafts jobs, and percent 45-64 or over 65, and percent with less than a 9th grade education.

    Overall, education, occupation, age, race and ethnicity help us understand Democratic strength in large metropolitan America and also in rural and small-town American Indian, Black and Hispanic areas, especially in parts of the South and West. But areas and regions with a less educated and professional populace, with higher rates of religious persuasion, with fewer women in the labor force, and with older populations remained loyally Republican. This helps us understand the resistance to Obama and the Democrats in Appalachia and across the border South, from WV, through KY and TN, AR, LA and OK.

    An interesting geographic phenomenon should be noted: the emergence of Chicago and the upper Midwest as part of the new Democratic coalition. Metropolitan Chicago provided Obama with a margin of almost 1.5 million votes, more than New York or Los Angeles. This presaged a gigantic increase in Democratic margins throughout the upper Midwest, including IN, IL, MI, WI, IA, and MN. In this one part of the country more than 150 counties moved from the Republican to the Democratic column. In addition to the big shifts on the coasts, this is where Obama gained the most ground.

    If this pattern continues, the Democrats may well have achieved a critical mass in their core support, adding a powerful upper Midwest base to their almost total control of both coasts. These would leave the GOP with little more than the heart of the Old Confederacy – even that is threatened in places like North Carolina and Virginia by modernization – as well as more socially conservative regions such as Appalachia and parts of the Great Plains. It’s not a pretty picture if you are a Republican.

    Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)

  • Voting Shift Map, Change in Margin of 2008 Presidential Election

  • The Geography of Change: Election 2008

    As an old radical Democrat, I remained fearful that this fall would see another 2000 and 2004. But instead there was a massive shift of perhaps 10 million votes, or about 7 percent to the Democratic side.

    Yet in some ways the “red” and “blue” map of results doesn’t look very different than in the past – a vast interior sea of red, although close inspection reveals some important shifts from red to blue. But the second map, of change – 2008 compared to 2004, is astounding: now a sea of blue across the North and West (except for the Arizona due home state effect). There was also a fascinating (Bible?) belt of counties that became redder than in 2004, if that were possible, from Appalachia, the southwest tip of PA, through WV, TN and northern AL, then west across the border South through TN, AR, ands OK.

    The 2008 election clearly reinforced and amplified some trends already apparent in 2006, a Democratic ascendancy based first in large metropolitan areas, but now extending far into suburbia and even exurbia, and dominated by an intellectual and professional class, and second, traditional racial and ethnic minority areas, urban or rural.

    Now these are joined by a third group, a dramatically larger Obama vote from the under thirty, and probably enough to have shifted several critical states – CO, IN, IA, NH, NC and VA – the Democrats. The three groups overlap, of course. Except in those anomalous border states, the relative shift was about the same in rural small-town America as in the large metropolitan areas. However, the turnout certainly increased more for minorities and for the under-30 than for us white non-Hispanic adults. Frankly, along with other political geography experts, I underestimated the likelihood of the shift to the Democrats of VA, NC and IN.

    There are some fascinating details. First is the amazing success of Obama in counties dominated by colleges and universities, with switches in strongly Republican Whitman county in Washington (home of Washington State), or Gallatin, MT (Montana State, Bozeman) and Monongalia (Univ. West Virginia), or Tippecanoe (Purdue University), IN, and dozens of others. Second is the shift of many metropolitan core, suburban and exurban counties to Obama, including in California Ventura, San Bernardino, Riverside and San Diego (truly amazing), as well as Reno (Washoe), NV; Orlando (Orange), FL; Houston (Harris); TX; Birmingham, AL; and Raleigh, NC. Perhaps the most unusual were the switch of very long time Republican strongholds as Omaha NE, Cincinnati, OH, and Grand Rapids, MI. Third, Democrats also continued to carry even more counties with environmental in-migration, especially in the west.

    We may have seen a historic shift from the baby-boomer generation to a newer Millennial generation. But the Democrats should remember from 1994 that the American electorate is centrist, and any supposed realignment is fragile.

    Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)

    Election maps courtesy of Mark Newman, Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems, University of Michigan

  • Election 2008: Hardcore Republican and Democratic versus Balanced Areas

    It’s interesting to look at 2000 presidential election results from some extreme counties, contrasting the most Republican and the Democratic areas, and compare them to some areas that voted 50:50 in 2004. I’ll look at 7 counties of each kind, illustrating the peculiar geography of American partisanship. The Republican and the Democratic areas will not change much, but it will be fascinating to see what happens to the even split areas of 2004. Do look them up in your road atlas and on the web for more detail!

    Ultra Republican counties
    The most extreme are all in the Great Plains or the Mountain West – not in the east. All are almost entirely white, most have more men than women (unusual in the US), have very high levels of traditional families, and most have fairly low levels of income inequality, reflective of cultural homogeneity.

    These can be grouped into three sets:

    1. Madison and Franklin, ID, and Rich, UT, (all close together);
    2. Grant, NE, and Garfield, MT; and
    3. Ochiltree, TX, and Beaver, OK, (also close to each other).

    The Idaho and Utah counties are similar in many ways, but the key characteristic is the dominance of the Mormon Church – no cultural ambiguity here! Rexburg, in Madison County, has a branch of Brigham Young University. Garfield and Grant typify the extremely low density and declining farm counties of the Plains and interior West, with a fiercely independent “western” image. Ochiltree and Beaver are in the Panhandle and also low density oil and gas and range economies. These are the rural, culturally conservative small towns that Sarah Palin would consider “real” America. Conspicuously absent are any counties that we would associate with the traditional image of rich suburbia and exurbia!

    Ultra Democratic Counties
    The extreme Democratic counties are not quite so extreme as their Republican counterparts. These counties are comprised of two somewhat distinct types – the cores of giant metropolitan areas, exemplified here by New York City, San Francisco and Washington, DC, and then the areas of very high concentrations of minorities.

    Claiborne, MS, (in the Mississippi delta) and Macon, AL (home of the Tuskegee institute), are highly Black. Menominee, WI, has a high concentration of Native American Indians, while Prince George’s County, MD, is both a large metropolitan suburban county (of Washington DC) and is majority Black. In contrast to the ultra Republican counties, these are all rather low in non-Hispanic whites, low in traditional families, but high in singles and partners. Most have high inequality, with societies bifurcated between the rich and the poor.

    The 50:50 balanced set is more complex and diverse. Some are in the South, with their fairly high minority shares balancing their likely cultural conservatism – Tensas, LA, (Mississippi delta), and Bladen, NC, (SE, food processing industry).

    Three are small city or small metropolitan Midwestern counties with diverse economies – rich agriculture, urban industry: Peoria, IL, Winneshiek, IA, and Nicollet, WI.

    Similarly, Monroe, PA, (Pocono mountains, tourism and exurban living), and Rensselaer, NY (Troy, Rust Belt, but some recovery) have both traditional conservative rural-oriented residents and liberal who have moved in from the New York Megalopolis. They tend to be intermediate between the very Republican and very Democratic areas in household structure, degree of inequality, with perhaps a little higher portion of the population engaged in manufacturing.

    These sample areas reinforce the conventional wisdom of a polarization, at the extremes, between a metropolitan Democratic base, high in minorities, and a rural-small-town Republican base of traditional “values”. The small city, small metropolitan belt, mainly across the North, is amazingly balanced, and not surprisingly, the major battleground in this election. Big cities may talk a lot about diversity, but it’s largely in these smaller towns, as well as some exurbs and suburbs, where the real political debate about our future now takes place.

    Richard Morrill is Professor Emeritus of Geography and Environmental Studies, University of Washington. His research interests include: political geography (voting behavior, redistricting, local governance), population/demography/settlement/migration, urban geography and planning, urban transportation (i.e., old fashioned generalist)