19 thoughts on “State Political Culture Geekiness”
This is a very strange categorization. The “Midlands” looks like a gerrymander and Greater Appalachia connects everything from the Pittsburgh suburbs to Dallas. .
I can’t quite tell where these borders are, but it looks like Columbus, OH, and Indianapolis, IN, were both placed in Greater Appalachia while Pittsburgh wasn’t. That seems wrong on all three counts.
Also, is the Upper Midwest included “Yankeedom?” Because that seems really wrong from a cultural and political standpoint. The outcomes might be similar in a US political environment, but the inputs are quite different. Lutherans vs. Calvinists and all that.
Oh hell no. This map gets the rust belt all wrong. The only accurate regional culture map I’ve seen for the rust belt is this one , because it emphasizes the urban/rural divide as well. Trust, the urban areas of Illinois as represented on the megaregions map belong in neither “the Midlands” nor “Yankeedom”. (I find it hard to believe whoever made this map ever left O’Hare if on the off-chance s/he ever made it to Chicago to begin with).
Lutherans, hell. The folks who populated the factories of the rust belt were primarily Catholic . The cultural gulf between Catholics and both Lutherans and Calvinists is broad and deep, and abides even among religious “nones”.
Calvinists are impossible to get along with. They get all judgy about drinking and if they don’t they get way too drunk. But you’re forgetting the huge number that were some type of Eastern Christian.
“Calvinists are impossible to get along with. They get all judgy about drinking and if they don’t they get way too drunk.”
I haven’t seen that–either the judginess or the heavy drinking. My local Presbyterian chums do like their wine, though–it’s much more enjoyable to do in the face of (official) Baptist teetotalism.
I like the old saying about how a Presbyterian is a Baptist with shoes and an Episcopalian is a Presbyterian with a car. Good times.
You could probably draw the line between the midlands and greater Appalachia by comparing counties with more than 15% (or something like that) Baptists with others. I always thought of it as a small deal, like LDS or Jehovah’s Witnesses, then I moved south.
“You could probably draw the line between the midlands and greater Appalachia by comparing counties with more than 15% (or something like that) Baptists with others. I always thought of it as a small deal, like LDS or Jehovah’s Witnesses, then I moved south.”
Exactly. Living up north, I always thought of Baptists as being vanilla Protestants, but then we moved to an area with lots of Baptists, and then I discovered that they are considerably more complicated than that.
Heh. If Baptists are what separates Greater Appalachia from the Midlands, then it makes even less sense to extend GA practically all the way up to I-80 in Illinois. “White Baptist” is damn near an oxymoron here.
The parts of the map I’m most familiar with seem bang-on accurate to me, based on linguistics, culture, and a rusty memory of Albion’s Seed
My family is from a county on the eastern side of the border between “Tidewater” and “Greater Appalachia”. You can hear the accent differences between the branches from the western half of the county (where I have “aints”) and the eastern half (where I have “onts”) — separated by no more than 20 miles. (For examples relevant to an earlier post, watch trailers for “Tickle” on the Discovery Channel.)
Similarly the division in Texas between “Deep South”, “Greater Appalachia”, and “El Norte” seems accurate within a county or so.
Since moving to our part of Texas, we have gotten used to getting sweet tea in Mexican restaurants (and in our area, it feels like 50% of restaurants are Mexican). My husband once went to a conference in San Antonio and ordered sweet tea with his dinner out of habit. They didn’t have any. “Where do you think you are,” a native Texan colleague asked him, “Dallas?”
Colin’s from Maine and spent a few years, I think, way down south in Texas, somewhere near Brownsville. Not surprising that’s where the article is strongest.
By the way, isn’t it a bit suspicious that while much of the country is diced up pretty fine on this map, the “Far West” is a huge undifferentiated lump? Are Utah, Nevada, Alaska, and the interior of California really all that similar? I take that big lump as indicating that the creator of the map doesn’t know the West all that well.
Huh. I’d want to stretch Appalachia up into Western NY state, like MH said about Pittsburgh. And good heavens do I not think of NY and NE as in the same region as the Great Lakes area. They’re lovely people and all, but they’re not us.
Having moved from the New England “Yankeedom” (where I actually attended college with the author of this very article….go Jumbos!) to the Wisconsin “Yankeedom”….I can attest that they are very, very, very different indeed.
Apt. 11d 
This is a very strange categorization. The “Midlands” looks like a gerrymander and Greater Appalachia connects everything from the Pittsburgh suburbs to Dallas. .
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I can’t quite tell where these borders are, but it looks like Columbus, OH, and Indianapolis, IN, were both placed in Greater Appalachia while Pittsburgh wasn’t. That seems wrong on all three counts.
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Also, is the Upper Midwest included “Yankeedom?” Because that seems really wrong from a cultural and political standpoint. The outcomes might be similar in a US political environment, but the inputs are quite different. Lutherans vs. Calvinists and all that.
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Oh hell no. This map gets the rust belt all wrong. The only accurate regional culture map I’ve seen for the rust belt is this one , because it emphasizes the urban/rural divide as well. Trust, the urban areas of Illinois as represented on the megaregions map belong in neither “the Midlands” nor “Yankeedom”. (I find it hard to believe whoever made this map ever left O’Hare if on the off-chance s/he ever made it to Chicago to begin with).
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Lutherans, hell. The folks who populated the factories of the rust belt were primarily Catholic . The cultural gulf between Catholics and both Lutherans and Calvinists is broad and deep, and abides even among religious “nones”.
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Calvinists are impossible to get along with. They get all judgy about drinking and if they don’t they get way too drunk. But you’re forgetting the huge number that were some type of Eastern Christian.
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“Calvinists are impossible to get along with. They get all judgy about drinking and if they don’t they get way too drunk.”
I haven’t seen that–either the judginess or the heavy drinking. My local Presbyterian chums do like their wine, though–it’s much more enjoyable to do in the face of (official) Baptist teetotalism.
I like the old saying about how a Presbyterian is a Baptist with shoes and an Episcopalian is a Presbyterian with a car. Good times.
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“I like the old saying about how a Presbyterian is a Baptist with shoes and an Episcopalian is a Presbyterian with a car. Good times.”
And the problem with the full-immersion Baptists is that no one keeps them under long enough.
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You could probably draw the line between the midlands and greater Appalachia by comparing counties with more than 15% (or something like that) Baptists with others. I always thought of it as a small deal, like LDS or Jehovah’s Witnesses, then I moved south.
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MH said:
“You could probably draw the line between the midlands and greater Appalachia by comparing counties with more than 15% (or something like that) Baptists with others. I always thought of it as a small deal, like LDS or Jehovah’s Witnesses, then I moved south.”
Exactly. Living up north, I always thought of Baptists as being vanilla Protestants, but then we moved to an area with lots of Baptists, and then I discovered that they are considerably more complicated than that.
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Heh. If Baptists are what separates Greater Appalachia from the Midlands, then it makes even less sense to extend GA practically all the way up to I-80 in Illinois. “White Baptist” is damn near an oxymoron here.
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The parts of the map I’m most familiar with seem bang-on accurate to me, based on linguistics, culture, and a rusty memory of Albion’s Seed
My family is from a county on the eastern side of the border between “Tidewater” and “Greater Appalachia”. You can hear the accent differences between the branches from the western half of the county (where I have “aints”) and the eastern half (where I have “onts”) — separated by no more than 20 miles. (For examples relevant to an earlier post, watch trailers for “Tickle” on the Discovery Channel.)
Similarly the division in Texas between “Deep South”, “Greater Appalachia”, and “El Norte” seems accurate within a county or so.
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Since moving to our part of Texas, we have gotten used to getting sweet tea in Mexican restaurants (and in our area, it feels like 50% of restaurants are Mexican). My husband once went to a conference in San Antonio and ordered sweet tea with his dinner out of habit. They didn’t have any. “Where do you think you are,” a native Texan colleague asked him, “Dallas?”
These nuances take a while to pick up.
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Colin’s from Maine and spent a few years, I think, way down south in Texas, somewhere near Brownsville. Not surprising that’s where the article is strongest.
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By the way, isn’t it a bit suspicious that while much of the country is diced up pretty fine on this map, the “Far West” is a huge undifferentiated lump? Are Utah, Nevada, Alaska, and the interior of California really all that similar? I take that big lump as indicating that the creator of the map doesn’t know the West all that well.
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Huh. I’d want to stretch Appalachia up into Western NY state, like MH said about Pittsburgh. And good heavens do I not think of NY and NE as in the same region as the Great Lakes area. They’re lovely people and all, but they’re not us.
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Colin Woodard parses the NJ results for Christie by looking at New Netherlands versus Midlands localities, says it bodes well for a Christie presidential effort: http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/ten-miles-square/2013/11/new_jersey_regional_divide_ref047718.php
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That’s looking at how Christie could win a national, general election. I don’t see how he gets past a Republican primary.
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Having moved from the New England “Yankeedom” (where I actually attended college with the author of this very article….go Jumbos!) to the Wisconsin “Yankeedom”….I can attest that they are very, very, very different indeed.
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