Ten Nations of the United States

In an earlier post I discussed Joel Garreau's The Nine Nations of North America. In 1989, Garreau took a look at North America, erased all of the international, state and provincial borders and redrew the lines around regions that have common interests in culture, politics and and industry. This way of looking at regional interests, that transcend state and national boundaries, forever changed my understanding of those regions.

The folks at Beyond Red & Blue, a political blog, have updated this concept, using election data:

Beyond Red & Blue" was conceived about four years ago, in anticipation of the 2004 presidential election. The idea was to divide the United States into 10 regions of equal voting power, each with a distinct history and political bent... Keep in mind that for at least 60 years, no one has ever been elected president without carrying at least five of these regions.

The original article with the 2008 map was posted in September 2007, and last week offered more detail on What went into deciding the 10 regions. It is hard for me to think of myself in Western Ohio, and people living in Indiana or Illinois as having the same identity (Cumberland) as the folks in Appalachia, or that people in the San Joaquin Valley of California are part of the same voting block as North Dakota... But this approach to an electoral map is fascinating nonetheless.

Via The Electoral Map