Chris Blattman

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Path dependence at work

This is the south’s 2008 presidential vote (in red and blue) overlaid by an 1860 map of cotton production (dots).

From Strange Maps (via Creative Class, via Durham’s Bull)

5 Responses

  1. This is the so-called “Black belt” (i.e., high concentrations of African-American voters). You can see results like this stretching back many elections. And take a look at county-level results of this year’s Senate elections in MS, AL, GA, and SC. Same exact pattern.

  2. Could it be that places where cotton was grown had higher black population and that is still the case today?…and we all know for whom African Americans voted….

  3. Isnt much of this explained by population density? So places where cotton was grown in the late 1800s have higher population density today, that would explain most of this..

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