As I was browsing my usual news sites, I came across an Al-Jazeera article on the upcoming US election. A map illustrated the current political voting trend (shown below), with states that usually vote Democrat demarked in blue, and states usually won by Republicans in red. Swing states (those states that may vote either way and are critical to both parties) are marked in yellow.
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| Al Jazeera Map: 2012 Democrat vs Republican |
My first impression was how closely the current political map resembled the division of Union and Confederate states during the American Civil War. So I skipped over to the Wikipedia entry on the American Civil War, and to my surprise I found nearly the same map...
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| Wikipedia Map: American Civil War 1864 |
On the Wikipedia map, red represents Confederate states while dark blue shows the those states that remained within the Union. West Virginia, Missouri, Kentuky and Maryland (light blue) were Union states permitted to own slaves. In the Al-Jazeera map, these states vote Republican (with the exception of Maryland). The vast mid-west is unrepresented (white) as they were not states in 1864, but territories.
Besides those "swing states" demarked in yellow, Kansas seems the only post-Union non-slave state to have bucked the Union Democrat/Confederate-Republican comparison, having switched from blue (1864) to red (2012).
Also of note, most of the states that were territories during the American Civil War (white on the 1864 map) now vote majority Republican.
While it may be tempting to draw a direct link between the Republican party and its holdings of formerly pro-slavery/Confederate states, it is important to note that the first and perhaps greatest Republican -- Abraham Lincoln -- served the cause of the Union, not the Confederacy.
The demarcation lines regarding red and blue states have remained fairly consistent since the end of the American Civil War, which may leave us wondering "why the obvious and persistent divide"? What is the common ground between the Confederacy of the 1860's and modern day Republicanism?
Just a little food for thought...
