< PREVIOUS ] [ 2001 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >
As good Americans, we not only endure a presidential election, but we also tolerate the analysis that emerges afterward.
This time around, the right-thinking pundits couldn't accept the simple fact that the 2000 presidential election was one of the closest in history. Instead, they looked for a mandate for the winner, and found one in acreage.
As Mark Steyn explained in the Dec. 4, 2000, edition of
the conservative National Review, 677 counties voted for
Gore, 2,434 for Bush,
and the Gore counties cover
580,134 square miles, the Bush counties, 2,427,039 square
miles.
He seems to think that the federal constitution starts
with We, the townships and sections of the United
States,
rather than We, the people ...
Steyn saw a geographic pattern. Gore carried states in
the Northeast, around the Great Lakes, and along the
Pacific Coast. The interior where we live is part of a
big Republican 'L' running down the Rockies and sweeping
through the South.
This was also noted by another conservative publication, the Wall Street Journal, which on Jan. 19 published an article by a staff writer, John Harwood.
He wrote that our L-shaped Republican zone is part of a
nation split not by economics or politics so much as by
culture. On one side is the America Mr. Bush already
identifies with: mainly rural, religiously observant,
devoted to traditional notions of marriage and morality.
On the other is the group he is reaching out to: largely
urban, secular, tolerant of feminism and gay
rights.
While this reads well, and fits nicely with common stereotypes about how traditional virtues thrive in the hinterlands, it has one big problem with the Mountain West. It doesn't fit.
Start with the rural
part of the Bush political
domain. According to the Census Bureau, 79.9 percent of
all Americans live in one of the country's 256 standard
metropolitan statistical areas.
But in many of our states, the urban percentage is even higher: 87.6 percent in Arizona, 85.7 percent in Nevada and 84.0 percent in Colorado. At 77.1 percent, Utah comes close to the national average.
And besides, if rural means Republican,
why does
America's most rural state, Vermont (only 27.7 percent
urban) keep electing socialists and independents?
So we're not especially rural. How wholesome are we in other respects?
The most recent available statistics for church membership are from 1990, so they're not all that recent. But then, 52.7 percent of Americans belonged to a Christian church or attended one regularly.
The only Western states that exceeded the national average for church membership and attendance were New Mexico (58.3) and Utah (79.6) -- both founded by religious colonists.
As for the rest of us, it's a wonder that we don't see more missionaries on our doorsteps, because we're about as heathen as Americans get. Only 50.4 percent of Idahoans and only 47.6 percent of Wyomingites belonged or attended regularly. In Montana, it was 42.7 percent; in Arizona, 41.1 percent; in Colorado, 37.8 percent; in Nevada, 29.6 percent.
Nor is the Mountain West a zone of stable marriages. The American average in 1997 was 3.3 divorces per 1,000 population. For the eight states in the Mountain West, it was 5.8. None of our states is below that average, not even Utah, which had 4.4 divorces -- 33 percent higher than the national average -- per 1,000 residents. Our other states range from 4.6 in Montana to 10.4 in Nevada.
We're not especially wholesome in other respects, either. Nationally, 32.4 percent of all births are to unwed mothers. It's 37.7 percent in Arizona and 43.5 percent in New Mexico. The national rate of reported crime in 1997 was 4,923 per 100,000 population; in the Mountain West, it was 5,822.
The West leads the nation in drug-arrest rates, and the federal Drug Enforcement Administration recently announced that Colorado leads the nation in marijuana use.
Colorado voters did pass the anti-gay Amendment 2 in
1992, but history says the Mountain West is tolerant of
feminism,
in that American women first voted in Wyoming
Territory in 1869, and the next states to adopt female
suffrage were Colorado, Utah and Idaho.
The Mountain West did vote Republican in the most recent national elections. There's no argument about that.
But those East Coast pundits need to find another
explanation for our voting patterns inside the vertical
part of the Republican L.
We are not more rural,
more religious, or more devoted to traditional notions
of marriage and morality
than the rest of America.
It's time for them to find another stereotype.
< PREVIOUS ] [ 2001 Index ] [ Ed Quillen HOME ] [ SEARCH ] [ NEXT >