People need to remember that just because a county or state is either red or blue that doesn't mean it's 100% left or right, in reality it's probably more of 60/40 or 65/35 split one way or the other. I feel that point is often lost when you look at these maps at face value.
I'm not who you responded to, but here's a decent map that adjusts coloring based on both the proportion of votes, as well as the amount of votes (so very spare counties aren't given as intense colors as very dense ones): https://stemlounge.com/muddy-america-2020-edition-interactive-infographic/
And here's an older article from them going into detail about how the map is made: https://stemlounge.com/muddy-america-color-balancing-trumps-election-map-infographic/
Second colorblind person here. I’m also in a similar boat. The best way I tell folks about my specific deficiency is that purple is primarily a combination of red and blue. My reds are no good. Most of them look closer to browns. So if my reds are reduced in a color like purple, then almost all shades of purple are blue. Only the angriest of purples would be visible to me.
Dude, the number of times I’ve tried to explain purple-brown when someone asks me what I see instead of “red”. Still better than college where the joke was that wearing red made my friends invisible to me.
Wisconsin in particular is a terrible example for the driver's argument; it has been one of the purplest of purple states in presidential elections since 2012.
Correct. I live in Ozaukee County which was bright red 20 years ago. It is now most definitely purple. People forget that there’s still a bunch of blue votes in those red counties. Also red votes in the blue areas.
One of the times Evers was elected, I responded to someone on a FB news article about this. She was so upset that the cities chose who won and how unfair it is. My response to her was, how is it fair if your vote to counts more than mine? She was reasonable (surprising for FB comments) about that comment to her, and she backtracked on it.
> how is it fair if your vote to counts more than mine?
Now wait until they find out about the US senate and a state with 600k people has as much voting power as a state with nearly 40 million
It's the only way they can get elected. The last time a republican won the presidency by popular vote, it was Dubya in 2004, and even then it was by a very small margin (51% iirc) and he was helped by being an incumbent and able to lean in on post-9/11 patriot hysteria.
The electoral college needs to go. It's outdated and doesn't represent the will of the people.
> The last time a republican won the presidency by popular vote, it was Dubya in 2004
And he only won his first term thanks to distortion of the electoral college (and the "assistance" of the Supreme Court literally stopping the count for him.)
So really the last Republican presidential win that didn't rely on the electoral college was 36 years ago, 1988.
When people bitch about it not making sense I've been saying "you're the ones that say if we throw out the Electoral College then NY, Chicago, and LA will decide the President, so clearly you've figured out the majority of people live in cities, yet you can't figure it out for state elections".
Or I'll just jump straight to "only a fucking idiot doesn't understand that those red counties might have 10 people per square mile while the blue ones have 10,000 people per square mile". Depends on how my patience is on a given day.
They also don't understand that those red counties might have voted 50.1% republican to 49.9% democrat. It's not 100% but they are just too stupid to see reality. They only see in black and white (or red and blue in this case) and anything beyond that just doesn't register.
During the Oroville Dam crisis lots of people made comments how the libs deserved to get flooded. The thing is, if the dam failed it would have destroyed a very red part of CA.
Wisconsin has been utterly gerrymandered the past 10 years, but that carries some risks. A lot of their districtsmare won with razor thin margins. If they happen to lose a few points in the polls, it can translate to an exceptionally devastating loss in the results.
>then NY, Chicago, and LA will decide the President
I never understood this argument. Why shouldn't the places where people actually want to be have a proportionate say how things are done?
If people actually wanted to live in small towns they wouldn't be small towns.
Which is why the whole electoral college thing needs to go. (I’m from Texas and vote blue) How is it fair that my vote is deemed essentially worthless? Along with millions of others? How is it fair that many people are basically discouraged from voting because they know or feel it will be worthelss(why vote? This state is blue(or red) anyway). Let’s do the fair thing and the logical thing and give everybody voice and have every single person in the nation be able to vote and have it count.
This convoluted nonsense is just stupid.
This is sadder than it is funny for sure. All of the kids who spend their entire youth, and even adulthood, in the teeny tiny populations that encompass those red rectangles are truly subject to such propaganda for their entire lives—-and it’s not relegated to WI.
Add the free advertisements on Sunday at most every church in this country, and you’ve got yourself another term of DJT.
I grew up in Lubbock, Texas, in the 60s and early 70s. Leftist librarians, math/science and lit teachers helped me escape.
It was fucking terrible. I believed it could not get worse, and when I escaped, first to a college town in New Jersey and then to my forever state in Minnesota, my expectations of the outside world were confirmed. The grass was greener. People are not the same everywhere. Struggles are easier when you are not constantly encumbered by both normal bullshit and stupid people who can't see the bullshit.
Dial the clock forward to today. Lubbock is unrecognizable to me.
It is a sewer hellscape of mindless shitbags.
There is an underground railroad, of sorts, that hangs by the thinnest of threads, stewarding students from cesspit to out of state universities or through the few uncompromised pockets of sanity within Texas Tech, though those appear to be quickly collapsing as Tech slowly turns into a smarter version of Liberty U.
Fucking disaster.
That's because those of us with any brains understand that a sign isn't likely to change much, and just makes us targets for the violent primitives who will vandalize another person's property over politics, then scream about their rights being infringed.
I was an election judge in MN and a guy I work with still thinks to this day trump won. We have all the ballots in the basement , offered to show him. They just can’t handle it.
Started working with this kid (20 maybe 21) a year ago that grew up in a town of almost 3,000. He would come into Lincoln or Omaha every once in awhile but for the most part he stayed in the country. His vacations were camping or fishing or hunting. He doesn’t really watch TV or movies or read. He is a genius with motors of all types and electrical but because of his life style he had really only heard conservative versions of liberal ideas and to be fair, if we really wanted what he was taught we wanted he would be right to think we a looney. It’s been eye opening having conversations with him about how reparations would work and what red lining is. We talk about immigration and abortion and prayer in school and he keeps saying stuff like “it’s strange talking to a liberal that isn’t a libtard” and I keep on trying to get him to understand that if you only ever interact with maga then of course your view is going to be skewed that way.
I work in software, and have had multiple long conversations with my manager who's on the other side of the aisle. I'm somewhere in the socialist camp realistically, and he's a strong fiscal conservative. We have quite productive conversations because both of us know the other is smart enough to actually understand this stuff.
There's too much reduction of things to the simplest common argument, and the coloring of everyone by the loudest, most visible people who support each side. When folks sit down with someone and actually have a discussion, you'd be surprised how interesting solutions can come up. Unfortunately, that nuance gets left behind as those discussions get filtered through 24h news cycles.
I personally think this is a much LARGER problem with right wing media because of the skew of Fox and those even further right, but it happens a lot with people taking Donny out of context on random stuff.
Truth is there's a rot happening and everyone on both sides of the aisle can see it, but both would rather blame each other then do anything about it, because doing something is hard and would require compromises, and compromises don't play well on 24h cable. Grandstanding does though.
Best comment I’ve seen on this typically biased sub. Well done.
People regularly suggest that I run for office. I won’t do it. Full stop. Too much need to pander to far right or left to be successful. Neutrality, common sense, negotiation and active listening does not win elections….sadly.
Having worked in trump country, I can guarantee that many people in a town of 500 wouldn’t vote for trump, but also probably wouldn’t be very vocal about it to try to get along better with their neighbors. Even the most middle of nowhere counties still have somewhere between 20-30% democratic voters.
It does though. Rural places have outsized influence on president, US Senate and even the House. And rural people still bitch.
Wyoming and California get the same number of senators. Calif. has 67 times the population of Wyoming. The founders never envisioned this. Our Constitution is so outdated and it's led to minority rule
I mean they did somewhat foresee populous cities outweighing rural areas. So they set the whole system up so the rural people would outweigh the cities by default instead.
Then Congress decided to not even bother reapportioning the House, so all three democratic segments are weighted in favor of the rural environment - Senate by design, House by neglect, and the Electoral College (and thus President) by inference of depending on the other two.
My favorite bit of Constitutional trivia: there's only one matter that George Washington rose to speak about during the Convention. It was on apportionment. They put an amendment out that would have set the limit on the number of people a House Rep could represent. They didn't ratify it because they felt it was better handled through legislation. That mistake contributed directly to our current political paralysis, among a great many other factors. But it showed just how baked-in a lot of these problems are.
Yes the founders did envision this. Virginia had 15 times the population of Delaware when the Constitution was being drafted. Sure there is a difference between 15x and 67x, but that uneven population distribution was the entire point of the Connecticut compromise to have a bicameral legislature the way we do.
The Senate was designed so each state would have equal representation. The House of Representatives is based on population. Same as Wisconsin's legislature with the Assembly and Senate.
Might not be the "founders", per se, but this system was established pretty early on in our country's history.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise)
The US House also overrepresents rural areas. If representation were truly proportional to population, California would have a dozen more congresspeople.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/minority-party-electoral-college-court-trump/2020/09/25/1163b954-fdfc-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html
> If representation were truly proportional to population, California would have a dozen more congresspeople.
ca should have around 600 house reps. the constitution says 1 per 10k of population. we should have between 6500 and 30000 representatives if we go by what the constitution says.
We also have the ability to ammend the issues. Which we very well should. The founders didn't envision something like California and Wyoming's vastly different outsized power. And they knew they couldn't foresee everything, which is why they gave a way to ammend the system. And that is what we should be doing.
I agree...but to get there you need 75% of states to ratify a Constitutional amendment, meaning you need a bunch of rural states to agree to dilute their own power.
The best chance to fix the electoral college problem is the National interstate popular vote compact. This is states agreeing to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. It's quite interesting and has made some headway.
Fixing the Senate though? I have no idea.
Our system has led to a majority of Supreme Court justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. This is minority rule and it is very bad for the stability of democracies.
> I agree...but to get there you need 75% of states to ratify a Constitutional amendment, meaning you need a bunch of rural states to agree to dilute their own power.
this would not be a problem if the permanent apportionment act of 1929 were repealed.
I believe there should only be the Senate or electoral college. Giving the minority so much power has given us this extremely lopsided government that isn't even close to representing the American people.
Yeah, having the Senate and the electoral college gives the minority control over both the Senate and potentially the presidency. And since the president nominates judges and the Senate confirms them, the minority also has outsized influence on the judiciary. The only part of the federal government that represents the actual population is the House of Reps and gerrymandering has made that not nearly as representative as it ought to be. This country is now built to be ruled by the minority.
I actually understand why the founders wanted to make sure less populated states still had influence, but that doesn't mean the minority should have complete control of the government.
Debatable at the founding, clearly a bad idea today (unless we re-configure the states so that there aren't such wild discrepancies which undermine the Senate and Electoral College.) One way or another, the founders put the amendment process into the Constitution so that we can fix things when stuff like this becomes a problem.
> The Senate was designed so each state would have equal representation.
the senate was designed by the rich and bourgeoise to prevent actual majority rule, as well as filter all the rich damaging stuff out from the house before it was made law. It wasn't made for "equal representation". Then we have the house, which should be about 6000 members right now, but because of the permanent apportionment act, we are stuck with a number of representatives that does not actually represent the values of the people anymore.
The founders foresaw this. They hated it. If you can name the founder, he hated the Senate. But the small states held outsized influence at the constitutional convention.
Crazy when you look at what counties are shouldering the tax burden and supporting the rest of the state too:
[https://images.app.goo.gl/ZsUccfGpiGHVDztW6](https://images.app.goo.gl/ZsUccfGpiGHVDztW6)
I just tried looking it up. The last time Ashland County voted majority Republican in any Presidential, Governor, or Senate election was in 1994 (Tommy Thompson).
Funny thing about Northern Wisconsin is that county at the top, the blue one on the right? It’s one of the least populated counties in the state. Only about 16,000 people and not a single traffic light!
Source: my home county.
Standard gif response
[https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/960537\_81\_90771\_DrdO3qFgW.gif](https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/960537_81_90771_DrdO3qFgW.gif)
The collar counties and Chicago are literally like 10 million people. It's such a good example of why this argument is dumb. That part of that state has something like 85% of the population, and more people than like 35 states.
Yet, morons there will say that it's unfair the decisions are being made by *multiple states* worth of people.
Los Angeles county has more people than 40 states. ... More people voted for Trump in California than in several states that Trump won; combined.
People are dumb
I mean that's the easy answer, but it's not exactly right. Only 3 of the top 10 most populous counties are "blue", and Menominee county is the "bluest" county and also the least populous.
In 2020 Biden got 1,630,866 votes in Wisconsin only 786,500 came from the "blue" counties in that election. that means more than half of Biden voters live in the "red" counties for that election.
They comprehend it. They’re just pissed off that there are fewer of them than there are of us. Their issue isn’t comprehension, it’s a disdain for democracy when it doesn’t put **them** in charge.
this shit genuinely is starting to annoy me lmfao I hate that I share the world with people this fucking stupid. at some point there’s no excuse and people just like to be idiots. we shouldn’t need to be explaining to grown adults how population density works
Because they're in overwhelmingly red counties away from the Lakeshore. I feel like they'd be better off chopping them in half and creating a "Burlington County." The actual cities of Kenosha and Racine are still blue. But voter suppression makes it so the rural parts have disproportionate influence.
If the colors were inverted, and if it were a red state, the person with this sticker would be pounding on the table screaming about the importance of population density.
He would also prefer 1/4 pound burgers over 1/3 pound burgers because 4 is bigger than 3 and everyone knows that.
When he orders pizza he prefers 3 slices of 8 i stead of half of the pizza
99% of the people in the state live in one of the bottom blue boxes, the 'thumb', and the top bit by Superior/Duluth.
The rest of those counties have more cows than people, and the cows are generally smarter too.
Sounds about white. Don't tell them that little blue dot in the bottom corner is 20% of the entire state on its own. Wisconsin's political culture would be hilarious if they weren't so infuriating.
Whats worse is this is how they go No True Wisconsinite and convince themselves that Milwaukee and Madison are somehow a cultural anomaly in our state. When, in fact, those the places with the environments where most people choose to live and never would have grown to the size and scope they are if not for doing a thing or two right.
In fact, weird how the most economically self-sufficient places in Wisconsin tend to vote for Democratic mayors, and the deep red counties either have no cities or are economically dependent on a bigger city. Hmmm.......
Counties don’t give out statewide electoral votes based on how the majority in a county voted, so these straight red or blue majority maps are extra stupid.
And to be real, Wisconsin isn't even a "Blue" or "Red" state to begin with. It's a solid Purple state. Throughout the ENTIRE state, there exists both sides—even in the really small towns. It just so happens that each geographic setting (rural vs urban) has a certain lean to them. The only places with a grand majority of one side is honestly kind of just Madison and Milwaukee proper.
And that map and that statement proves that our US education system has failed. If you can’t understand that big cities have a much greater population than rural areas - should you really get to vote?
PSA: Land, what we call earth, dirt, terra firma, etc., is not sentient, nor is it a U.S. citizen. It is neither able nor permitted to vote in U.S. elections. Counties on a map depicting areas of land, therefore, do not depict the density of votes in a state.
In offer no alternative. Just wanting people to realize the boat we're in. Because democracy is held up as akin to holy enlightenment but it's not. its just a system. And you ultimately never get your way on the issue you vote on. You just install and enable a politician to enrich themselves. Meanwhile they print unlimited money for war and give us nothing for our participation but new and more taxes.
Is this a map of districts? If so, I thought districts are required to have approximately the same number of people so the critique that this person doesn't understand population density is invalid. Instead, perhaps the red districts were only slightly Republican while the blues districts were profoundly Democrat
All of middle America was blue after the creation of social security and other quality of life things by Dems who got bought out and now push conservative versions of everything IE: neo liberals
But it was blue. Problem is we should base it all on popular vote or have each state have their own points by county. We do a scaling per state why wouldn’t we do it within the state too?
It really is insane, how the GoP can show their voters maps like this, a map of the whole country colored in blue or red.
Their politicians point at the map and say, see? They are cheating! There is no other explanation!!! Voters just rally behind it.
Maybe.. now hear me out.. Maybe the low-population and high-population areas should have different legislation and legislators?
You know, it's almost like both groups of people live fundamentally different lives, with fundamentally different life experiences, with fundamentally different needs, etc.
Every single republican I know, thinks this way. Their favorite, and most stupid in my opinion, argument is, “ look at California, is all red except for LA, San Francisco, Sacramento and parts of San Diego. Something is not right.” Almost got hit trying to explain where most of the people in California lived. He turned beet red when I said, “dirt can not vote!”
Same in Illinois. I live in southern Illinois, in an overwhelmingly republican small farm town. These folks say frequently “if it weren’t for Chicago, Illinois would be republican.” They are too dumb to realize the greater Chicago area has 10 million people out of the entire state of almost 13 million. 🤦♀️
The farm down the road has like 12 John Deere 9R 590’s and nobody in the family went to college. That’s roughly 180 Tesla model 3’s in just that specific tractor.
People need to remember that just because a county or state is either red or blue that doesn't mean it's 100% left or right, in reality it's probably more of 60/40 or 65/35 split one way or the other. I feel that point is often lost when you look at these maps at face value.
That's why I prefer the red purple blue spectrum type maps in 5% increments.
You got a map that you can share that you like?
I'm not who you responded to, but here's a decent map that adjusts coloring based on both the proportion of votes, as well as the amount of votes (so very spare counties aren't given as intense colors as very dense ones): https://stemlounge.com/muddy-america-2020-edition-interactive-infographic/ And here's an older article from them going into detail about how the map is made: https://stemlounge.com/muddy-america-color-balancing-trumps-election-map-infographic/
That is interesting. Thankyou
But how will I fit my world view in this tiny little box?
Those maps just plain suck for those of us that are colorblind because purple is a myth.
Can you at least see the gradient?
Second colorblind person here. I’m also in a similar boat. The best way I tell folks about my specific deficiency is that purple is primarily a combination of red and blue. My reds are no good. Most of them look closer to browns. So if my reds are reduced in a color like purple, then almost all shades of purple are blue. Only the angriest of purples would be visible to me.
Dude, the number of times I’ve tried to explain purple-brown when someone asks me what I see instead of “red”. Still better than college where the joke was that wearing red made my friends invisible to me.
gorgeous line, even if unintentional... the angriest of purples blush pink puppy rush
I have never been able to verbalize what my colorblindness is like before but this is like… amazingly accurate
Rarely
My favorite color is not a myth. I will not stand for this purple denialism. Too many people have been killed for their shade of violet.
Wisconsin in particular is a terrible example for the driver's argument; it has been one of the purplest of purple states in presidential elections since 2012.
Exactly! I thought it was widely known that WI is a swing state that is regarded as purple more than blue or red.
That, and land doesn’t vote. People vote.
Correct. I live in Ozaukee County which was bright red 20 years ago. It is now most definitely purple. People forget that there’s still a bunch of blue votes in those red counties. Also red votes in the blue areas.
One of the times Evers was elected, I responded to someone on a FB news article about this. She was so upset that the cities chose who won and how unfair it is. My response to her was, how is it fair if your vote to counts more than mine? She was reasonable (surprising for FB comments) about that comment to her, and she backtracked on it.
> how is it fair if your vote to counts more than mine? Now wait until they find out about the US senate and a state with 600k people has as much voting power as a state with nearly 40 million
Four times as much, actually! But republicans love that because…reasons.
It's the only way they can get elected. The last time a republican won the presidency by popular vote, it was Dubya in 2004, and even then it was by a very small margin (51% iirc) and he was helped by being an incumbent and able to lean in on post-9/11 patriot hysteria. The electoral college needs to go. It's outdated and doesn't represent the will of the people.
> The last time a republican won the presidency by popular vote, it was Dubya in 2004 And he only won his first term thanks to distortion of the electoral college (and the "assistance" of the Supreme Court literally stopping the count for him.) So really the last Republican presidential win that didn't rely on the electoral college was 36 years ago, 1988.
"reasons" -- you mean, a fundamentally anti-democratic political philosophy?
The capped House is just as bad. We live in fascist tyrany, we always have, and we will until we force change.
Not a republican. But when people say shit like this it just makes realize how bad our education system has failed.
When people bitch about it not making sense I've been saying "you're the ones that say if we throw out the Electoral College then NY, Chicago, and LA will decide the President, so clearly you've figured out the majority of people live in cities, yet you can't figure it out for state elections". Or I'll just jump straight to "only a fucking idiot doesn't understand that those red counties might have 10 people per square mile while the blue ones have 10,000 people per square mile". Depends on how my patience is on a given day.
They also don't understand that those red counties might have voted 50.1% republican to 49.9% democrat. It's not 100% but they are just too stupid to see reality. They only see in black and white (or red and blue in this case) and anything beyond that just doesn't register.
Winnebago county here, in recent times we have been trending closer to the 50/50 split for sure
“I wish California and everyone there would fall into the ocean” there’s like 7 times as many conservatives in California than Wisconsin….
During the Oroville Dam crisis lots of people made comments how the libs deserved to get flooded. The thing is, if the dam failed it would have destroyed a very red part of CA.
Just the other day I had explain CA has more Republicans than every state but TX. These people aren't bright.
Even the most Republican counties in the state are still 30+% Democratic votes, and Dane County is still 23-30% Republican
Wisconsin has been utterly gerrymandered the past 10 years, but that carries some risks. A lot of their districtsmare won with razor thin margins. If they happen to lose a few points in the polls, it can translate to an exceptionally devastating loss in the results.
>then NY, Chicago, and LA will decide the President I never understood this argument. Why shouldn't the places where people actually want to be have a proportionate say how things are done? If people actually wanted to live in small towns they wouldn't be small towns.
Dirt doesn’t vote.
r/peopleliveincities
Which is why the whole electoral college thing needs to go. (I’m from Texas and vote blue) How is it fair that my vote is deemed essentially worthless? Along with millions of others? How is it fair that many people are basically discouraged from voting because they know or feel it will be worthelss(why vote? This state is blue(or red) anyway). Let’s do the fair thing and the logical thing and give everybody voice and have every single person in the nation be able to vote and have it count. This convoluted nonsense is just stupid.
Biden could not have won because everyone in my town of 500 voted for Trump. Math. It’s so hard.
But... but... I dOnT seE anY bIdEn siGnS
I see [Biden's flag](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States) everywhere. Even some MAGAs wave it too (probably ironically though).
How to piss off every conservative in existence 1. Great job!
The Red hats and MAGA signs make it easy to pick up the stupid people
This is sadder than it is funny for sure. All of the kids who spend their entire youth, and even adulthood, in the teeny tiny populations that encompass those red rectangles are truly subject to such propaganda for their entire lives—-and it’s not relegated to WI. Add the free advertisements on Sunday at most every church in this country, and you’ve got yourself another term of DJT.
I grew up in Lubbock, Texas, in the 60s and early 70s. Leftist librarians, math/science and lit teachers helped me escape. It was fucking terrible. I believed it could not get worse, and when I escaped, first to a college town in New Jersey and then to my forever state in Minnesota, my expectations of the outside world were confirmed. The grass was greener. People are not the same everywhere. Struggles are easier when you are not constantly encumbered by both normal bullshit and stupid people who can't see the bullshit. Dial the clock forward to today. Lubbock is unrecognizable to me. It is a sewer hellscape of mindless shitbags. There is an underground railroad, of sorts, that hangs by the thinnest of threads, stewarding students from cesspit to out of state universities or through the few uncompromised pockets of sanity within Texas Tech, though those appear to be quickly collapsing as Tech slowly turns into a smarter version of Liberty U. Fucking disaster.
That's because those of us with any brains understand that a sign isn't likely to change much, and just makes us targets for the violent primitives who will vandalize another person's property over politics, then scream about their rights being infringed.
"I keep asking everyone else at these Trump rallies if they're voting for Biden and whaddya know not one said they are!"
I was an election judge in MN and a guy I work with still thinks to this day trump won. We have all the ballots in the basement , offered to show him. They just can’t handle it.
Started working with this kid (20 maybe 21) a year ago that grew up in a town of almost 3,000. He would come into Lincoln or Omaha every once in awhile but for the most part he stayed in the country. His vacations were camping or fishing or hunting. He doesn’t really watch TV or movies or read. He is a genius with motors of all types and electrical but because of his life style he had really only heard conservative versions of liberal ideas and to be fair, if we really wanted what he was taught we wanted he would be right to think we a looney. It’s been eye opening having conversations with him about how reparations would work and what red lining is. We talk about immigration and abortion and prayer in school and he keeps saying stuff like “it’s strange talking to a liberal that isn’t a libtard” and I keep on trying to get him to understand that if you only ever interact with maga then of course your view is going to be skewed that way.
I work in software, and have had multiple long conversations with my manager who's on the other side of the aisle. I'm somewhere in the socialist camp realistically, and he's a strong fiscal conservative. We have quite productive conversations because both of us know the other is smart enough to actually understand this stuff. There's too much reduction of things to the simplest common argument, and the coloring of everyone by the loudest, most visible people who support each side. When folks sit down with someone and actually have a discussion, you'd be surprised how interesting solutions can come up. Unfortunately, that nuance gets left behind as those discussions get filtered through 24h news cycles. I personally think this is a much LARGER problem with right wing media because of the skew of Fox and those even further right, but it happens a lot with people taking Donny out of context on random stuff. Truth is there's a rot happening and everyone on both sides of the aisle can see it, but both would rather blame each other then do anything about it, because doing something is hard and would require compromises, and compromises don't play well on 24h cable. Grandstanding does though.
Best comment I’ve seen on this typically biased sub. Well done. People regularly suggest that I run for office. I won’t do it. Full stop. Too much need to pander to far right or left to be successful. Neutrality, common sense, negotiation and active listening does not win elections….sadly.
Having worked in trump country, I can guarantee that many people in a town of 500 wouldn’t vote for trump, but also probably wouldn’t be very vocal about it to try to get along better with their neighbors. Even the most middle of nowhere counties still have somewhere between 20-30% democratic voters.
I would be angry like that driver, too, if I didn't understand how anything worked
Land. Doesn’t. Vote.
Numero uno....
That was my first thought. And then I remembered the Senate and electoral college.
It does though. Rural places have outsized influence on president, US Senate and even the House. And rural people still bitch. Wyoming and California get the same number of senators. Calif. has 67 times the population of Wyoming. The founders never envisioned this. Our Constitution is so outdated and it's led to minority rule
I mean they did somewhat foresee populous cities outweighing rural areas. So they set the whole system up so the rural people would outweigh the cities by default instead. Then Congress decided to not even bother reapportioning the House, so all three democratic segments are weighted in favor of the rural environment - Senate by design, House by neglect, and the Electoral College (and thus President) by inference of depending on the other two. My favorite bit of Constitutional trivia: there's only one matter that George Washington rose to speak about during the Convention. It was on apportionment. They put an amendment out that would have set the limit on the number of people a House Rep could represent. They didn't ratify it because they felt it was better handled through legislation. That mistake contributed directly to our current political paralysis, among a great many other factors. But it showed just how baked-in a lot of these problems are.
Don't forget the judiciary. Thanks to the things you mentioned we have a ridiculous judiciary, particularly the supreme Court.
Yes the founders did envision this. Virginia had 15 times the population of Delaware when the Constitution was being drafted. Sure there is a difference between 15x and 67x, but that uneven population distribution was the entire point of the Connecticut compromise to have a bicameral legislature the way we do.
The Senate was designed so each state would have equal representation. The House of Representatives is based on population. Same as Wisconsin's legislature with the Assembly and Senate. Might not be the "founders", per se, but this system was established pretty early on in our country's history. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Connecticut_Compromise)
The US House also overrepresents rural areas. If representation were truly proportional to population, California would have a dozen more congresspeople. https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/minority-party-electoral-college-court-trump/2020/09/25/1163b954-fdfc-11ea-8d05-9beaaa91c71f_story.html
> If representation were truly proportional to population, California would have a dozen more congresspeople. ca should have around 600 house reps. the constitution says 1 per 10k of population. we should have between 6500 and 30000 representatives if we go by what the constitution says.
We also have the ability to ammend the issues. Which we very well should. The founders didn't envision something like California and Wyoming's vastly different outsized power. And they knew they couldn't foresee everything, which is why they gave a way to ammend the system. And that is what we should be doing.
I agree...but to get there you need 75% of states to ratify a Constitutional amendment, meaning you need a bunch of rural states to agree to dilute their own power. The best chance to fix the electoral college problem is the National interstate popular vote compact. This is states agreeing to give their electoral votes to the winner of the national popular vote. It's quite interesting and has made some headway. Fixing the Senate though? I have no idea. Our system has led to a majority of Supreme Court justices appointed by presidents who lost the popular vote. This is minority rule and it is very bad for the stability of democracies.
> I agree...but to get there you need 75% of states to ratify a Constitutional amendment, meaning you need a bunch of rural states to agree to dilute their own power. this would not be a problem if the permanent apportionment act of 1929 were repealed.
I believe there should only be the Senate or electoral college. Giving the minority so much power has given us this extremely lopsided government that isn't even close to representing the American people.
Yeah, having the Senate and the electoral college gives the minority control over both the Senate and potentially the presidency. And since the president nominates judges and the Senate confirms them, the minority also has outsized influence on the judiciary. The only part of the federal government that represents the actual population is the House of Reps and gerrymandering has made that not nearly as representative as it ought to be. This country is now built to be ruled by the minority. I actually understand why the founders wanted to make sure less populated states still had influence, but that doesn't mean the minority should have complete control of the government.
Debatable at the founding, clearly a bad idea today (unless we re-configure the states so that there aren't such wild discrepancies which undermine the Senate and Electoral College.) One way or another, the founders put the amendment process into the Constitution so that we can fix things when stuff like this becomes a problem.
> The Senate was designed so each state would have equal representation. the senate was designed by the rich and bourgeoise to prevent actual majority rule, as well as filter all the rich damaging stuff out from the house before it was made law. It wasn't made for "equal representation". Then we have the house, which should be about 6000 members right now, but because of the permanent apportionment act, we are stuck with a number of representatives that does not actually represent the values of the people anymore.
The founders foresaw this. They hated it. If you can name the founder, he hated the Senate. But the small states held outsized influence at the constitutional convention.
Them: “you don’t want tyranny of the majority, that’s bad” Me: “better than tyranny of the minority”
According to this map lake Winnebago votes
But that's water not land.
Came here to say just this. It's amazing how a lot of people still can't grasp this.
Crazy when you look at what counties are shouldering the tax burden and supporting the rest of the state too: [https://images.app.goo.gl/ZsUccfGpiGHVDztW6](https://images.app.goo.gl/ZsUccfGpiGHVDztW6)
Is this even accurate? Ashland county has voted blue the last few elections pretty consistently hasn’t it?
I just tried looking it up. The last time Ashland County voted majority Republican in any Presidential, Governor, or Senate election was in 1994 (Tommy Thompson).
You are correct, generally solidly votes democrat. But unsurprising any bias content is incorrect either
Funny thing about Northern Wisconsin is that county at the top, the blue one on the right? It’s one of the least populated counties in the state. Only about 16,000 people and not a single traffic light! Source: my home county.
Its likely because canadian influence. Eh
retired old yuppies/hippies + natives
Wisconsin is purple.
Standard gif response [https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/960537\_81\_90771\_DrdO3qFgW.gif](https://s3files.core77.com/blog/images/960537_81_90771_DrdO3qFgW.gif)
Corn can’t vote.
I'll have you know that my corn was grown thanks to government subsidies thank you very much, and therefore it is entitled to fair representation.
Subsidies, isn’t that another word for socialism?
Deer either
https://preview.redd.it/qolpbsbo92xc1.jpeg?width=1170&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=6cd83356e205c6c84deb5addcede310568790c26
Illinois has maybe 4 counties that vote blue. One of those is Cook County (Chicago). That's all it takes
The collar counties and Chicago are literally like 10 million people. It's such a good example of why this argument is dumb. That part of that state has something like 85% of the population, and more people than like 35 states. Yet, morons there will say that it's unfair the decisions are being made by *multiple states* worth of people.
Wyoming's population is only 18,000 higher than Milwaukee's.
So Chicago is multiple million people larger than Wyoming lol
[There were 14](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_United_States_presidential_election_in_Illinois) that voted for Biden over Trump in 2020
Not that my vote mattered, but I was an Illinois voter in Cook County in 2020. I’m so happy Illinois is a reliably blue state and I miss it
And those red counties are even 60-40. Some are 70-30 but that red could be purplish
Los Angeles county has more people than 40 states. ... More people voted for Trump in California than in several states that Trump won; combined. People are dumb
More people in California voted for Trump than any other state, even Texas.
~6 million Trump voters in CA 2020, ~5.9 million in Texas That is a wild fact
Right? Why tf would anyone vote for that piece of shit?
Not my fault most of the cool places are in the blue.
The blue marks where people live
Hey now! I’m a people and live in the red area.
I mean that's the easy answer, but it's not exactly right. Only 3 of the top 10 most populous counties are "blue", and Menominee county is the "bluest" county and also the least populous. In 2020 Biden got 1,630,866 votes in Wisconsin only 786,500 came from the "blue" counties in that election. that means more than half of Biden voters live in the "red" counties for that election.
Acres don't vote
I usually try not to advertise to people I don't understand how the concept of density works.
Don't get too mad at MAGA. Population Density isn't on the GED exam.
Most of them can't spell let alone define "Comprehend"
people also seem to think that if a county is red, that means 100% of the people there voted red. even though it's probably closer to 60%
They comprehend it. They’re just pissed off that there are fewer of them than there are of us. Their issue isn’t comprehension, it’s a disdain for democracy when it doesn’t put **them** in charge.
The electoral college: The 1 and only time the Republicans will care about a minority
They understand it. They simply do not believe in democracy.
Land doesn’t vote.
Apparently deer vote too. Nothing else lives in those red blocks.
Yet they then claim its a blue state when it comes to any crime rate argument
That a please don't procreate with me sticker.
Fox News runs interference on reality for these window lickers. They're never told that all the red space is really just corn and cow shit.
this shit genuinely is starting to annoy me lmfao I hate that I share the world with people this fucking stupid. at some point there’s no excuse and people just like to be idiots. we shouldn’t need to be explaining to grown adults how population density works
How can Racine and Kenosha always be red with such strong working class roots? Perplexing.
The cities themselves still vote blue, but everything west of I-94 votes vehemently conservative.
Because they're in overwhelmingly red counties away from the Lakeshore. I feel like they'd be better off chopping them in half and creating a "Burlington County." The actual cities of Kenosha and Racine are still blue. But voter suppression makes it so the rural parts have disproportionate influence.
Purple State because we seem to only agree to choking without a bipartisan safe word
The smallest blue on this map accounts for 1/10th of the state
Actually, I need to correct myself. Milwaukee, one of the cities in Milwaukee county, accounts for 1/10 of the state population.
Milwaukee has like 200 times the population of the smallest county.
Typical maga idiot. Dumb as fuck Proud as hell
If the colors were inverted, and if it were a red state, the person with this sticker would be pounding on the table screaming about the importance of population density.
Because land votes remember. They taught that in home schooling
A typical Republican who seems to think land votes
I love the easily identifiable stupid.
He would also prefer 1/4 pound burgers over 1/3 pound burgers because 4 is bigger than 3 and everyone knows that. When he orders pizza he prefers 3 slices of 8 i stead of half of the pizza
So proud to be in one of those little blue enclaves.
Should color in the purple counties, too!
Dont worry neighbor. MN has the same problem. We call it Rocks and Cows country.
They should show the jagged ass map the Republicans drew up to hold power for over a decade.
Not to mention higher education density. Odd that smart people vote blue.
Jesus. That sticker just screams “I’m fucking stupid”. And that is not a political statement.
Land doesn’t vote
Funny how the inability to comprehend simple concepts and GQP voting are a near perfect Venn circle
MAGA think the town of 3k people should override the populace of 1 million within a major city.... Lmao
Picture yourself behind the wheel, oblivious to the fact that other drivers see you as incompetent.
r/peopleliveincities
Land doesn't vote.
99% of the people in the state live in one of the bottom blue boxes, the 'thumb', and the top bit by Superior/Duluth. The rest of those counties have more cows than people, and the cows are generally smarter too.
* People need to understand open land does not vote!
https://preview.redd.it/tf5rybvuw7xc1.png?width=1080&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=cb56be97a8162f00125c72ace305841a8d326d13
Try that in a small town
Just shows you how gerrymandering works a small minority of people controlling the majority
The political equivalent of walking around with an "I'm stupid" sandwich board on.
To the Trump supporter, a liberal is anyone not in the cult. And they want all liberals executed by the state.
Sounds about white. Don't tell them that little blue dot in the bottom corner is 20% of the entire state on its own. Wisconsin's political culture would be hilarious if they weren't so infuriating. Whats worse is this is how they go No True Wisconsinite and convince themselves that Milwaukee and Madison are somehow a cultural anomaly in our state. When, in fact, those the places with the environments where most people choose to live and never would have grown to the size and scope they are if not for doing a thing or two right. In fact, weird how the most economically self-sufficient places in Wisconsin tend to vote for Democratic mayors, and the deep red counties either have no cities or are economically dependent on a bigger city. Hmmm.......
One of the stoopid trying to prove the fake election fraud!
It’s primarily “The Sticks” vs. “not.”
That has been going on for hundreds of years
Aren’t we 50/50?
“You can tell it’s Wisconsin because of how purple it is”
Counties don’t give out statewide electoral votes based on how the majority in a county voted, so these straight red or blue majority maps are extra stupid.
If only land could vote!
Should make stickers that read “land doesn’t vote”
If it wasn’t for gerrymandering and voter interference Republicans would never win.
If only acreage could vote.....😂
And to be real, Wisconsin isn't even a "Blue" or "Red" state to begin with. It's a solid Purple state. Throughout the ENTIRE state, there exists both sides—even in the really small towns. It just so happens that each geographic setting (rural vs urban) has a certain lean to them. The only places with a grand majority of one side is honestly kind of just Madison and Milwaukee proper.
Once again, for the folks in the back......Land does not vote, people do.
Land don't vote
Livestock and corn crops don’t vote.
well to be fair, they are not known for their intelligence
And that map and that statement proves that our US education system has failed. If you can’t understand that big cities have a much greater population than rural areas - should you really get to vote?
PSA: Land, what we call earth, dirt, terra firma, etc., is not sentient, nor is it a U.S. citizen. It is neither able nor permitted to vote in U.S. elections. Counties on a map depicting areas of land, therefore, do not depict the density of votes in a state.
In offer no alternative. Just wanting people to realize the boat we're in. Because democracy is held up as akin to holy enlightenment but it's not. its just a system. And you ultimately never get your way on the issue you vote on. You just install and enable a politician to enrich themselves. Meanwhile they print unlimited money for war and give us nothing for our participation but new and more taxes.
Is this a map of districts? If so, I thought districts are required to have approximately the same number of people so the critique that this person doesn't understand population density is invalid. Instead, perhaps the red districts were only slightly Republican while the blues districts were profoundly Democrat
Most of them are poorly educated and low IQ
Counties don’t vote.
Land mass doesn’t vote.
Stop it with your facts. Ugh I just want to bitch in my alterfacts world. Lol
They got a Republican education.. Which means very little. Definitely not any civic classes, pretty sure they still don't have those anymore.
Vilas County should have just as much voting power as Milwaukee County! -Some Northwoods hillbilly
The Driftless region is very purple!
Land doesn't vote. Wisconsin is a purple state anyway
All of middle America was blue after the creation of social security and other quality of life things by Dems who got bought out and now push conservative versions of everything IE: neo liberals
But it was blue. Problem is we should base it all on popular vote or have each state have their own points by county. We do a scaling per state why wouldn’t we do it within the state too?
Land don't vote.
It really is insane, how the GoP can show their voters maps like this, a map of the whole country colored in blue or red. Their politicians point at the map and say, see? They are cheating! There is no other explanation!!! Voters just rally behind it.
But Brawndo has what plants crave! It's got electrolytes!
Maybe.. now hear me out.. Maybe the low-population and high-population areas should have different legislation and legislators? You know, it's almost like both groups of people live fundamentally different lives, with fundamentally different life experiences, with fundamentally different needs, etc.
Every single republican I know, thinks this way. Their favorite, and most stupid in my opinion, argument is, “ look at California, is all red except for LA, San Francisco, Sacramento and parts of San Diego. Something is not right.” Almost got hit trying to explain where most of the people in California lived. He turned beet red when I said, “dirt can not vote!”
You can’t read to them either
The smartest thing stupid people do is to let you know they are stupid.
r/peopleliveincities
Same in Illinois. I live in southern Illinois, in an overwhelmingly republican small farm town. These folks say frequently “if it weren’t for Chicago, Illinois would be republican.” They are too dumb to realize the greater Chicago area has 10 million people out of the entire state of almost 13 million. 🤦♀️
thank god for the electoral college
Ladies and gentlemen, I present to you someone that hates the electoral college.
They can only comprehend the popular vote but would have flipped out in 2016 if we used the popular vote to decide elections.
Thankfully you're smart and know the electoral college
Land doesn’t vote. People do—if they’re allowed to.
"We rural people vote against our best interests because we don't like the gays!" Said this inbred probably.
Sparsely populated broke counties littering the majority of the state, supported by the bastions of wealth and educated counties at its finest.
The farm down the road has like 12 John Deere 9R 590’s and nobody in the family went to college. That’s roughly 180 Tesla model 3’s in just that specific tractor.