North vs. South

[JoeW]

I've read reports that Kerry is pinning his hopes on Edwards to help secure (some of) the southern vote. <br /><br />I'm curious, Is the South truely a unique demographic anymore? Are southern issues any different from nothern issues (or western or eastern etc). The last time I was in New Orleans and even in Charlotte NC, I had somewhat of a hard time finding someone with an accent, to say nothing of anything unique from the rest of the U.S. Generica (KFC, McDonalds, Shell, strip-malls etc) seem to be fairly consistant across the nation. <br /><br />I'd be interested to hear you thoughts on this.

 

[gaugeguy]

Re: North vs. South

I think it says a whole lot that in the Dem Primary, the only state that Edwards won was NC against a stiff from Mass.

 

[gsbodine]

Re: North vs. South

I'll speak mostly to the linguistic differences on this, as I think you are more or less correct about the franchising and corporatization of most everything, but there are still very strong dialectal speech patterns regionally. You mention only big cities, where the regional dialectal variation is weakest because of the influence non-regionally-raised urban dwellers and visitors. Once you step outside of the urban (and suburban, really) areas, you see much more variation. <br /><br />And analogous to the linguistic features, I think that political views and issues also tend to be more regionally oriented outside of the urban areas.

 

[JB]

Re: North vs. South

I think the modern demographic split is small town/rural vs. urban, except that most of the northeast is urban minded.

 

[kenimpzoom]

Re: North vs. South

They just say that so idiots will vote for him cause he "represents the south". Idiot media still thinks (and wishes) we are fighting the civial war. Not that many differences left, cept more northerners move to south every year.<br /><br />Edwards is about as southern as an eskimo.<br /><br />They also tried to say Bush Sr was from the south. With that accent???<br /><br />Now good ole GW is a good example of a Texan. But that didnt seem to help too much in the Florida vote.<br /><br />Ken

 

[blacktie]

Re: North vs. South

I work in an industry that raises campaign funds for conservatives...(oops...let that cat out of the bag!)...we were looking at a map of the congressional splits from the 2000 election. we noticed a funny pattern. nearly all of the districts on the major waterways and coasts are held by democratic congressmen. the interior is held by the republican congressmen. probably because of the way the nation developed over 200 years. for about 160 of those years, water was the means for industrialization (transport). wasn't until the highways came around that it began to change. this backs up JB's urban/rural split.