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from the issue of May 3, 2007
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Lavin, Archer help develop atlas of presidential elections
Ballot box historians
BY SARA PIPHER, UNIVERSITY COMMUNICATIONS
With the drumbeat of the 2008 presidential elections already growing stronger, a new reference book provides clues to voting patterns in every county in the United States.
| | MAPPING IT OUT - UNL professors Stephen Lavin and J. Clark Archer hold their book, "Historical Atlas of American Presidential Elections 1788-2004." The book is the first to map results of all 55 presidential elections at the county level. Photo by Sara Pipher/University Communications.
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Two UNL professors have produced the definitive resource on the history of voting in U.S. presidential elections.
Stephen Lavin and J. Clark Archer, both faculty in the department of anthropology and geography, spent several years and thousands of hours of research compiling the "Historical Atlas of American Presidential Elections 1788-2004," published by CQ Press.
The book was named to the Library Journal's Best Reference list and it also won top prize in its category at the annual awards of the Scholarly Publishing Division of the Association of American Publishers. The book is the first ever reference source that maps election outcomes for all counties in all of the nation's 55 presidential elections.
"For about 50 years, from roughly the 1930s-1980s, mapping elections went out of favor in academia," Archer said. "In that period, historians tended to be more documentary evidence oriented, and political scientists focused more on individual voting behaviors. In a sense, that created an opportunity to take a look at the geography of elections once again."
Archer also noted that the federal government has not collected information on popular voting for president; rather it has focused on Electoral College votes. For the researchers, this meant that there was no central place to turn to for all historic popular voting results, particularly at the county level. They had to rely on a number of sources of information, including private and computer archives, almanacs, and any available local newspapers.
There are three parts of the atlas, Archer said. It begins with a discussion of presidential elections and how they've been conducted over time, from the first uncontested election, through the development of political parties, to a look at political participation in modern times, including the two most recent and hard-fought contests. The book also analyzes increases and decreases in voter participation and turnout. For example, voter turnout in presidential elections remained over 75 percent through the late nineteenth century, but then fell to about 50 percent by the 1920s. The rates increased to over 60 percent in the 1950s, then fell to barely 50 percent by the late 1990s.
Part two of the book is composed of the maps themselves. They provide vivid, full-color portraits of voting trends and make a wealth of data visually accessible. The maps, too, highlight changes over time. For example, in early elections, most of what is now the American West was considered a foreign territory. During the Civil War, the southern part of the country is shown in the color brown, devoid of election results; since the south had seceded, its residents did not have the right to vote for president.
In order to produce such maps, you need three pieces of information, Archer said. He and his colleagues had to discover how many popular votes were cast at a county level - which required extensive research - as well as the party affiliations of the candidates, and where, geographically, votes were cast over time. As the United States has been settled from east to west, county boundaries have changed.
The third part of the atlas is a collection of essays that examine key data and events of each election, providing context to that particular vote and the geographical pattern of elections preceding and following it.
Archer and Lavin wrote the Atlas in collaboration with two other scholars, Fred M. Shelley of the University of Oklahoma and Kenneth C. Martis of West Virginia University. The colleagues have worked together on multiple projects over the years, from 2002's "Atlas of American Politics" to numerous articles and papers.
"We all partition the jobs and have separate responsibilities," Lavin said. "Clark is at the beginning of the process because he deals with data - election data and county boundaries. We have all known one another for a good long while. It works out well because everyone knows what they're responsible for." Lavin was the chief cartographer for the atlas, so in a sense his work fell at the end of the writing and production process. From inception to a completed manuscript, the book took about three years to assemble. Lavin is quick to point out that that's a bit of a misleading number, as much of the data they utilized has been assembled by Archer and others over a period of decades.
Though the atlas is weighty and carries a hefty price tag, its authors believe that all types of individuals - not just academics - will find its contents interesting.
"It operates on a bunch of different levels," Lavin said. "The first thing people do when they look at it is go in and find their county and their state and begin to compare overall patterns. They can look through time and really see how patterns have shifted." For example, from 1888-1952, the southern U.S. was a solidly Democratic swath. But by looking at the maps one can see that Democratic block break up during and after the Civil Rights movement and passage of the Civil Rights Act. Since then, Republican candidates have dominated in the South.
With the completion of the atlas, Archer and Lavin aren't resting on their laurels. They are already at work on their next volume, an atlas of the Great Plains.
GO TO: ISSUE OF MAY 3
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