The Nature of Party

I apologize for the light blogging over the past week. I have, however, been hard at work on a question that's been nagging me for some time now... Why party?

Specifically, what is it about one party or another that attracts the allegiance of partisans or voters?

In my own case, I find that I admire the right-moderate side of the Democratic Party and the left-moderate side of the Republican party in roughly equal measure. My own party affiliation is weak, though I am a registered Democrat (for primary voting purposes). I have an "ideal party" for which I'm certain I would always vote, but neither actual party commands such allegiance, and I have voted third-party in both presidential elections which I have been able to vote in.

Both parties are so broad and so vast that it seems much of our thinking about party affiliation in America gets rather mushy and muddle-headed. Party allegiance is real, but it seems it must be based upon abstractions. You often hear comments like, "I would vote for Republicans if only they weren't such racists" or "Democrats could win my vote if they'd only kiss-off the public employee unions."

Meanwhile, loads of evidence demonstrates that the division between Republicans and Democrats signifies a cultural divide more than a political one. We can observe obvious voting trends by demographic groups - men vs. women, blacks vs. whites, college graduates vs. high-school droputs.

Since I have neither the time nor the resources to travel the nation investingating these questions, I've taken the simpler method... analyzing and cross-tabulating the data available for each of the 3138 counties and municipalities of the United States.

So, over the next week or so I'll be trying to share the insights I can glean from this data. Some of it will be oriented towards delineating stark cultural divides which are suggested by disparities in the data. Some of it will be oriented towards projecting electoral dynamics in the upcoming election. And some of it will be oriented towards understanding what, if anything, the relationship between demographic data and political practices might signify.