East Coast Bias

(Actually in the very early years there probably weren’t such things as time zones, but the people lived in what are now the Eastern and Central time zones.) In fact, there weren’t. The time zones were adopted by the railroads in 1883, but coexisted along local time for some years thereafter. The zones received federal sanction during World War I.

So will VP ScHweitzer be two hours late for meetings?

Bloix, I agree this is more pro-southern than pro-east. But I think it is surprising how strong the prairie states are on that list, and that none of those prairie slots was taken by a westerner.

For a perhaps more graphical representation of how weak the Democrats used to be in the west, see “this map of the 1976 election”:http://matthewyglesias.theatlantic.com/archives/2008/05/times_change_4.php. Apart from Texas, the Democrats didn’t win a single state in any part of the western or mountain time zones. And that was an election they won. Obviously times have changed, but I was shocked to see how weak the Democrats historically have been out west.

The Atlanta Braves were also in the NL West until 1993 (but so were the Reds).

Not that I’m proud of associating him with my home town, but Hoover’s residence when nominated and serving was Palo Alto (actually the Stanford Campus). I think I even went to look at his house once.

Made part of his fortune slant drilling in Bodie, and you can’t get much more Western (or more crooked) than that. Unless you count the other parts of his fortune that he made in China.

This is implicit in some of what’s been said already, but the four time zones do not really divide the country into equal geographical slices. First, the Eastern Time Zone extends further to the east than it otherwise would, so that Maine does not end up in the Atlantic Time Zone. And, due to the orientation of the Eastern seabord, much of what would be the south eastern corner of that time zone is in the Atlantic

Similarly, the Pacific time zone starts in the Pacific Ocean.

I’m not sure what the actual U.S. land areas of the time zones are in square miles (someone must have calculated this), but glancing at this map makes it clear that the two middle time zones contain more land in the US than the Eastern and Pacific time zones, with Central Time taking up the greatest space.

You called it! I think you and I are the only ones who think so, but I think Brian Schweitzer is a great choice…however whenever I mention his name I get blank stares.

Jeff and Ben, it is clearly true that the western ‘half’ of the country contains less than half the people. My guess in the post was that it was less than 1/4 in fact. That’s still a lot of people to have never had either a Presidential or Vice-Presidential candidate.

Or put another way, the western ‘half’ isn’t exactly a gerrymandered group, and when a non-gerrymandered group produces 15 candidates for one party, and 0 for the other, I think that’s kind of interesting.

Andrew, that’s a good point about Pelosi, but I think for current purposes she pretty clearly counts as western. On entirely unscientific grounds, I think of the U.S. as much more migratory than most countries. Obviously in academia things are a little skewed, but even among non-academics, it seems normal for people to have families scattered over the country. (I suspect this is related to the common American practice of moving to go to college.) If that’s right, it would be surprising if there weren’t a lot of people whose high school (say) was a long way from their current home, and, if they are in the House of Representatives, their current district.

I think more than the low population (and remember that in presidential elections it isn’t population per se that counts, it’s electoral votes and what are now called swing states) the operative factor may be that the opposition to the Republican/plutocratic/business party has not historically always been the democrats, it’s been socialists, greenbackers, populists, free silvers, and perhaps most importantly (in California) progressive Republicans of the Earl Warren/Hiram Johnson variety. Plus the democrats have tended to be fringe figures like Bryan, fringe at least in the sense of outside of the Southern-urban Catholic-sound money alliance that typically produced national democratic candidates.

Andrew, at #14, in his parenthetical statements, encapsulates why I decided not to try to figure out how many members of US congress represent areas they originate from.

This sort of question is a lot easier to answer for countries that use proportional representation in districts that coincide with states/provinces. (The answer in such cases turns out to be most, and more when districts are on the smaller side, or lists are open.)

Hoover was 28 and 32 not 32 and 36. But more importantly, time zones are a whacky way to define what is Western. Minnesota self-identifies as western as much as mid-western with it’s important role as a train and plane distribution point for Western commerce. Minneapolis-Seattle defines one of three important Western axes the other two being San Francisco-Chicago and Los Angeles -Phoneix-Dallas -Atlanta. The Democrats have typically thought in terms of Sunbelt hence the overrepresentation of Texas on Democratic tickets and the under-representation of California.