North America Archives

Mapping the Return of the Gray Wolf to California

Article-Grid, Environmental Geography, North America / Martin W. Lewis

One of the most surprising aspects of the recovery of the gray wolf in the United States is the return of the species to California. Wolves had been eliminated from the state in the 1920s and were not expected to return any soon time, if at all. But in 2011, a single wolf made the arduous journey from northeastern Oregon to northeastern California, remarkably tracked by wildlife officials (see the map posted below). Other wolves followed, and before long several breeding packs had been established. California’s Department of Fish and Wildlife recently announced that in 2024 “a minimum of 30 pups born across five or six packs and that’s the largest annual litter count we’ve had thus far in the state.” Although most California wolves are found in the state’s northeastern reaches, in 2023 a new pack was confirmed in the southern Sierra Nevada Mountain Range some 200 miles to the south.

Gray Wolf Distribution in California 2024 map

The first map in this post also shows potential wolf habitat the United States (excluding Alaska), as well as the approximate range of wolves at roughly the time when California was reinhabited. Although it is not surprising that many areas marked as habitat are still without wolves, it is perplexing that wolves are depicted as living in areas outside their supposed habitat zone. Determining what constitutes “wolf habitat” is a difficult task, but I still do not think that the cartographer has done a good job on this map. The small dots of “habitat” scattered across Nevada, Utah, and Idaho are especially suspicious, as these areas are too small to support viable packs. I suspect that a much larger portion of the U.S. is potential wolf habitat, at least to the extent that people would allow wolves to repopulate it.

Even mapping the historic range of the grey wolf in the United States is a difficult and contentious issue. As can be seen in the figure posted below, different maps show very different distribution patterns. Most uncertain is the historical range of the gray wolves in the eastern United States. Much of the uncertainty here stems from the presence of a closely related but smaller species, the red wolf. But it is not even clear whether this critically endangered animal is a separate species or merely a gray-wolf subspecies. Red wolves have, moreover, hybridized extensively with coyotes in recent decades, adding to the general taxonomic and distributional confusion.

Historic Range of the Gray Wolf in North America maps

Another striking aspect of the historic distribution of the gray wolf depicted on these maps is the absence of the animal from central and western California (except the German-language map produced by the World Wildlife Fund). The reported lack of wolves here is curious, as California’s vast Central Valley and surrounding foothills had roughly 500,000 tule elk circa 1800, which could have supported a large wolf population. It seems most likely that the conventional mapping of the historic distribution of the gray wolf in California is simply incorrect. At any rate, the chatbots that I consulted all agreed that grey wolves were historically found across most the state. Grok, for example, informed me that:

GROK: Yes, wolves historically lived in the western areas of California. Gray wolves (Canis lupus) were once widespread across the state, including the western regions, such as the Sierra Nevada, coastal ranges, and Central Valley. Historical records, including accounts from early European settlers and Native American tribes, indicate their presence throughout California before the 20th century. However, due to habitat loss, hunting, and extermination campaigns, wolves were largely eradicated from California by the 1920s.

The best potential wolf habitat in California is probably located in the larger and more remote parts of the state that currently support elk (wapiti, or Cervus canadensis; see the map posted below, which probably exaggerates the current range.) But although elk are now widely distributed in California, their numbers remain small. According to current estimates, California has some 12,700 elk, whereas Idaho has around 120,000 and Montana up to 175,000. Due in part to the paucity of elk and other potential prey species larger than the black-tailed deer, California’s wolves have been extensively preying on domestic livestock. As can be seen in the “depredation report” posted below, such kills are occurring roughly every other day. It is thus hardly surprising that California ranchers are worried about the state’s expanding wolf packs.

Elk (Wapiti; Cervus canadiensis) Range in California map

Wolf Depredation Report California May 2024

The map entitled “U.S. Gray Wolf Distribution and Habitat” that is posted above depicts the central Sierra Nevada as one of the state’s largest areas of wolf habitat. This extensive and heavily forested area does not, however, have any elk. Its thick seasonal snowpack would be a challenge for both elk and wolves, requiring extensive areas of winter habitat in the more densely populated western foothills, presenting another challenge. I doubt that it is coincidental that California’s existing wolf packs are concentrated in the drier and more sparsely populated lands found to the east of the northern Sierra and southern Cascades, which I have illustrated on the final map posted below.

Gray Wolf Range in California and Precipitation map

Mapping the Return of the Gray Wolf to California Read More »

The Controversial Expansion of Gray Wolves in the United States

Article-Grid, Environmental Geography, North America / Martin W. Lewis

As discussed in the previous post, the gray wolf has made a remarkable but controversial recovery in Europe. The same is true in the United States. In the mid twentieth century, wolves were found only in Alaska, far northeastern Minnesota, and the western half of Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. A few may have lived in northern Wisconsin, but the state’s Department of Natural Resources claimed that the species had been locally extirpated by 1960. The western U.S. was essentially without wolves. The map posted below shows the range of the gray wolf terminating precisely along the U.S.-Canada border in western North America in the 1960s. Using a political border to delimit the range of a species is usually a lazy and misleading expedient, but it is probably appropriate here. At the time, wolves living in mountainous areas of southern British Columbia and Alberta occasionally crossed the border, but breading packs had been systematically eliminated from the western United States.

Range of the Gray Wolf in the U.S. Circa 1965

Wolves began to return to the western U.S. in the 1980s. In 1979, a lone female was encountered near Glacier National Park, and two years later she evidently mated with a migrant male. The so-called Magic Pack that they formed quickly expanded, forming the nucleus for wolf repopulation in northwestern Montana. In the 1990s, wolves were intentionally reintroduced into Yellowstone National Park, located mostly in northwestern Wyoming. Enjoying federal protection as an endangered species in all U.S. states but Alaska and Minnesota, wolves continued to expand their range and numbers over the next several decades, mostly through natural population increase and dispersion. Captive breeding programs for the smaller and almost extinct Mexican subspecies allowed its reintroduction into the mountainous area along the Arizona-New Mexico border.

Wolf numbers and ranges in the United States are carefully tracked by wildlife managers, allowing the creation of reasonably accurate distribution maps. Synthesizing spatial information from all the maps I could find and using numerical data from a Wildlife Informer article, I have mapped the distribution of wolves in the U.S. as of 2024 (see below). As can be seen, Alaska and the Lake Superior region in the upper Midwest still support the largest populations. In the western “Lower 48,” Montana and Idaho stand out.

Gray Wolf Distribution and Population in the U.S. 2024

The wolf resurgence is as controversial in the United States as it is in Europe. In 2020, Colorado voters opted to reintroduce the species by a razor-thin margin; since then, 25 wolves have been released in the state. But in the following year, federal protection was removed, letting some states manage their own wolf populations and allow hunting and trapping.

Currently, the governments of Montana and Idaho are seeking to substantially reduce their number of wolves. Over the past few years, some 200 to 300 wolves have been annually hunted or trapped in Montana, with the total state population, around 1,100, remaining roughly stable. Montana’s Department of Fish, Wildlife, and Parks is now proposing an increased cull, hoping to reduce the population to around 450. Similarly, Idaho’s Gray Wolf Management Plan calls for a reduction from around 1,200 to roughly 500, with a minimum of 350. Environmental activists opposing the Idaho plan argue that the actual numbers may be significantly less than current estimates. Ranchers point to the more than 200 annual livestock predation deaths in contending that the wolf population is too large, regardless of precise numbers. In response to such concerns, the Idaho Department of Fish and Game recently adopted a new statistically and genetically sophisticated method of population estimation called “Approximate Bayesian Computation,” which came up with a figure of 1,150.

Such wolf-reduction plans appall most environmentalists, who believe that wolves are important for ecosystem integrity. As argued in a recent article from the Center for Biological Diversity:

Most insidiously, some Republicans are trying to roll back the protection wolves do have, which would turn western states into bloodbaths like those in the northern Rockies, where wolves aren’t federally protected. But the current threats to legal protections for wolves are more than just an attack on a beloved wild animal. They have broader, more devastating implications for western lands. Wolves are an essential part of healthy, functioning wild landscapes. Like other keystone species, such as bears, beavers, bison and birds, wolves contribute to ecosystem restorations and help build a wilder landscape.

The argument that wolves help maintain ecosystem health by limiting the grazing and browsing activities of large herbivores, especially along watercourse, is well substantiated. The idea that “birds” are a “keystone species,” on the other hand, is both ecologically and taxonomically illiterate (although the alliteration is nice).

The wolf-reduction plans of Montana and Idaho are characteristic of the more conservative attitudes found in these Republican-voting, or “red,” states. As a left-leaning (if purple-trending) state, Minnesota is taking a different path. “Objective 1B” of its current management plan is to “maintain a population comparable to recent estimates (2,300-3,000, well above the federal recovery goals) and distributed across the majority of current wolf range.” Intriguingly, although wolf numbers in Minnesota have declined slightly since 2004, the species’ range in the state has continued to expand, as demonstrated by the figure posted below.

Gray Wolf Range and Population in Minnesota Map

Although the current wolf policies of Montana and Idaho seem harsh when compared to that of Minnesota, they seem positively pro-wolf when compared to that of Sweden, a country with a strong “green” reputation. As noted in the previous post, Sweden intends to reduce its wolf population from roughly 400 to only 170, whereas Idaho has set a far more robust target population of 500. Sweden, moreover, is almost twice as large an Idaho (173,860 sq mi vs. 83,571 sq mi), and a larger percentage of its land is potential wolf habitat.

The Controversial Expansion of Gray Wolves in the United States Read More »

Canadian Provinces and U.S. States Economically Compared

Article-Grid, Economic Geography, North America / Martin W. Lewis

As noted in the previous GeoCurrents post, Alberta is Canada’s most prosperous and economically productive province. But it does have, as might be expected, by the country’s highest cost of living. Although living costs in Alberta are above the national average, they are below those of Ontario, Canada’s most populous province. The major factor is the cost of housing. As can be seen on the map posted below, the average price of a house in both Ontario and British Columbia far exceeds Alberta’s figure, owing largely to expensive real estate of Toronto and Vancouver.

But despite its prominent economic position in Canada, Alberta ranks in a middling level when compared with the states of the U.S. Although the United States and Canada have historically maintained rough economic parity, their relative positions began to diverge in the second decade of the twenty-first century, as can be seen in the graphs posted below. As the following maps show, per capita GDP and median income levels are now substantially lower across the provinces of Canada than across the states of the United States. Canada’s Atlantic provinces occupy a particularly low position, below those of the poorest U.S. states. But it is also true that the cost of living is, on average, higher in the United States than in Canada, owing in part to elevated medical costs in the U.S.

(Note: In making the maps posted below, I used ChatGPT to convert Canadian dollars to U.S. dollars, which might have resulted in erroneous figures.)

U.S. and Canada Economically Compared graphs

U.S. States Canadian Provinces Per Capita GDP map

Canadian Provinces and U.S. States Economically Compared Read More »

Economic Factors Behind the Alberta Secession Movement in Canada

Article-Grid, Elections, North America, Regionalism / Martin W. Lewis

Several recent GeoCurrents posts have emphasized similarities in the electoral geographies of the United States and Canada. But there are also some major differences, particularly regarding state/province voting patterns and levels of economic development.

In the U.S., the wealthiest states tend to favor the left-leaning Democratic Party while the poorest states tend to favor the right-leaning Republican Party. As can be seen in the map first posted below, in 2024 presidential election all but one of the states that gave Kamala Harris the highest percentage of their votes have relatively high median household income figures. Intriguingly, however, that state that most strongly supported Harris, Vermont, has only a mid-level income figure. By the same token, states with the lowest median household income figures supported Donald Trump in 2024. Yet the state that most strongly supported Trump, Wyoming, has a relatively high median income figure (see the second map below).

2024 U.S. Election Income Level and Harris Vote map

2024 U.S. Election Income Level & Trump Vote map

In Canada this relationship is largely inverted. In the 2025 Federal Election, provinces with the lowest median income levels strongly supported parties on the left, whereas the province with the highest income level, Alberta, strongly supported the Conservative Party (see the first two maps posted below). The correlation between economic development and conservative political orientation is more clearly apparent when comparing the 2025 electoral map with the map of per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by province. As can be seen, the two provinces that strongly supported the Conservative Party, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have much higher GDP figures than Canada’s other provinces. (Canada’s three northern territories admittedly have high GDP figures and low levels of support for the Conservative Party, but they also have very small populations.)

Conservative Vote in the 2025 Canadian Election map

This seeming economic-electoral discrepancy between the United States and Canada is easily explained, at least at the upper end of the GDP spectrum. The productive economies of the two conservative provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, are heavily based on natural resources and agriculture, and in Alberta fossil fuels play a particularly prominent role. In recent years, Canada’s Liberal government has pursued a carbon-reduction agenda that has restricted the oil and natural gas industries, and extractive processes more generally, angering many voters. Such policies have helped spur an independence movement in Alberta and, to a lesser extent, Saskatchewan

The independence movement in the western Prairie Provinces also gains strength from Canada’s system of “equalization payments,” which effectively transfers funds from wealthier to poorer provinces so that “reasonably comparable levels of public services can be provided at similar levels of taxation.” In 2025, the three westernmost provinces will not receive any equalization payments, whereas all the eastern provinces, including Ontario, Canada’s economic core, will receive such payments. The equalization-payments map, posted below, not surprisingly figures prominently in Alberta independence movement.

Economic Factors Behind the Alberta Secession Movement in Canada Read More »

Who Are “The Laurentian Elite?” Where Is “Laurentian Canada?” & Why Do Americans Ignore the Saint Lawrence River?

Article-Grid, Borders, Geopolitics, Historical Geography, North America, Physical Geography / Martin W. Lewis

Canada’s western separatists often refer disparagingly to “the Laurentian elite” and “Laurentian Canada,” terms that are not familiar to most readers in the United States. These terms derive from the region around the Saint Lawrence River, Canada’s political, economic, and demographic core, but they refer more specifically to the Canadian establishment, or governing class. As the Wikipedia article on the “the Laurentian elite” notes, this group has a “bias toward federal power,” which is one of the main reasons why is deeply distrusted by western regionalists. It is closely associated with the center-left Liberal Party.

I could not find a map of “Laurentian Canada,” as its geographical bounds are vague and unspecified. It could conceivably cover the entire “Quebec City-Windsor Corridor,” a well-mapped region that contains roughly half the country’s population (see the map below). ChatGPT, however, tells me that “Laurentian Canada” refers “particularly to southern Quebec and eastern Ontario,” a region focused on Ottawa, Toronto, and Montreal. The chatbot Grok also specifies the inclusion of Quebec City. I am dubious of this claim, however, as Quebec City strikes me as too provincial and too francophone to merit inclusion. It is also uncertain whether this informal region encompasses southwestern Ontario; cities such as Windsor strike me as too peripheral to be included. I have therefore impressionistically mapped a limited “Laurentian Canada” within the larger “Quebec City-Windsor Corridor” (the second map posted below).

The Saint Lawrence River, and larger Saint Lawrence corridor, is tremendously important in the history of Canada and for the country’s self-image. In the U.S., however, the river and its basin are generally overlooked, even though a large portion of the watershed is in the United States. For more than a hundred miles in northern New York, moreover, the river forms the border between the two countries. But consider its portrayal in a visually appealing but conceptually muddled National Geographic map of the “Watersheds of the United States,” the subtitle of which asks, “Where do the U.S. watersheds drain?” A casual interpretation of this map might lead to the conclusion that the rivers of northern New York drain into the “Great Lakes,” as this watershed (depicted in orange), is not mapped as reaching the sea. Bizarrely, a few limited areas in Canadian that drain either into the Great Lakes or directly into the Saint Lawrence are mapped as part of the same drainage basin, yet almost all of the northern portion of the watershed goes unmapped.

The general exclusion of the Saint Lawrence River from the U.S. geographical imagination stems in part from a heritage of nationalist thinking. The Great Lakes figure prominently, as four of them are partly in the U.S. and the fifth, Michigan, is entirely American. But the Saint Lawrence? It seems to be regarded as a Canadian river, and therefore of relatively little significance. Contributing to this partial erasure of the Saint Lawrence is the fact that its upper reaches, bordering New York, is something of a demographic and economic backwater. The two largest cities along this portion of the river, Cornwall and Brockville in Ontario, have modest populations (47,800 and 22,100 respectively), and those on the U.S. side are smaller still.

The reduced significance of the upper Saint Lawrence is partly rooted in physical geography and history. Before the development of canals, traveling upstream from Montreal would take one into Lake Ontario but not much farther, given the profound barrier of Niagara Falls. To reach the upper Great Lakes, and hence the interior of the continent, travelers would instead voyage up the Ottawa River and then make a short portage to gain access to Georgian Bay in Lake Huron (see the map below).

Ottawa-River Route to Interior North America

But regardless of such occlusion in the U.S. geographical imagination, the Saint Lawrence is one of the great rivers of the world, the tenth largest by average discharge. In terms of flow, the Mississippi and Saint Lawrence are in a league of their own as far as North America rivers are concerned, with average discharges into the sea of 21,300 and 17,600 cubic meters per second respectively. The next largest, the Mackenzie, flowing into the Arctic Ocean, has an average discharge of 9,800 m³/s, whereas that of the mighty Columbia is “only” 7,400 m³/s (see the map posted below).

Largest Drainage Basins of North America map

The relatively short length of the Saint Lawrence has probably contributed to its relative obscurity in the United States. But its actual length is the subject of debate. Does it include the massive estuary, the largest in the world according to some sources? Although most watershed maps of the Saint Lawrence include the estuary, sometimes even up to Anticosti Island (see the Wikipedia map posted below), I have covered only a small portion of it on my own map (the second figure posted above). Equally vexing is whether the Great Lakes, and the short rivers that flow between them, can be counted as part of the same river. Vanishingly few sources do so, but the Wikipedia article on the Saint Lawrence includes all options in reckoning its length:

Length: 500 km (310 mi) excluding the estuary. C. 928 km if included. (St. Lawrence River–Lake Ontario–Niagara–Lake Erie–Detroit–Lake St. Clair–St. Clair–Lake Huron–St. Marys River–Lake Superior–St. Louis–North River: 3,058 km).

Determining the length of a river, it turns out, can be a very tricky exercise.

Saint Lawrence Among Other Rivers of Central North America

Who Are “The Laurentian Elite?” Where Is “Laurentian Canada?” & Why Do Americans Ignore the Saint Lawrence River? Read More »

Canada’s Population Is Clustered Near the Southern Border, Yet Is Nonetheless Distanced from the United States

Article-Grid, North America, Population Geography / Martin W. Lewis

Although it is often claimed that 90 percent of the people of Canada live within 100 miles of the U.S. border, this assertion is of dubious validity. Reputable sources put the figure closer to 80 percent. Statistics Canada more convincingly claims that 66 percent of Canadians live within 100 kilometers (62 miles) of the border, based on the 2016 census. An excellent population-density map, derived from 2006 census data, depicts this “100 kilometer” limit, which passes through Winnipeg and Quebec City.

But if Canada’s population is not as clustered along the U.S. border as many people think, the lack of habitation across the northern three-quarters of the county is still noteworthy. Significantly, the zone of extremely low population density – defined on the map posted above as fewer than 0.4 persons per square kilometer – extends to the country’s southern limit in central and western Ontario. Demographically speaking, Canada is thus divided into western and eastern segments. As a result, population-based cartograms of Canada have a strange if not disconcerting shape, depicting the country as two imbalanced lobes. This demographic division is of some relevance to the separatist movements of Alberta and Saskatchewan.

As a cartographic experiment, I took the Wikipedia map of the results of Canada’s 2025 election and eliminated most areas of extremely low population density. This electoral map, like most others, exaggerates support for the Conservative Party and Bloc Quebecois, as these two parties find much of their support in agricultural areas of relatively low-density population density.

2025 Electoral Map of the More Densely Settled Areas of Canada

Even though Canada’s population is concentrated in the far south, density of settlement increases along most of the border as one heads north out of the United States. Consider, for example, the map detail posted below (taken from the second map posted below). From “Point A” in sparsely settled northern New York, for example, a trip into Canada would quickly take one into the densely inhabited Montréal metro area, with more than four million inhabitants. A trip south, in contrast, would take one into the sparsely settled Adirondak Mountains. From “Point B” in the wilds of northern Maine, a trip to the north, west, east, southwest, or southeast would take one into more densely inhabited areas in Canada. One would have to travel considerably farther to the south to reach areas of comparable population density in the United States.

Population Density of Northern New England and Maritime Canada map

Canada’s trans-border demographic advantage is also pronounced in the northern Great Plains, as is depicted in the “five-state, three-province” map posted below. Alberta alone has a larger population than Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Nebraska combined. Canada’s Prairie provinces are also more urbanized than the northern Plains states of the United States. Calgary, Edmonton, and even Winnipeg far exceed any cities of the Dakotas, Montana, and Wyoming. It is also notable that the largest cities on the U.S. side of this trans-national region are on or near its eastern flank, unlike those of Canada.

Demographic Patterns of the Prairie Provinces of Canada and the Northern Great Plains in the U.S. map

In southwestern Saskatchewan and southeastern Alberta, rural population density increases markedly a few hundred kilometers north of the U.S. border. It does so largely because soil fertility and moisture also increase in this area, allowing more productive farming. Here one finds – or found, before agricultural settlement – the Aspen Parkland, a transitional biome between the grasslands of the Great Plains and the northern boreal forest (taiga). This agriculturally favorable zone terminates abruptly in north-central Alberta and Saskatchewan, as is reflected on the population density map. Farming is not feasible across most of the northern halves of the Prairie Provinces not because of climate but rather because of soil. But to the northwest of the belt of continuous agricultural settlement lies a secondary zone of fertile Aspen Parkland in the so-called Peace River Country, which is home to roughly a quarter-million persons.

Aspen Parklands and Population Density in Alberta and Saskatchewan map

The main body of the Peace River Country forms a relatively compact zone of settlement, but far to the north lies a smaller farming region, located to the east and southeast of the town of High Level. Approximately 20,000 persons live here, cultivating some 350,000 acres of rich farmland 455 miles (733 kilometers) north of Edmonton. This northernmost extension of the Peace River Country was first settled by farmers after World War II, perhaps making it the final agricultural frontier of North America. It also has two large oil and gas fields and two lumber mills.

Satellite Map of the High Level Region of Northern Alberta

Canada’s Population Is Clustered Near the Southern Border, Yet Is Nonetheless Distanced from the United States Read More »

Exploring the Urban/Rural Electoral Divide in Canada, and Its Exceptions

Article-Grid, Elections, North America / Martin W. Lewis

Although the Canadian electorate is more leftwing than that of the United States, the two counties have similar electoral geographies (see the previous GeoCurrents post). In both the U.S. and Canada, population density figures prominently in the political divide: the more urban the location, the higher the vote tends to be for parties and candidates on the left.

There are, however, some important exceptions to this generalization. Canada’s three very sparsely inhabited northern territories, along with the thinly settled northern reaches of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and Quebec, opted for left-leaning parties in the 2025 federal election, as they generally do. Such voting behavior stems largely from the fact that many or most of their inhabitants are indigenous (First Nations), a group that generally supports the Liberal and NDP parties. A similar pattern is found in the United States, where sparsely inhabited but heavily indigenous areas in central and western Alaska, western South Dakota, and northern Arizona usually vote for candidates in the Democratic Party. (Urban Native Americans and those without reserved lands, however, have recently been trending in a decidedly Republican direction; according to exit polling, 68 percent of “Native American/American Indian” voters supported Donald Trump in 2024.)

The tendency for rural areas and small cities to support conservative parties is exemplified by southern Ontario, which has 94 percent of the province’s population on 14 percent of its land. As the map posted below shows, all but one of this region’s sizable cities supported the Liberal Party in the 2015 federal election. Southern Ontario’s rural areas turned, as usual, to the Conservative Party, as did Toronto’s northwestern suburbs and exurbs. In the Ottawa area, city and suburbs alike supported the Liberals. The one metropolitan area that went “blue” (“red” by U.S. conventions) in 2025 was Windsor, immediately south of Detroit. Intriguingly, the city of Windsor has long been a stronghold of the leftwing New Democratic Party. Note, however, the city’s light shade of blue on the map, showing that the Conservative victory came through minority support, owing to the multiple parties on the left. The Conservative Party’s success in the Windsor area has generally been attributed to the rising cost of living and concerns about public safety, but such issues are equally prominent in other Ontario cities, where the Conservatives gained votes but did not achieve victories. Windsor’s troubled manufacturing sector and its close economic ties with the United States may have contributed to its 2025 swing to the right.

Southern Canada’s major exception to the urban/rural political divide is found in Quebec. In the western half of southern Quebec, most rural districts usually support candidates in the separatist-oriented Bloc Quebecois, as they did in 2025. Although this party has some conservative aspects, it is usually classified as center-left (see the discussion forum for the previous GeoCurrents post). The Bloc also did well in sparsely settled areas of far eastern Quebec. But it was a different story in the lower Saint Laurence Valley in the southeast, where the Conservatives prevailed in rural areas and small cities, as they usually do. Although the Liberal Party triumphed in Quebec City in 2025, its suburbs voted blue (red, by U.S. conventions). Outside this southeastern region, support for the Conservative Party in Quebec is very limited.

The compelling question here is why most rural and small-city voters in areas surrounding Montréal support the socially liberal Bloc Quebecois whereas those near Quebec City turn instead to Conservative Party. Quebec City is much smaller and less cosmopolitan than Montréal, which is probably of some significance (Quebec City 2021 population, 549,459 city and 839,311 metro; Montréal 2021 population, 1,762,949 city and 4,291,732 metro). It is also much more francophone than largely bilingual Montréal. The French language and Quebecois culture have historically been more threatened in the west than in the east. Such precarity may have fostered protective ethno-nationalist politics in the west. Such reasoning, however, cannot account for the success of the Bloc Quebecois in far-eastern Quebec.

In discussion forums on Reddit, a different factor behind southeastern Quebec’s conservatism tends to be highlighted: rightwing talk radio. In the 1980s and 1990s, the radio-host turned politician Gilles Bernier gained influence across the Quebec City region. From 1984 to 1997, he represented the riding of Beauce, south of Quebec City, in the Canadian parliament. As Wikipedia notes, Beauce “has the highest percentage of people who answered “Canadian” as their ethnic origin in the 2006 Census” and has the “highest percentage of White people of European descent (99.3%)” in the country. The current influential radio figure in southeastern Quebec is Éric Duhaime, described by Wikipedia as both “openly gay” and as “a Canadian conservative columnist, radio host and politician serving as leader of the conservative party of since April 17, 2021.” The same article further claims that Duhaime “has been associated with radio poubelle(literally ‘garbage radio’), a style of provocative right-wing radio popular in Quebec.” But while it is tempting to attribute a conservative regional orientation to right-wing radio, one must ask why radio poubelle proved much more popular in the east than in the west. This importamt question deserves more investigation than I can provide.

British Columbia is another interesting place for examining the urban/rural electoral divide. Outside the three largest urban areas, Vancouver, Victoria, and Kelowna, only one electoral district did not vote Conservative in 2025* (Courtenay-Alberni, which supported instead the leftwing New Democratic Party.) But rural and small-city voters in this “left-voting” province proved to be much less conservative than rural and small-city voters in neighboring “right-voting” Alberta. In several districts of British Columbia, the Conservative candidate in 2025 won with less than 40 percent of the total vote (see the map posted below). The only dark-blue riding in British Columbia, with a more than 70 percent Conservative vote in 2025, is found in the northeast, an area demographically anchored on the agricultural “Peace River Country,” the core of which is in conservative Alberta.

British Columbia and Alberta 2025 Election map

Although the Conservative Party narrowly won most rural ridings in British Columbia in 2025, it had been a different story in previous recent federal elections. In 2021, the leftwing New Democratic was victorious across the province’s non-metropolitan western districts and triumphed as well in central Vancouver. Even in 2025, if one were to combine the vote tallies of the Liberal, NDP, and Green parties, western British Columbia would not be mapped in “conservative blue.” Some of this region’s electoral districts have large indigenous communities, which constitute more than a third of the population of the massive Skeena-Bulkley Valley riding. Overall, however, rural and small-city voters of all ethnic groups in western British Columbia tend in a leftwing direction The same pattern is found in several non-metropolitan counties in northwestern California and far-western Washington and Oregon.

Finally, most rural and small-city voters in Nova Scotia and Prince Edward Island in far eastern Canada also favor the political left. Contrastingly, most of New Brunswick follows the more typical pattern, with the larger cities voting “left” and the more rural areas voting “right.” The exception to this rule in New Brunswick are several mostly French-speaking rural ridings in the north and east, which opted for the Liberal Party in 2025, as they usually do.

I thought it would be interesting to compare recent voting patterns in Canada’s Maritime provinces and in neighboring northern New England in the U.S. The map that I made is crude and impressionistic, but it is still suggestive. Extensive areas on both sides of this trans-border region have left-voting but mostly rural elecorates. The adjacent low-density areas of interior Maine and central New Brunswick, however, have a decidedly conservative orientation.

Northern New England & Canadian Maritimes Political Orientation map

*The “West Vancouver-Sunshine Coast-Sea to Sky Country” riding might seem mostly rural on the map, but it encompasses West Vancouver as well as the ski-resort town of Whistler.

Exploring the Urban/Rural Electoral Divide in Canada, and Its Exceptions Read More »

A Major Win for the Left in Canada’s 2025 Election – But Not in Alberta or Saskatchewan

Article-Grid, Elections, North America / Martin W. Lewis

The Conservative Party was widely expected to win Canada’s April 28 federal election. As recently as January 2025, the party was polling well ahead of the governing Liberals (see the graph posted below). But after U.S. President Donald Trump began calling Canada the “fifty-first state,” support for the Conservative Party plunged while support for the Liberal Party surged. In the end, the Liberals scored a relatively narrow victory, taking 170 parliamentary seats with 43.8 per cent of the vote to the Conservatives 143 seats with 41.3 percent of the vote.

But if the election was fairly close in terms of party politics, it was a different matter regarding political ideology. In Canada, the center-right Conservative Party is the only major party with a right-leaning political stance. But three additional parties are generally located to the left of the center-left Liberal Party. All three suffered major losses in 2025, as left-leaning voters rallied with the Liberals to prevent a Conservative victory. The New Democratic Party lost 17 seats, the Bloc Québécois lost 11, and the Green Party lost one, retaining a single seat. All told, the election might be considered a landslide for the left, with its four parties taking 57.7 percent of the vote against the Conservative’s 41.3 percent.

Although the Liberal Party scored decisive victories in eight of Canada’s 10 provinces, it was a different matter altogether in the remaining two: Alberta and Saskatchewan. In these resource-rich provinces, it was the Conservative Party that scored landslide victories, taking 63.7 percent of the vote in Alberta and 64.7 percent in neighboring Saskatchewan. As can be seen in the second map posted below, the discrepancy in support for the Conservative Party between these two provinces and the rest of Canada is profound. Outside of Alberta and Saskatchewan, the Conservatives took more than 45 percent of the vote only in Manitoba, while in Quebec they received a meager 23.4 percent. As will be explored in later GeoCurrents posts, the nationwide defeat of the Conservative Party has reinvigorated a separatist movement in Alberta, and, to a lesser extent, in Saskatchewan. This development potentially threatens Canadian nationhood.

Canada 2025 Election Results by Province map

As is the case in the United States and Europe, rightwing political sentiments in Canada are concentrated in rural areas and in smaller cities and towns, whereas leftwing political sentiments are concentrated in urban areas. But again, Alberta and Saskatchewan are partial exceptions (see the first figure below). To be sure, the left did relatively well in 2025 in central Edmonton and Calgary, taking three parliamentary seats. In Strathcona, located in Edmonton’s university district, the social-democratic New Democratic Party came in first, as it has in every federal election since 2008. But as the map posted below shows, all other ridings (federal electoral districts) in the Edmonton and Calgary metro areas supported the Conservative Party. In Saskatchewan, the Conservative Party triumphed in all six metropolitan ridings, located in and around the smaller cities of Saskatoon and Regina, albeit with lower vote percentages than in adjacent rural areas. Such urban support for the Conservative Party sharply differentiates Alberta and Saskatchewan from Canada’s other western provinces, British Columbia and Manitoba (see the second figure below).

2025 Canada Election Metro Areas in Alberta and Saskatchewan map

2025 Canada Election Metro Areas British Columbia and Manitoba map

But as the map posted below shows, one highly rural Saskatchewan riding, which essentially covers the entire northern half of the province, gave landslide support to the Liberal Party (with 65.1 percent of the vote, as opposed to 25.5 percent for the Conservative Party). Not surprisingly, this district – Desnethé-Missinippi-Churchill River – is demographically dominated by indigenous people, who constitute more than 70 percent of its population. Other parts of Canada with indigenous (First Nations) majorities also voted for parties on the left, as will be examined in a later post.

Alberta and Saskatchewan in the 2025 Canadian Election map

A Major Win for the Left in Canada’s 2025 Election – But Not in Alberta or Saskatchewan Read More »

Highway 61 Revisited Revisited in 2024: Bob Dylan, Geography, and the Blues

Article-Grid, Cultural Geography, North America / Martin W. Lewis

Watching the superb and sublimely acted recent film A Complete Unknown has inspired me to revisit the songs of Bob Dylan. In doing so, I have once again been impressed with his geographical vision, marked by effective invocations of place. His frequent use of place names in lyrics has even drawn cartographic attention, as can be seen in figure posted below. (Although impressive, the map does not seem to capture all the places that Dylan has mentioned in his songs; Ashtabula in northeastern Ohio, for example, is apparently missing.*)

Dylan achieved fame as a songwriter in part by drawing on, and synthesizing, a remarkable range of musical traditions. Although he initially gained attention for folk music, the blues genre has arguably been a greater influence over the course of his career. The album that he was working on in the second half of the film signals as much in its title: Highway 61 Revisited. Highway 61 (officially, U.S. Route 61) is often known as the “Blues Highway,” as it wends its way through the land of the Delta Blues in the Inland Delta of northwestern Mississippi (not to be confused with the actual delta of the Mississippi River – the so-called Bird’s Foot Delta – in southern Louisiana). Significantly, Route 61, as it was originally constituted, stretched from New Orleans to Duluth, Minnesota, Dylan’s birthplace, and beyond. Its northern reaches are not far from Dylan’s hometown, the small mining city of Hibbing in the Mesabi Iron Range.

Mississippi River Delta and Inland Delta Map

Intriguingly, Dylan implies a journey from one end of Highway 61 to the other in his acclaimed song “Tangled Up in Blue,” generally regarded as a fictionalized, semi-autobiographical account:

I had a job in the Great North woods

Working as a cook for a spell

But I never did like it all that much

And one day the axe just fell

So I drifted down to New Orleans

Where I was looking for to be employed

Working for a while on a fishing boat

Right outside of Delacroix

Dylan’s choice of Delacroix, a town of 48 residents (in 2000), is also intriguing. Locally called “The End of the World” (originally “El fin del Mundo”), Delacroix was originally settled by Isleños, Spanish-speaking people from the Canary Islands. It is also known for the annual blessing of its fishing fleet.

One of the early scenes in A Complete Unknown features Dylan singing his folk tribute to Woody Guthrie, “Song to Woody,” to Guthrie himself, mute and restricted to his bed, as well as to folk-icon Pete Seager. Although moving and effective, the scene itself is fictional. “Song to Woody” was one of the first original songs that Dylan recorded, but it is never ranked, to my knowledge, as one of his best. It is a different story, however, with his 1983 homage to Willie McTell, a Georgia-born practitioner of the Piedmont Blues, described in his Wikipedia article as “singing in a smooth and often laid-back tenor, which differed greatly from the harsher voices of many Delta bluesmen …” Although relatively little known, in large part because Dylan was unsatisfied with the recording and only released it years later on a “Bootleg” album, “Blind Willie McTell” is now regarded by many critics one of Dylan’s best songs. Greil Marcus goes so far as to rate it as his greatest recording, provided, that is, if the listener is in “the right mood.” I would unreservedly put it among his top five. As commentator michaelg4411 pithily summarizes it on a YouTube offering of the song, “Hundreds of years of American history distilled into a six-minute masterpiece. Stunning.”

* Mentioned in “You’re Gonna Make Me Lonesome When You Go”: “I’ll look for you old Honolulu, San Francisco, Ashtabula.”

Highway 61 Revisited Revisited in 2024: Bob Dylan, Geography, and the Blues Read More »

Declining Human Fertility and Urbanization in the United States

Article-Grid, North America, Population Geography / Martin W. Lewis

A recent GeoCurrents post on Utah’s declining birth rate included maps of the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) of the U.S. by state in 2008 and 2022. Comparing the state-by-state data from these two years yields a map of total fertility change during this period (posted below). As this map shows, the fertility drop was, in general, more pronounced in the West than in the rest of the country. In contrast, it was less pronounced in the Midwest, along with a couple of adjacent states (Kentucky and West Virginia).

Changes in U.S. Fertility Rate by State, 2008-2022 map

This regional distinction made me wonder about the possible role of urbanization in changing fertility patterns. The two states with the most pronounced TFR drops, Utah and Nevada, are both characterized by high urbanization rates, whereas states with less pronounced declines, such as North Dakota, Iowa, West Virginia, and Kentucky, have lower urbanization rates.

The Wikipedia map of urbanization by state, however, shows that the correlation is relatively weak. Mississippi, for example, had a significantly greater fertility drops than Louisiana, yet its urbanization rate is much lower. It is intriguing, however, that Maine, the eastern state with the lowest fertility drop, also has one of the country’s lowest urbanization rates. The least urbanized state, Vermont, also had a relatively low fertility decline in this period. But the TFR of Vermont is still the lowest in the country (1.35), which was also the case in 2008 (when in was 1.67).

Changing fertility patterns is a complex issue, one that continually challenges – if not bedevils – professional demographers. Their problems in projecting changes in this regard are glaringly evident in the Financial Times’ graph posted below. As a well-known quip of uncertain origin reminds us, “It is difficult to make predictions, especially about the future.”*

* Attributed by different sources to Niels Bohr, Samuel Goldwyn, K.K. Steincke, Robert Storm Petersen, Yogi Berra, Mark Twain, Nostradamus and “Anonymous.”

Graph of Failed UN Birth-Rate Projections

Declining Human Fertility and Urbanization in the United States Read More »

Utah’s Declining Fertility Rate and the Changing Mormon Church

Article-Grid, North America, Population Geography / Martin W. Lewis

On the U.S. Total Fertility Rate (TFR) map of 2008, Utah clearly stands out. At the time, the state’s TFR was 2.60, well above the national average of 2.08. Utah’s relatively high birth rate has usually been linked to the demographic dominance of members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints (LDS), colloquially called the Mormon Church. As of 2020, Mormons constituted a little over 60 percent of the population of Utah. Significantly, second-place Idaho, with a TFR of 2.47 in 2008, also has a large LDS population, roughly a quarter of the population. As noted by demographer Tim Heaton in 1988, when the U.S. fertility rate was plummeting in the 1970s, that of Utah was increasing.

The Mormon church has long encouraged large families. My own paternal grandmother came from an LDS polygamous family of 19 children, born of two sister wives. (As a result, she had quite a few half siblings who were also cousins.) Although I was not raised in the church, I did attend extended-family reunions, where my relatives seemed countless. One year, my first cousins and I got in a fight with another group of boys who turned out to be second cousins attending the same event, held in a large public park. The adults who broke up the scuffle found it quite amusing.

Although the Mormon fertility rate in the U.S. remains higher than average, it has declined considerably in recent years. An article entitled “The Incredible Shrinking Mormon American Family” notes that the TFR of the faith declined from 3.31 in 1981, when the national rate was 1.81, to 2.42 in 2014. Although recent information is not readily available, it seems safe to assume that the decline has continued. The TFR of Utah in 2022 waS 1.85, only a little above the national average.

According to the author of the “Incredible Shrinking Mormon American Family,” changes in church teachings are largely responsible for this decline. As the author notes:

Gradually in the 1980s and ′90s, Latter-day Saint leaders stopped overtly preaching against birth control, even though they still promoted the importance of children. In the 1998 Handbook, contraception is considered to be a matter between the couple and the Lord, and church members are advised not to judge one another about it. (As if.) That don’t-ask-don’t-tell approach has effectively been the church’s policy for the past 20 years.

I am somewhat skeptical of this argument. The prohibition on contraception in the Roman Catholic Church, after all, has not changed, yet the American Catholic fertility rate dropped before that of the Mormons. It is quite possible, however, that LDS families are more inclined to follow church teachings than Catholic ones.

Tim Heaton argued in 1988 that the Mormon family of the time was quite distinctive from the modal American family, being characterized by what he referred to as the “Four C’s,” namely (premarital) chastity, conjugality, children, and chauvinism (the final term referring to a belief in traditional gender roles). But he also argued that these distinctive attributes were changing and would probably continue to do so. As Heaton perceptive argued:

The ideology of the LDS church has been remarkably flexible in accommodating social change The same central doctrine of eternal marriage was used to sanction polygamy in the nineteenth century as is currently used to promote the family patterns described above. As the church has spread to more culturally diverse areas and as new social trends have been adopted by the LDS membership, policies and practices have modified accordingly.

Another possible reason for the declining LDS fertility rate is the gradual convergence of Mormon social and cultural practices with those of the American population at large. Distinctive religious groups in the U.S. that have maintained high or ultra-high fertility rates – the Amish, Old-Order Mennonites, Hutterites, and Haredi Jews – have, in contrast, remained far more distinctive, and their ideologies have not been “remarkably flexible in accommodating social change.”

But purely material factors may also play a role. Housing prices are now elevated in Utah (see the map below), making it difficult for many young couples to have children. Perhaps not coincidentally, in the states with the highest current fertility rates, South Dakota and Nebraska, housing remains much more affordable. But housing prices are even lower in West Virginia, and its TFR is roughly that of the national average. The situation is, to say the least, complicated.

Utah’s Declining Fertility Rate and the Changing Mormon Church Read More »

Recent Trends in Domestic Migration in the United States

Article-Grid, Migrations, North America, Population Geography / Martin W. Lewis

A recent article in Newgeography by demographer Wendell Cox analyzes net domestic migration from one state to another from July 2020 to July 2024. Aptly titled “United States Moves South,” the article includes an intriguing data table outlining the current trends. In this short period, the South (as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau) gained 2,658,499 domestic migrants at the expense of the rest of the country, while the Midwest lost 494,057, the West lost 978,415, and the Northeast lost 1,186,027. As the author also notes, these gains and losses were unevenly distributed across each of these four large regions. Most the migration from the Midwest, for example, came from the more industrial eastern half of the region, a subregion designated “East North Central” by the Census Bureau (Ohio, Michigan, Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin).

The pattern is more intricate at the level of the individual states. As a crude map of the raw data shows (see below), most of the migration out of the eastern Midwest came from one state, Illinois, which posted a figure of -395,721. As the map also indicates, one state – California – is responsible for most of the outflow from the West. A somewhat similar situation is found in the Northeast, with New York losing a whopping 893,537 residents. As can also be seen, five southern states each gained more than 200,000 domestic migrants: Florida (810,122), Texas (693,979), North Carolina (383,851), South Carolina (299,962), and Tennessee (237,368). In the same region, however, Mississippi and Louisiana saw substantial outmigration (20,099 and 124,444 respectively).

U.S. Net Domestic Migration 2020-2024 Map

U.S. Net Domestic Migration 2020-2024 Population-Proportional Map

It is not surprising that the most populous states – California, Texas, Florida, and New York – would post large absolute figures, whether positive or negative. But a different picture emerges when we look at domestic migration from 2020 to 2024 as a percentage of total state population. As this map (posted above) shows, the interior West vies with the Southeast as a magnet for domestic migrants. In proportional terms, Idaho was the top attractor, and Montana came in third (after South Carolina).

As the map also shows, domestic migration from 2020 to 2024 was not really focused on the so-called Sun Belt. Several states and areas in the southern portion of the country experienced net outmigration: Mississippi, Louisiana, New Mexico, Hawaii, and especially southern California. By the same token, several “Frost Belt” states in the north gained migrants: Idaho, Montana, Wyoming, South Dakota, Maine, New Hampshire, and Vermont.

A stronger correlation, although still far from perfect, is found between state-level political orientation and domestic migration trends. In general, Republican-voting “red” states gained while Democratic-voting “blue” states lost. Harsh COVID restrictions in 2020 and 2021, along with high taxes and strict regulations, have often been linked to migration out of “blue” states. But again, there are notable exceptions. Republican-voting Alaska, the least-taxed state in the nation,* saw a significant population outflow in this period. Conversely, highly taxed Vermont, by some measures the country’s most leftwing state, had a positive migration rate, although just barely. More striking is Delaware, which posted one of the highest population-proportional in-migration rates. But although a strongly Democratic-voting state, giving Kamala Harris a 15 percent edge over Donald Trump in 2024, Delaware is also noted for its low taxes. According to a Wikipedia table, it had the country’s third lowest “state tax burden” in 2022 (see the map below, derived from the Wikipedia table linked to above). A Delaware Online article attributes the state’s recent population gains to “tax leniency and housing affordability – including homes that are approximately 16% cheaper than Maryland rates and 22% cheaper than New Jersey rates …” Significantly, 13 of the 14 states with the lowest taxation rates had more people moving in than moving out from 2020 to 2024. By the same token, 10 of the 12 states with the highest taxation rates had more people moving out than moving in.

West Virginia’s gain of 11,089 domestic migrants from 2020 to 2024 is surprising, as the state is noted for its long history of outmigration. Its population peaked at 2,005,552 in 1950 and now sits at approximately 1,770,000. According to a Wikipedia demographic chart, West Virginia’s lost 3.2 percent of its population between 2010 and 2020. It also supposedly lost another 1.3 percent – 27,737 persons – from 2020 to 2024, a period when it is reported to have gained some 11,089 domestic migrants.

*Despite its low rate of taxation, Alaska does, however, have a high cost of living, due mainly to high levels of expenditure on food and health care.

Recent Trends in Domestic Migration in the United States Read More »

New Lectures on U.S. Presidential Elections Posted on YouTube

Article-Grid, Elections, North America, Uncategorized / Martin W. Lewis

Several new lectures on the historical geography of U.S. presidential elections have been posted on the GeoCurrents YouTube channel. The most recently posted lecture covers elections from 1880 to 1992.

These lectures include many maps, some which are analyzed in detail, down to the county level. For example, the map posted below has been amended with call-outs indicating counties (or groups of counties) with particular voting patterns.

U.S. Presidential election 1880 distinctive counties map

Maps of congressional elections are also included, especially those that saw major voting shifts, such as the midterm election of 1890 (below)

Political cartoons from the time are used extensively in these lectures. Some are explained through the use of call-outs, as in the example below.

1884 Bourbon Democrats Political Cartoon Explained

GeoCurrents will continue posting illustrated lectures on U.S. presidential elections for the next month or so.

New Lectures on U.S. Presidential Elections Posted on YouTube Read More »

Changing Correlations Between Income and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections, 2016-2020

Article-Grid, Elections, North America / Martin W. Lewis

In 2009, Andrew Gelman published a fascinating and informative book called Red State Blue State Rich State Poor State: Why Americans Vote the Way They Do. Gelman’s main thesis was nicely summarized by Leo Carey in The New Yorker: “Andrew Gelman persuasively argues that the poor in both red and blue states still mostly vote Democratic and the rich, nationally speaking, overwhelmingly vote Republican.” At the time of publication, the data clearly upheld Gelman’s thesis. But with the Republican Party’s turn to rightwing populism under Donald Trump, a reassessment is necessary. If we compare exit-polling data from the elections of 2004 and 2020 (see the edited Wikipedia table posted below), the answer is clear: poor voters have been trending in a Republican direction, although they still primarily supported Joe Biden in 2020. For the affluent (a category limited in the surveys to those earning more than $200,000 a year), support for the Democratic Party has surged. In 2020, the vote of this income category was evenly divided between Biden and Trump.

Correlation Between Income and Voting in the U.S. Presidential Elections of 2004 and 2020

Precinct-level mapping, made available by the New York Times for 2016 and 2020, shows a more nuanced situation. As can be seen on the map posted below, the extremely wealthy, old-money, and formerly Republican city of Atherton in the San Francisco Bay Area strongly supported Joe Biden over Donald Trump in 2020. Yet at the same time, Atherton remained distinctly “less blue” than neighboring cities, particularly Palo Alto. Palo Alto is an affluent town, but it is not as rich as Atherton. It is also more closely associated with the new-money of Silicon Valley. Also notable on this map is the fact that East Palo Alto, a relatively and poor and ethnically diverse community, gave a slightly lower percentage of its vote to Biden than did Palo Alto. This pattern would not have been seen in elections from previous decades.

2020 Presidential Vote in Palo Alto, East Palo Also and Atherton Map

The map of the Bay Area vote in 2020 reveals one of the problems associated with precinct-level mapping. A surprising feature of this map if the scattered “red islands” of Trump support in a very blue region. But when one clicks on these red precincts on the interactive Times map, it is quickly revealed that all of them have very few voters, often just one.

2020 Presidential Vote San Francisco Bay Area anomalies Map

The precinct-level maps of New York City reveal similar patterns and tendencies. The Times vote-shift map from 2016 to 2020 shows that relatively poor areas, such as the Bronx, moved in a red direction, even though their total vote-counts remained overwhelmingly Democratic. Wealthy areas in Manhattan, in contrast, showed a modest blue shift, deepening their already dark blue coloration on the actual election map. The 2020 election map also indicates that the wealthiest areas of Manhattan, such as the Upper East Side, are not quite as strongly Democratic voting as somewhat less affluent nearby neighborhoods, such as the Upper West Side. Similar patterns can be found in other American cities. Gellman’s thesis thus appears to be valid to a limited degree: at the precinct-scale, the country’s wealthiest neighborhoods in deep-blue metro areas are still somewhat more Republican-oriented than nearby less-affluent areas.

Manhattan Income and 2020 Presidential Vote Map

Manhattan and the Bronx 2016-2020 Vote-Shift map

It will be interesting to see what the 2024 election brings in this regard. I can only hope that Times continues to produce these fascinating precinct-level maps.

Changing Correlations Between Income and Voting in U.S. Presidential Elections, 2016-2020 Read More »

Remapping the Great Lakes from a Hydrological Perspective

Article-Grid, North America, Physical Geography / Martin W. Lewis

As noted in the two previous GeoCurrents posts, Lake Huron and Lake Michigan are a single body of water, forming the world’s largest freshwater lake (by surface area) by a considerable margin. The Wikipedia article on this greatest of the Great Lakes explains the situation:

Lake Michigan–Huron (also Huron–Michigan) is the body of water combining Lake Michigan and Lake Huron, which are joined through the 5-mile-wide (8.0 km), 295-foot-deep (90 m), open-water Straits of Mackinac. Huron and Michigan are hydrologically a single lake because the flow of water through the straits keeps their water levels in overall equilibrium. Although the flow is generally eastward, the water moves in either direction depending on local conditions. Combined, Lake Michigan–Huron is the largest freshwater lake by area in the world.

For casual purposes, there are no problems with regarding this single body of water as divided into two discrete lakes. For both scientific and comparative purposes, however, it is more useful – and accurate – to treat Michigan-Huron as a single lake. Not surprisingly, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) hydrological diagram of the Great Lakes follows this model. But it also divides this massive lake into three basins: Michigan, Huron, and Georgian Bay. Georgian Bay is conventionally regarded as part of Lake Huron, but it hydrologically functions as a separate basin.

Given these complications, it seems worthwhile to experiment with remapping the Great Lakes. The first map posted below shows the standard five-lake model. The second map depicts Michigan-Huron as a single lake, while adding the much smaller but still substantial (430 sq mi) Lake Saint Clair, which is an essential component of the Great Lakes system. The third map divides Lake Michigan-Huron into its three separate basins. The final map shows how the Great Lakes would be depicted if we were to regard all deep embayments as separate lakes.

Remapping the Great Lakes from a Hydrological Perspective Read More »

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