The Answer

I’m sure you are all waiting with bated breath for the answer to the question posed in my mystery map post. Despite my error, the first two commenters had the right guess, and the third, Andy, figured out the error:

I vote for NFL cities also – figuring that IA is mistakingly taking the place of IN. It would also ‘splain why Wisconsin is a Red (Yellow) state in this list rather than Blue – I wouldn’t expect Milwaukee to have voted for Bush, but it’s plausible to me that Green Bay would have.

It stood out to me at the time as I was looking at the list of NFL cities that it was overwhelmingly Blue, which surprised me somewhat because I think of football as about as American as you can get. Certainly, it’s right up there with Mom and Apple Pie. So perhaps the Blue states are part of Real America, after all.

In any event, here are a few surprises I found while making the map.

• Maricopa County, home to Phoenix, went for Bush 58-42, making it Bush’s best NFL county (the Cardinals record, however, is a mere 3-5).
  
• Harris County, home to Houston (and Angry Bear) only went for Bush 55-45, and only 51% of Dallas voted for Bush. That’s right: the country overall prefers Bush slightly more than does Dallas.
• Among the NFL cities, Kerry broke 80% in Baltimore, New York, Philadelphia, and San Francisco. Boston and New Orleans gave over 75% of their votes to Kerry.
• Bush’s best NFL city showings were in Phoenix and Jacksonville, FL (both at 58%), Green Bay (55%), and Houston (55%) . Bush also broke 50% in Dallas, Tampa, San Diego, and Cincinnati.
• The overall NFL vote is 22 markets for Kerry and 8 for Bush. Only two of the eight Bush teams have winning records (Jacksonville and San Diego), and the combined record of Bush teams is 31-34.
  

So there you have it. The Blue states have more money and they have the NFL. The Red states have all encompassing power over everything else.

AB