Blog Post #2 - Demographics of Pennsylvania - Hunsicker

 

    In this first map, we can notice the population centers of Pennsylvania. Urban and suburban areas tend to vote more Democratic than their rural counterparts. These apex centers can be found in areas with a high populace, including Pittsburg, Harrisburg, Philadelphia, Allentown, Scranton, and Erie. Of note is the fact that Reading, though being an urban-suburban split, still votes Republican in elections, with in recent years only 2008 having a difference of a win from five to ten percent for the Democrats. Another important note is the lack of population around what is commonly known as the 'T' in Pennsyvalnay, as those are very much rural centers.

    My second map includes 25-year-olds and older who have completed enough college-level education to obtain a bachelor's degree. To explain these patterns, you see the big cities and areas people will most likely travel to from work. This can be seen through the area of Pittsburg, where the surrounding area has some people with a bachelor's level education. I believe there is a correlation between the level of education you have obtained and how your political ideology may be shaped. I believe that the more you are in college, the more you are exposed to a liberal set of values than those who have only obtained a high school diploma. I believe the more brown areas will most likely vote Democratic as they already tend to do that, and with the increased level of education, we see a higher chance of voting Democrat.

    This map shows immigration from foreign countries based on absolute numbers. We can see a clear leaning towards significant cities. Still, we also see clear-cut areas where people start to diffuse out, such as Lancaster County, which, although a Republican-dominant county, still has an excellent number of immigrants. From the research that I have done and articles I have read, most immigrants prefer voting Democrat overall, with Cubans, in particular, voting the opposite in most cases. Also, looking at the Sanctuary City Map, we notice some similarities between the immigration map and that of the Sanctuary Cities Map. Though we know that not all immigrants are illegal, having a state as a Sanctuary for unauthorized immigrants can signal more of a Democratic-leaning, though not always, as such in the case with Cubans, who are typically more conservative.

(Marlon et al. 2023)

    This is an extra map that I decided to put up on the blog. I found it from the Yale Climate Opinion Maps published in 2023. Since climate change is more of a progressive idea on the left side of the political spectrum, we can surmise that the lighter areas are most likely more right-leaning, meaning they would most likely vote Republican. The Southwestern and central Northern portion of Pennsylvania, including Fayette, Greene, Washington, Potter, Tioga, Bradford, and other counties, are more likely to be dismissive of climate change due to the massive importance of fracking as an economic necessity.

Bibliography

Marlon, Jennifer, Emily Goddard, Peter Howe, Matto Mildenberger, Martial Jefferson, Eric Fine, and Anthony Leiserowitz. 2023. “Yale Climate Opinion Maps 2023.” Yale Program on Climate Change Communication. December 13, 2023. https://climatecommunication.yale.edu/visualizations-data/ycom-us/.