I always forget about the Greenbacks / Populists being competitive in the South.
OTL Election maps resources thread
- Thread starter Thande
- Start date
I always forget about the Greenbacks / Populists being competitive in the South.
The Chilean presidential and parliamentary elections are now up on AJR (I made them when the actual elections happened, I just haven't gotten them up until now). Thanks to @Lenwe and @Paradox-less for reviewing the writeup for the former.
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
I'm presuming that the population of the municipality won by Goic is somewhere in single figures?
She got 78 votes. The total number of votes cast was 289.
She's from Punta Arenas though (it has a very large Croat population, for reasons unknown to me), so it's not completely odd.
I forgot to add a note to that one. Democrat Noble A. Hull won the election in FL-2 by just 22 votes, leading his Republican opponent (and incumbent congressman) Horatio Bisbee to appeal the election, and after a recount, he was awarded the seat in January 1881. This was, of course, just in time to lose it again.
Strangely enough, I recently was thinking of mapping the same election, despite the fact that I rarely do US maps. Recently I had gone to the NYC public library map division and had checked out a first-party source mapping that election. Strange how minds think alike.
Thande
Donor
Fantastic work. I think it might be better if you used a different colour for Independent Democrat to distinguish it better from Greenback, but still a great glimpse into an uncharacteristically competitive era of US politics in the South.
Interesting that Kentucky had managed to gerrymander away its Republicans in the south-east at that point.
Thande
Donor
This is an excellent example of that thing I talk about concerning how America in the 1880s was, like, over a century ahead of the rest of the world in terms of data visualisation techniques.Strangely enough, I recently was thinking of mapping the same election, despite the fact that I rarely do US maps. Recently I had gone to the NYC public library map division and had checked out a first-party source mapping that election. Strange how minds think alike.
Uhura's Mazda
Banned
I love that, by some fluke, they're using the modern colour scheme.Strangely enough, I recently was thinking of mapping the same election, despite the fact that I rarely do US maps. Recently I had gone to the NYC public library map division and had checked out a first-party source mapping that election. Strange how minds think alike.
You can see the beginnings of the Solid South - the GOP had abandoned Texas, Arkansas, Mississippi, western Tennessee, much of Virginia, northern Georgia, and several other places. This was also the first election after the federal GOP had more or less been forced to abandon South Carolina, and while the state party fought back hard, massive voter fraud and intimidation practiced by the Democrats caused all five of their seats to fall.
There's an interesting TL to be made at some point where David Davis isn't appointed to the Senate, gets to serve on the Electoral Commission, and throws his lot in with Tilden. The GOP might actually still try to court black voters in the South going into the 1880s, and Grant's Civil Rights Act might at least have lip service paid to it for a few more years.
Alex Richards
Donor
Credit Thande for this one and you should be fine. Needs a small edit to remove the star in Georgia of course.
Thande
Donor
There is a slight problem with a misalignment in some of the later maps which I need to fix later, I am not sure if this is one of them or not.
Its all good, it will work for my purposes. I'll make sure to credit you!
I've started getting to old Colorado elections - unfortunately, when I went to the library earlier today I didn't bother to get any information on the actual apportionment, and as it turns out the lists of members I did get for the State House only show their county of residence, not necessarily all of the counties they represent. Now, for the Senate matters are different, as their districts were numbered, but f l o t e r i a l d i s t r i c t s means it'll likely take me a while to work out how to do those properly.
Nevertheless, here's what I have for the 1880 apportionment so far:
Now, if we compare this to the constitutional 1876 apportionment, the most striking change by far is Lake County, which went from a single member in 1876 to four in 1880 despite losing most of its territory. This is because of Leadville, the local boomtown founded in 1877 atop a recently-discovered lode of (say it with me)... er, silver. By 1880 it had nearly 15,000 inhabitants and a full range of services up to and including an opera house built by local mine magnate and eccentric millionare Horace Tabor. The silver boom would affect Colorado in general and Leadville in particular, making the state the main stronghold of the Silver Republicans next to Nevada and bringing the town wide renown as a place where countless legendary figures of the Old West passed through but nearly none actually stayed. When the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed in 1893, harshly limiting the amount of silver the government would buy, the bottom fell out of Leadville, and today it's home to just over two thousand people. Its population in the first census taken after its incorporation was never exceeded, which makes it fairly unusual among U.S. settlements but probably far less so among Western mining towns.
Nevertheless, here's what I have for the 1880 apportionment so far:
Now, if we compare this to the constitutional 1876 apportionment, the most striking change by far is Lake County, which went from a single member in 1876 to four in 1880 despite losing most of its territory. This is because of Leadville, the local boomtown founded in 1877 atop a recently-discovered lode of (say it with me)... er, silver. By 1880 it had nearly 15,000 inhabitants and a full range of services up to and including an opera house built by local mine magnate and eccentric millionare Horace Tabor. The silver boom would affect Colorado in general and Leadville in particular, making the state the main stronghold of the Silver Republicans next to Nevada and bringing the town wide renown as a place where countless legendary figures of the Old West passed through but nearly none actually stayed. When the Sherman Silver Purchase Act was repealed in 1893, harshly limiting the amount of silver the government would buy, the bottom fell out of Leadville, and today it's home to just over two thousand people. Its population in the first census taken after its incorporation was never exceeded, which makes it fairly unusual among U.S. settlements but probably far less so among Western mining towns.
Last edited:
Thande
Donor
I'm interested in seeing what Colorado Springs was like politically at the time, as it had a large British population and was known as Little London (as I discovered from Michael Portillo's train programme).
While checking the details of this point, by the way, I managed to find this. Talk about things that look like AH but aren't.
Alex Richards
Donor
I'm not sure whether the obvious nod to Daughters of the Confederacy is an unfortunate homage, copying a catchy name or some subtle trolling.
It's probably named after the organization which inspired it, which itself was possibly named by analogue to the UDC, DAR, or this earlier organization, although I suspect it's probably just, as you said, a catchy name.