Talk:Purple America

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Untitled[edit]

"Purple America is a political concept in the USA of the people who want to combine the values of the red, Republican states, with the tastes of the blue, Democratic states."

This is a pretty foolish sounding sentence. What are the values of the red states and the tastes of the blue? Besides being unclear, it is also rather stereotypical: It implies that blue states have no values and red states have no tastes. This type of broad-brush characterization does not seem consistent with the notion of "purple america".

Not as divided-[edit]

and how? The purple imlpys a 50/50% partisian split, correct? Therefore, most counties 'are' as equally divided as the media says, am I right? —The preceding unsigned comment was added by 70.106.36.134 (talk) 01:05, 11 December 2006 (UTC).[reply]

I think the point is that the division isnt "this group vs that group" but pretty much everyone everywhere. Something that bugs me is that the population-weighted map looks a lot bluer than this map @_@

Wow I came here to post precisely this point. Granted this is old news, but the more purple it is the more divided we can be assumed to be, not the other way around. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.48.70.33 (talk) 19:36, 26 October 2008 (UTC)[reply]

"purple" only means that the votes are equally balanced, not that they are perfectly partisan. A perfectly centrist area is just as purple as a highly partisan area with equal numbers "red" and "blue"-Yanofsky (talk) 17:18, 22 April 2011 (UTC)[reply]

There are different shades of purple. Some are more red, some are more blue. The point is that it isn't "red states" versus "blue states". We stereotype red states, but there are lot of liberals and progressives who live there. We stereotype blue states, but there are a lot of conservatives who live there. The point is that we are more geographically mixed. Pigkeeper (talk) 16:51, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I propose the removal of the Neologism tag[edit]

I propose the removal of the Neologism tag. I question whether it was appropriate to put the tag there in the first place. This is an important and useful concept that has gotten a lot of awareness and play. It wasn't made up by the creator of this Wikipedia article. There is the cited Washington Post article, which is important. But "purple America" maps have gotten a lot of play, particularly at that time, but also before and after.

In fact, I feel like the whole paragraph below gives about everything we need.

"Robert Vanderbei at Princeton University made the first Purple America map after the 2000 presidential election. It attempts to reflect the margin of victory in each county by coloring each with a shade between true blue and true red. In light of the general absence of overwhelming victories, this technique results in mostly shades. This map was reprinted in US News & World Report a few months prior to the 2004 election. After the 2004 election, Vanderbei and then others made similar maps summarizing the results. Quickly thereafter, the term Purple America permeated the political blogosphere and entered the public lexicon as a way of stating that the United States is not as divided as the political pundits would have the people believe.[3]

"Purple America" is both a real demographic phenomenon (in terms of states having mixed populations, rather than being unilaterally Democrat or Republican) and also a significant cultural and historical phenomenon (in terms what the maps showed, and their ensuing popularity).

Purple America is a demographic reality, as well as a substantial cultural, political "thing", worthy of a Wikipedia page. Pigkeeper (talk) 17:36, 17 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Seeing no responses, I'm taking the tag down. Feel free to raise the issue again if you think this was a mistake. I think it's the right decision. Pigkeeper (talk) 15:13, 22 May 2020 (UTC)[reply]