Are you kidding? Let's review my initial statement: "This is wrong. I've split my life in the Northeast (NYC) and California (Bay Area). In both locations, Stanford and Duke are WAY WAY WAY more popular than Vandy. The only region I can see Vandy competing with Duke and Stanford in is the South."

Show me the words "lay" or "prestige" in there please. It's easy to totally misrepresent someone's words when you're only reading them for what you want to be in there, even if it's not in there.

Um, why the hell are you using electoral votes to compare population? Alabama has 3x as many electoral votes as Vermont while having almost 8x as many people...

Also, I wasn't counting Michigan in the Northeast, it's clearly in the Midwest. That MI is supposed to be Maine. Yeah, I got a couple of postal codes wrong, sue me.

Even if we eliminate WV from the South, the latter still has about a million more people. And that's a pretty narrow definition of the South. The US Census bureau classifies WV/MD/DC/DE as part of the south, which IMHO makes sense. Been to Maryland lately? It's culturally very similar to Virginia and has a similar agricultural heritage. Alternatively, you could take PA/WV/MD/DC/DE/VA and break it off into a Mid-Atlantic region that probably better reflects their modern (as opposed to historical) alignments. The south is still bigger under that measure.

This could go on forever but I'm not going to take it any further. Of course, if you expand the South to include half the fucking country it's going to have more people than a tiny grouping of states in the very upper-right corner of the map. Why don't we just throw TX in there as well? I suppose I should have said "population-dense;" it'd be tough to argue the South is more population-dense than the NE.

I might be mistaken here, but isn't Texas traditionally counted as being in the South already? Or would contemporary reckoning place it in the Southwest?

(An honest question, not trying to engage in the debate here.)

I honestly don't know. If it's included in the "South," then there should only be 3 or maybe 4 regions in the country: South, North, (Midwest), West. If we start talking about Southwest and Northeast, then you have to have Mid-Atlantic and Southeast, too.

Anyone think it's funny how even otherwise intelligent people find it almost impossible to separate themselves from their regional prejudices? I'm not exempt; I still think the red states are the bane of civilization.

Merry Christmas quibblers, just admit how heavily biased you are and have make up sex.

the census only defines 4 regions: south, northeast, midwest, and west (with subdivisions within each region)

Yep I am very heavily biased. I think any state that voted for a presidential ticket with Sarah Palin on it should be wiped from the map. This includes the entirety of the South, of course, with the exception of Virginia, North Carolina and Florida (which is hardly in the "South").

hah, North Carolina and Virginia are very much "the south..."

Yes I know, I was referring to Florida. Also, Northern Virginia - which has a ton of the state's population - is not really the South. It's more a DC suburb.

This is all you had to say from the get go!

It's funny how off topic these threads get. I think it's a testament to how useless they are in the first place.

I didn't expand the south to include half the country. I put in states that are clearly in the south. Which ones do you disagree with? Virginia? North Carolina? Arkansas?

There are more expansive definitions of the south I could've used to disprove your contention. If we go by the Census Bureau, then Delaware, Maryland and West Virginia, along with Virginia, Georgia, etc, are part of the South Atlantic states. If we go by college football conferences, then we see that the flagship Maryland and Florida schools play in the ACC or SEC with primarily southern schools. If we go by the membership of the former Confederate States, we still get Virginia and Florida (not to mention Texas, etc). If we go by states that are south of the Mason-Dixon line, Maryland, Delaware, and Florida are still in the south. If we go by where people have recognizably southern accents outside the cities, etc...

Basically, your assertion that the south was the least populous region was completely and utterly wrong. Now we're just arguing about the degree to which it was wrong.

TITCR.

Right, the state that hosts a major part the Lee and Jefferson Davis highways, has a giant statute of Jefferson Davis in its capital, etc, is definitely not a part of the south...

I don't see how northern Virginia being a DC suburb makes Virginia not part of the South. Atlanta is a ridiculously democratic city and upscale suburbs like Roswell, etc aren't qualitatively different from Vienna/Tysons Corner in Virginia, so does that meant that Georgia isn't a southern state?

Plus, lots of the DC suburbs in VA do have a distinctly southern feel there. I have family that moved to that area and their children all picked up a southern twang to their accent, and have adopted a lot of generally accepted "southern" values.

[/quote]
Plus, lots of the DC suburbs in VA do have a distinctly southern feel there. I have family that moved to that area and their children all picked up a southern twang to their accent, and have adopted a lot of generally accepted "southern" values.[/quote]

That is complete and total BS. Real northern Virginianers dont have accents and Northern Virginia ALWAYS votes blue. That family probably moved to one of the distant "suburbs" like 50 miles from DC and didn't want to say they lived in real Virginia so they tried to hop on the ever expanding Northern Virginia bandwagon.
The rest of the Virginia is a different story....

Plus, lots of the DC suburbs in VA do have a distinctly southern feel there. I have family that moved to that area and their children all picked up a southern twang to their accent, and have adopted a lot of generally accepted "southern" values.[/quote]

That is complete and total BS. Real northern Virginianers dont have accents and Northern Virginia ALWAYS votes blue. That family probably moved to one of the distant "suburbs" like 50 miles from DC and didn't want to say they lived in real Virginia so they tried to hop on the ever expanding Northern Virginia bandwagon.
The rest of the Virginia is a different story....[/quote]

So does everyone on here who talks about the south get ALL of their info from Bill Mahr? The south is not a monolithic place where everyone votes Republican or has an accent. At this point I'm starting to wonder if anyone on this website has really been to the south, or if they just spend too much time watching TV. Really what people on here often describe as "the south" are more like isolated areas like the Tennessee valley and most of Mississippi.

It's funny that those are your 2 criteria for being southern. FTR ~40% of people in the south vote blue regardless of where you are, and a lot of people that live in Northern VA DO have a light southern twang. Thanks for being so close-mindedly dismissive, though.

EDIT: And +1 to Kurama... this is pretty uninformed of several posters.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presid ... Final.html

NOVA seems pretty red here.

Also, what does voting republican/democrat have to do with anything? Atlanta always votes democrat, that doesn't make it a northern city...

That is complete and total BS. Real northern Virginianers dont have accents and Northern Virginia ALWAYS votes blue. That family probably moved to one of the distant "suburbs" like 50 miles from DC and didn't want to say they lived in real Virginia so they tried to hop on the ever expanding Northern Virginia bandwagon.
The rest of the Virginia is a different story....[/quote]

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/Presid ... Final.html

NOVA seems pretty red here.

Also, what does voting republican/democrat have to do with anything? Atlanta always votes democrat, that doesn't make it a northern city...[/quote]

This was my point. It's like a lot of people on here talk about the south and say all of these comments, but they have no idea what they are talking about. It's like they just caught an episode of Real Time and considered that their trip to Atlanta or Charlotte.

I've spent significant time in Arkansas, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia, not to mention having lived in Northern Virginia.

Northern Virginia is very blue - it's the only reason Virginia went for Obama last year.

Every other state - with the exception of the urban areas (Nashville, Memphis, New Orleans, Little Rock were the cities I've spent time in) - in that list is HARDCORE red neck. You cross the border from Oklahoma into Arkansas and the first thing you see is a huge white cross and Confederate flags. You're telling me that's not backwater? Also, Little Rock is unlike the other three cities; it's also very Southern.

It's not BACKWARD if you're into that kinda thing, but any rural area is by definition isolated.

Well I did mean to say backwater, but backward works just as well.

Not exactly the best map in the world. If you can ignore Dave Leip's red-blue inversion, you'll notice that Fairfax and Prince William (the part of NoVA with lots of people) is pretty damn "blue" (its red in this map). (http://www.uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/)

EDIT: Inland California has its share racist, gay-bashing, gun-toting teaggers too. You'll find these loud and obnoxious tools EVERYWHERE. Not just the South.