For the curious, my ancestors are from South Carolina; records suggest that a Joseph Beaudrot served in the American Revolution under Sir Francis Marion. So tonight's results have a bit of extra resonance for me.
On one level, these results are uninformative; Obama's win was so overwhelming that he earned a 20% or greater plurality (or majority) in most counties. Clinton won Horry County (Myrtle Beach) on the Eastern coastline, while John Edwards (!) won Oconee County in the Appalachian foothills by 16%, with Clinton coming in 3% ahead of Obama.
There's a three-fifths problem associated with this sort of analysis, but it would be worth examining the results among white voters only to see where he managed to fare best, if only to see what this suggests about Obama's future performance in other states. It's really not appropriate for me to speculate on what the results among white voters might have been, so I'll wait until I have more time.
I just wanted to thank you, Nick, for these maps. They're really informative and helpful, and I can only imagine the time and effort that goes into them. Bravo.
Posted by: litbrit | January 27, 2008 at 08:59 AM
Yeah, lots of information lost here due to the big margin of victory. An Edwards map and a Clinton map would be interesting here. I'm guessing that Edwards does well in the west and north and Clinton does well on the coast. It seemed to me like Obama was getting white votes in both parts of the state, but it is a bit hard to tell.
So I'm guessing that your ancestor was French Huguenot, right? There were lots of them in colonial Charleston from what I understand.
Posted by: ikl | January 27, 2008 at 10:47 AM
Marion was many things, but one thing he was not was a "Sir."
Posted by: rea | January 27, 2008 at 04:15 PM
I was surprised that Obama won Hilton Head and Beaufort. (very bottom two coastal counties). I thought it was Hillary territory for sure. The 2000 census has Beaufort county as 70% white and that figure has certainly gone up in the last 8 years as retirees have moved in. Beaufort is where Parris Island is located and there are also Sun City and Del Webb retirement communities in the area. It was the fastest growing county in SC during the 1990's.
Posted by: Just Karl | January 28, 2008 at 05:51 PM
The whole state is 70% White. So the racial composition in Beaufort County is exactly the same as the rest of the state.
Posted by: Nicholas Beaudrot | January 29, 2008 at 02:36 PM