Health Care Vote Politics II: Geography & Race

Following up on my last post touching the generalities of the health care vote, I wanted to look specifically at the impact of congressional district geographic location and race.

Blue Dogs from Southern districts voted against the health care bill. There were also a number of Blue Dogs from East Coast and Midwestern states with low percentages of racial minorities who voted against the bill. Examples of these include New York, Pennsylvania, Maryland and Ohio. Further research will investigate the income distribution of these districts, but I can speculate that they're in predominately working class, blue-collar areas. As a result, the number of Blacks is skewed higher in both the average and the median racial composition.

Blue Dogs who voted for the bill came from the West and parts of the Midwest. Traditionally, these individuals represented large Hispanic and similarly blue collar constituencies with low Black populations.

Below you will find two graphs demonstrating the racial compositions of Blue Dog representatives who voted for or against the health care bill. Please note that this data is based on the 2000 Census and therefore information is limited by the availability of new data. Furthermore, the data sometimes does not equal 100% of the population. I excluded Asians from the graphs for the sake of simplicity. Asians constituted a very small sample of these populations. 

Key: Blue = White; Red = Blacks; Green = Hispanics

No Votes

Race	Mean	Median	Range
White	80.1%	83%	52-96%
Black	13%	8%	0-42%
Hispanic	2.6%	2%	1-7%

Yes Votes

Race	Mean	Median	Range
White	69.8%	78%	17-96%
Black	7.6%	3%	0-44%
Hispanic	16.5%	5%	1-65%