Where McCain is King

A guest post on the Freakonomics blog, based on a best selling book and hosted by the New York Times, caught my attention this evening.   The post notes the fact that a whole swath of counties across the American south and southeast voted much more strongly Republican this year than in 2004, and discusses whether racism was the primary driver for this embrace of the right.  After doing some regressions controlling for the level of education, age, rural / urban divide and percentage of blacks and other minorities both in the county itself and in the state where it is located, he determines that counties that voted for McCain in significantly higher proportions than voted for Bush in 2004 are predominantly white populated counties that live in states which are more racially mixed.  In other words, white people who live with blacks voted in a more “racist” manner than other whites.

While reading this post and trawling through the accompanying NYTimes map, I wanted to know something else.  Which county in America voted most solidly for John McCain?  As far as I can detect (though I challenge you to be dorkier than me and look through every county, not just the southern ones), that particular honour goes to King County Texas.  93% of voters in King County voted for McCain.  So who lives in King County?  According to Wikipedia and the 2000 census, 356 people, 236 of which were voting age (the New York Times reports 151 of them voted for McCain, 8 for Obama and 3 for other candidates).  Main economic livelihood?  Cattle farming and, unsurprisingly, oil production, which might be a stronger predictor than race of your willingness to vote for a ticket who’s unofficial motto is “drill baby drill.”

And which county voted most solidly for Obama, you ask?  Washington DC at 93% (whose demographics require less research than those of King County).  So while McCain is King in King County, Obama is King in the capital.  A very appropriate place to be king indeed.