With support from the University of Richmond

History News Network

History News Network puts current events into historical perspective. Subscribe to our newsletter for new perspectives on the ways history continues to resonate in the present. Explore our archive of thousands of original op-eds and curated stories from around the web. Join us to learn more about the past, now.

What 100 years of voting looks like [VIDEO]

[CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO]

...To fully appreciate the journey that produced today’s polarized electoral map and the trends that will shape the future, Salon’s art director, Benjamin Wheelock, pored over a century’s worth of presidential, congressional and gubernatorial election results from every state, assigning each a shade of blue or red for each election year. Watch as the map travels backward from the divide we know today, through the long, slow post-civil rights evolution, through a sea of red when Dwight Eisenhower takes power, to coast-to-coast blue during the FDR years, and finally all the way to 1912, just a few decades after the end of Reconstruction, when “Republican” was still a curse-word in the South and the GOP reigned in states we now think of as Democratic bastions....

Read entire article at Salon