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Originally Posted by wittynickname

This definitely made my point far better than I was able to do it with words. That map is kind of fascinating. It's amazing to see how many pockets of blue there are, even through the deep south.

Those deep-blue pockets of the South can be directly tied to the presence of huge plankton blooms along the prehistoric coastline of North America.

http://www.npr.org/sections/krulwich...t-still-kickin

Spoiler!

Look at this map, and notice that deep, deep in the Republican South, there's a thin blue band stretching from the Carolinas through Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi.

Those counties went for Obama because trillions and trillions and trillions of teeny sun-loving creatures died there. He's talking about plankton. That's why the Republicans can't carry those counties. Blame plankton.

Spoiler!

North America as it looked during the Cretaceous era, 129 million to 65 million years ago.
The Deep South had a shoreline that curled through the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama and Mississippi, and there, in the shallow waters just offshore, were immense populations of floating, single-celled creatures who drifted about, trapped sunshine, captured carbon, then died and sank to the sea bottom. Those creatures became long stretches of nutritious chalk.

When sea levels dropped and North America took on its modern shape, those ancient beaches — so alkaline, porous and rich with organic material — became a "black belt" of rich soil, running right through the South.

And because this stretch was so rich and fertile, when cotton farmers moved here in the 19th century, this stretch produced the most cotton per acre.

Spoiler!

Then came slavery.

McClain, quoting from Booker T. Washington's autobiography, Up From Slavery, points out: "The part of the country possessing this thick, dark and naturally rich soil was, of course, the part of the South where the slaves were most profitable, and consequently they were taken there in the largest numbers." After the Civil War, a lot of former slaves stayed on this land, and while many migrated North, their families are still there.

This, says marine biologist McClain, explains that odd stretch of Obama blue; it's African-Americans sitting on old soil from ancient organisms that turned sunshine into fertilizer. So plankton remain a force in Southern elections.

Spoiler!