Coming soon: some thoughts on PA regions & voting trends (mumbled about this earlier with @4st8 but it's really happening now: New Regions👀) 
In part I wanted to work with a relatively more equal population distribution...
In part I wanted to capture the ways river towns along the Susquehanna River in central & northern PA—which tend to be home to colleges, medical ctrs, more young people, more professionals—have an evolving progressive ecosystem that shouldn't be split arbitrarily across regions
Black Lives Matter protests outside of PA's largest cities clustered in river towns, along the Susquehanna, Lackawanna, Lackawaxen, Beaver River, & more. #EverythingHasAHistory
... which was not a story of kumbaya togetherness (but also not "outside radicals! riots!") but of local young people stepping forward & feeling their way towards new allies & new kinds of voice, as @fdwilkinson captured here bloomberg.com/opinion/articl…
The big picture: Yes the jump in Dem votes in SEPA would have flipped PA even if everything else stood still. But it didn't. Allegheny (=Pgh suburbs) saw Biden net 38,000 above Clinton. & Trump carried ~13,500 fewer net votes out of each of SCPA, NEPA & Lehigh Valley than in 2016
A different way of thinking about the trends is to group counties by @AmCommPro types instead. Biden gains over Clinton incl. 98,000 net votes in Urban Suburb counties, 46,000 in Exurbs, 24,000 in Middle Suburbs & 18,000 in "College Town" counties (really, greater Harrisburg)
Summing up countywide totals is on the one hand really useful & on the other consistently misleading, if it makes us imagne regions moving in internal unison. Often it's internal *divisions* that're powering political dynamics: driving opposing shifts that net out to small change
I love the fact that people are arguing about individual county placement in the replies: yes I am here for discussion of the Berks-Lancaster transit authority! Meanwhile here is the thread w/@4st8 from like a year (=century) ago that started it all
https://twitter.com/lara_putnam/status/1210654631426220033
And yes there are lots of overlapping geographies you could point to within PA: like the Philly collar's collar (aka 222 corridor) where the populations of the cities of Lancaster, York, Lebanon, Allentown, Bethlehem are 1/3-1/2 Hispanic today: and Reading 2/3...
Never assume that county-level vote shifts reflect change driven by the demographic slice the county's most identified wth. This great article from @JuliaTerruso captures that well, even tho the title [not her fault!] misleads. NEPA/WPA=internally diverse inquirer.com/news/white-wor…
The internal spatial diversity of counties is esp important if you want to understand political engagement as a dynamic process, not treat as black box from which "preferences" emerge. Mental maps matter if we want to understand change over time—& even more if we want to shape it
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