{"id":22257,"date":"2016-03-12T14:13:15","date_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:13:15","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/scienceblogs.com\/gregladen\/?p=22257"},"modified":"2016-03-12T14:13:15","modified_gmt":"2016-03-12T20:13:15","slug":"independent-office-holders-by-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/2016\/03\/12\/independent-office-holders-by-state\/","title":{"rendered":"Independent Office Holders By State"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was chatting with a friend the other day about the whole Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton thing, and it occurred to me that there might be a pattern of independent office holding in the US, especially in Congress. I had the impression that the Northeast and Minnesota, together, had the lions share of such individuals. It turns out I was partly right and partly wrong.<\/p>\n

Going back through the 1970s, and for the heck of it, including Governors, there have been 19 such individuals, and they are indeed concentrated in the Northeast (with a couple in Minnesota, as well as Alaska, Virginia, and Florida). Here’s a map:<\/p>\n

\"IndyOfficeHoldersByStateSince1970s\"<\/a><\/p>\n

If you go back over the history of the US, there are a LOT in the south, and the pattern is overall quite different, but the time periods are not comparable. The current structure of the major political parties in the US, and thus by extension, of independents, came to fruition by, and not long before, the 1970s.<\/p>\n

Why is this interesting? Well, it may not be. But Bernie Sanders is one of those office holders, so this could be important context. The fact that he represents Vermont, which is in the part of the country where this sort of thing is common, makes sense.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was chatting with a friend the other day about the whole Bernie Sanders vs. Hillary Clinton thing, and it occurred to me that there might be a pattern of independent office holding in the US, especially in Congress. I had the impression that the Northeast and Minnesota, together, had the lions share of such … Continue reading Independent Office Holders By State<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":22259,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[],"tags":[33],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p5fhV1-5MZ","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22257"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22257\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22257"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22257"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregladen.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22257"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}