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Along the left-hand sidebar, you should see top-level results for each of the 50 states plus the District of Columbia, grouped into eight geographic regions.

The regions are meaningless other than as a way to organize the presentation of the data. However, they are similar to official regions as designated by the US Census Bureau, with a couple of exceptions:

I group Maryland, Delaware and the District of Columbia into the “Mid-Atlantic” region along with New York, New Jersey and Pennsylvania. The Census Bureau considers them part of the South Atlantic region.

The West South Central and East South Central regions are grouped together into a region I call “Deep South”. I also include West Virginia in this region. West Virginia is an extemely difficult state to characterize. Geographically, it is not all that close to the other states in the Deep South (although it is contiguous with Kentucky and thereby the rest of the region) but it seems to fit better there than anywhere else given its demographics and political culture.

What remains of the South Atlantic Region — Virginia, North Carolina, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida — I have dubbed the “South Coast” region. These states have pockets of liberalism
that other Southern states don’t, and should generally be more competitive in November.

The other states are grouped into the exact same regions that the Census Bureau uses, but I use a somewhat more evocative set of names. “East North Central” becomes “Great Lakes”, and “West North Central” becomes “Prairie”. “Mountain” becomes “Interior West”. “Pacific” and “New England” stay as is.

…as you should see, these regions form a relatively coherent set of electoral units, although almost every region has an exceptional state or two.

Nate Silver is the founder and editor in chief of FiveThirtyEight.

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