Wikipedia map, ancestries by state that IMO affect voting results.

[jody]

Racial and ethnic demographics of the United States

[Imalittleteapot]

1. Legend question

Just wondering - in the legend, the 3rd color rectangle down says "American". Under it is "American Indian". So, what is an American?

[Alexander]

3. "American" = "Declined to answer"

Those people either didn't know their ethnicity or didn't care to tell others about it.

[seasat]

6. A lot of Southerners don't know their ancestory

Most Southern Caucasian folks immigrated here so long ago that few know what country they originated from. It was never a big thing to trace your ancestry back like in some other states since a lot of Southern folks came here as indentured servants serving out prison sentences. They didn't exactly come over on the Mayflower Most of us Southerners don't have great roots. A distant cousin did trace our family back and found out that they were most likely rum runners. IMHO, that's why most Southerners answered "American".

[eowyn_of_rohan]

13. "Most of us Southerners don't have great roots." Don't be sure of that!

If they would try to trace their ancestry, they would most likely be happily surprised by the findings. BTW, ALL roots are great in one way or another and every family's story is interesting.

[seasat]

16. What I also mean is that a lot Southerns start their roots in the south.

Many Southern families will trace their roots back too the civil war but won't go much further. It's a generalization, but many Southerner families were here back in the 1700s and most don't feel a tie to their country of origin. Except for the slaves in the 1800s, the South didn't experience a lot of the tides of emigration like other states therefore most Southerners do not have nostalgia for the culture of their original country.

Caucasian Southerners kind of created their own culture and traditions, therefore they didn't feel the need to connect to their European origins. It is also kind of a regional snobbery that is part of being Southern. There is probably also some prejudice against North Easterners and Europeans since generally most Southerners are pretty conservative and view them as "unclean liberals".

I do know a few Southerners that have traced their roots back to Europe but they are not common. Being a native Southerner, I've never felt the need to go back beyond what records my Grandfather kept. I found out that my great-great grandfather was a moonshiner and Confederate soldier. The family legend is that he got drunk off his own shine one day and, while wearing his old uniform, accidentally chopped a tree down on himself. According to my Grandfather, that area is still haunted by his ghost. I usually tell everyone, "I ain't got roots, I got ruts."

[hfojvt]

17. I bet lots of them go back to Jamestown

on at least one branch or other. Some of my Puritan ancestors who settled New England in the 1630s have millions of descendants. So it probably means "mostly English". Probably most people are mixed to some degree anyway. My ancestry is at least as much English as it is German, but I probably would answer German if I had to narrow it down.

[eowyn_of_rohan]

18. lol- See? Very interesting!

I have some ancestors who were in North Carolina by the mid-1700s, of Scots-Irish background. They left by the mid=1800s and went west, so I don't have that long-standing Southern connection like you do (though I was born down there). One of them came from a family who had to flee England because his brother was involved in the killing of King Charles 1. I have been working on our genealogy for quite awhile and have found so much that my grandparents never knew about their own background, and I wish they were here so I could tell them.

[jody]

4. Beats me. n/t

[Imalittleteapot]

2. self delete

[Retrograde]

5. Are all those light blues really German?

There was a lot of German migration to the US, more than British IIRC, so it's plausible. But that included a number of minority populations that got lumped in as German in some counts. My ggfather's citizenship papers claim he was a German subject, but he always identified himself as Polish, despite that country not technically existing at the time.

I wonder where they get their data, though. Census figures? Immigration records? Self-defined?

[Occam Bandage]

7. Yep. We're a nation of Germans, which makes the "OMG THE MEXICANS" kind of stupid.

[mondo joe]

10. I heard a few years ago that the single most common ancestry was German,

among the US population.

Don't know how accurate it is.

[Occam Bandage]

8. Interesting how the Mormon areas all claim to be English. Cultural quirk, or factual?

[lurky]

15. Factual.

They migrated from New England and upstate New York, mostly.

[Occam Bandage]

9. Oh, and how do you believe this affects voting results? Is it just "Blacks vote Obama" and

"Hispanics won't vote for Obama?"

[jody]

11. You posed the question. Do you believe the answer is yes? n/t

[Elspeth]

12. Those damned Germans!

Affecting the damned election!

[kimmylavin]

14. Not sure about the voting results thing...

But that's a really interesting map - thanks for posting that! :)