Research

If you travel the country enough and pay attention to its complexities and differences you soon realize that the ways we try to understand it – red and blue, Northeast and Midwest – are too simplistic. They are inadequate and misleading.

That’s why we created Patchwork Nation, a demographic/geographic breakdown of the nation into 12 different kinds of community. Using counties as our building blocks we have identified different kinds of places – everything from rural agricultural Tractor Country to the wealthy suburban Monied Burbs – which we use to examine how various kinds of communities experience culture, the economy and politics.  You can read more on  the project methodology page.

Patchwork Nation delivers national data with local context while remaining visually intuitive for the reader.  The interactive map helps break down national data to analyze how it impacts communities.  We put data in the hands of the user, allowing him or her to compare different data sets and explore national data county-by-county.

Launched to cover the 2008 election and originally developed and hosted with the Christian Science Monitor, Patchwork Nation has evolved to cover more communities and more topics, focusing on the economy and culture as well as politics. The project represents an unprecedented collaboration of the Jefferson Institute with the Wall Street Journal, the NewsHour, the Christian Science Monitor and WNYC Radio as well as local public broadcasting stations.

The Patchwork Nation Team

Staff
Editor/Director, Dante Chinni, Jefferson Institute
Data Nerd, Zoran Hrncic, Jefferson Institute
Contributing Editor, Lee Banville, University of Montana

Advisory Board
Bruce Cain, University of California, Berkeley
Paul Freedman, University of Virginia
James Thurber, American University
Bill Kovach, University of Missouri
Susan Rasky, University of California, Berkeley