Transcript Politics, Elevation And Bumper Stickers In

Politics, Elevation And Bumper Stickers In Morgantown,
West Virginia
By: Jenni Lee, Phillip Oliver, Mary Emily Stonebridge and Andrew Stawarski
ABSTRACT
Our study is of the South Park neighborhood located in Morgantown,
West Virginia. We theorize that with increasing elevation comes a
change in political views. This is rationalized by the notion that the
higher in elevation you go the more expensive the property is. The
political views of bumper stickers will be our catalyst for trying to
explain this. Also, lower sections of the neighborhood should have
more stickers than the higher areas.
INTRODUCTION
Morgantown, West Virginia was first settled in 1772 by Zaquill
Morgan. The first plot of land went on sale in 1785. It is from
Zaquill Morgan that the town was named (www.morgantown.com).
The town really boomed as a mining town. During the 1900s, the
area known as South Park was established by the wealthy and
middle class during the boom in the early 1900s (Bartlett 2000). The
average income of the area is still average for the middle class (US
Census 2000.)
METHODS
DISCUSSION / CONCLUSION
RESULTS
We found no relationship between elevation and political views. Almost all of the
political bumper stickers were either liberal in nature or nonpolitical. Most contained
nonpolitical agenda such as points 42, 44, and 46. Most of the stickers with political
overtones were ones of peace and “freeing our minds,” as shown in examples 50 and
53. A minority of the stickers contained specific political overtones, such as point
51 which is a number of USA troops holding a flag saying “Halp Us Jon Carry – We
R Stuck Here N Irak.” This is a blatant parody at Senator John Kerry. Another
example is point 60 which has both political and non political overtones. One of the
stickers is promoting the Application Trail and the other is a “Don’t Tread on Me”
flag, which gained its fame during the American Revolution.
Point 42
Point 44
Point 46
The group was equipped with a GPS unit and digital cameras. The
GPS was used when bumper stickers were found during the walk.
The surveyed area was a two block radius, one block above Route 7
and one block located below Route 7. Notes and pictures of every
bumper sticker were also taken. In the lab the GPS coordinates were
imputed into Google Maps for the creation of the map and analysis.
MEAN INCOME
The lower income areas had surprisingly low bumper
stickers. This could also have been do to the low
population of college students that are missing during
the summer months. Our results show no political
change due to elevation. This could be explained by a
few factors. The largest factor could be time of day. We
collected our data in the mid afternoon when most
people would be at work. Another factor is time of year:
data was collected during summer and considering
Morgantown is a college town, this can play into the
validity of our data. One way of correcting this is to
change the time of our data collection to the beginning
of the week while school is in session. We can also
receive more accurate data by collecting it in the early
morning hours or in the late evening hours when most
people are resting for the work day ahead of them.
Point 50
Point 51
Point 53
Point 60
REFERENCE
Acknowledgements
We would like to thank Dr. Nancy Hoalst Pullen, and Dr. Jay D. Gatrell for letting us have the opportunity for this
trip and project.
References
Figure 1 : http://www.census.gov/
Bartlett, David A “EXPLORING SOUTH PARK, MORGANTOWN, WV: ACCESSING HISTORICOGEOGRAPHICAL MATERIALTHROUGH THE INTERNET
http://appalachia2009.wikispaces.com/file/view/Bartlett_D_Thesisop.pdf (Accessed July 24, 2009)
www.morgantown.com
Figure 1. US Census Data Cert. 2000