Dante Chinni

Mitt Romney had a lot of advantages going into New Hampshire – from residency to voter demographics – and in the end it all showed up on Tuesday night.

Dante Chinni, Patchwork Nation director, and author of the book Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the "Real" America, offers analysis about how the Iowa caucuses results broke down by demographics.

Former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney won in the state’s wealthier more urban counties – the wealthy Monied Burbs, exurban Boom Towns and collegiate Campus and Career locales. For...

The map on this page shows not only who’s winning in each of the state’s 99 counties, but, using Patchwork Nation, it shows how the candidates are doing in each of Iowa’s eight types of county – from the wealthy Monied Burbs to the rural agricultural Tractor Country counties. It will fill in with data as the results from the caucuses come in.

 

Journalist Dante Chinni discusses the Patchwork Nation project, using on-the-ground reporting and statistical analysis to move past red state/blue state generalizations and examine American communities in depth. Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth about the "Real" America looks at how America breaks into 12 distinct types of communities, and how they shape how Americans vote, invest, shop, and behave.

Days after the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords this weekend — and the deaths of six others at the same incident — the question of “why” remains.

The theories have come fast and furious since this weekend, shedding little light.

Some have hinged on drug use. Others have focused on a mentally unbalanced young man. Still others have looked for ties to the tea party. And it may be weeks before any real motive can be found in the assorted notes, emails and accounts that are creating a composite picture of suspect Jared Lee Loughner.

But that is less true of the setting of the shootings, Pima County and the city of Tucson. A mix of big college town with a strong, activist conservative base, Pima is a complicated backdrop.

A complex blend of seeming contradictions, Pima is a county where the long-serving Democratic Sheriff can rail against conservatives who talk about “tearing down the government” — as he did this weekend. It is also the place where a congresswoman can have her office vandalized after voting in favor of the health care reform bill — as happened to Giffords last year.

Patchwork Nation sees wide disparities in where the wealthy live by county, and in our 12 county types, and those disparities show how the tax cut extension for all may miss the mark ...

As a measure of economic pain, bankruptcies carry a special power. A bankruptcy is more than losing one's job or home, it is essentially calling for a complete financial do-over.

As the Democrats sort through the wreckage of Tuesday night, the question "what just happened?" is undoubtedly running through their minds. Was it Tea Party enthusiasm that buried them or anger at the economy or a loss of faith in President Obama? Or maybe all those things.

An analysis of the results through Patchwork Nation's breakdown of nine different types of congressional districts offers some answers.

Each week in October, Dante Chinni, project director of Patchwork Nation and author of Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the "Real" America, reviews the way Americans group themselves into categories like "Boom Towns," "Tractor Communities," and "Monied Burbs."

Each week in October, Dante Chinni, project director of Patchwork Nation and author of Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the "Real" America, reviews the way Americans group themselves into categories like "Boom Towns," "Tractor Communities," and "Monied Burbs."  Today, he looks at what the presence of Walmart, Starbucks, and Whole Foods stores in says about different parts of the country.

Dante Chinni, project director of Patchwork Nation and author of Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the "Real" America, uses statistical information to break the country into 12 categories, like "Boom Towns," "Tractor Communities," and "Monied Burbs."

Dante Chinni, project director of Patchwork Nation and author of Our Patchwork Nation: The Surprising Truth About the "Real" America uses statistical information to break the country into 12 categories, such as "Boom Towns," "Tractor Communities," and "Monied Burbs". He joins us each Thursday this month.

Instead of thinking about the US according to geography, the Patchwork Nation project groups counties in all 50 states into community types based on similarities in culture and local economy. Project director Dante Chinni discusses how Cash For Clunkers played out differently in the community types, from "monied ...