I have chosen two maps, one of which shows the map of America before the civil war. It shows the areas where high levels of cotton production during this time. You can clearly see two concentrated strips down the South and central America in states like Texas, Mississippi and Arkansas . The other map is of the 2008 presidential election results, with the blue areas representing counties that voted for Barack Obama and the red areas representing the area that voted for John McCain. You can clearly see a similarity between the concentrated areas of cotton production and the main areas that voted for Obama. From these two maps you can infer that a large proportion of votes for Obama came from African Americans who are the descendents of the African slaves who worked on the cotton plantations. However, from the map showing the 2008 election results not only is there a concentration of counties that voted for Obama in the central south where the high levels of cotton plantations where, but there is also a high proportion of votes for Obama in the north east. Although you can infer the link between the cotton production and the votes for Obama in the south, it doesn’t explain the large area of votes for Obama in the north east. You could infer from it that Obama didn’t just appeal to the African Americans, because Obama himself is an African American but he appealed to a wider population of America.