On March 2, Gov. Rick Perry won the Republican gubernatorial primary in Texas by a comfortable 21-point margin. He earned 51.1 percent of the vote, while US Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison received 30.3 percent and newcomer Debra Medina 18.6 percent. Many postmortems since then have made it sound like this outcome was obvious – that it was clear from the start that Governor Perry would win. But just a year ago, Perry was running behind Senator Hutchison in trial-heat polls by 25 points....

In a world of tight credit and joblessness, low- and middle-income people often find themselves in difficult financial straits. A unique and controversial type of business has emerged, primarily within the past 20 years, to respond to these situations: payday lenders....

Where are the bookworms in America? Last week, Patchwork Nation featured a post about the likely closing of a bookstore in Laredo, Texas, prompting us to delve more deeply into the market for book sales across America's variegated terrain. Certainly we can imagine the demand for books varying not only by education and literacy, but also by income, as books are not free, and even the most literate populations will not patronize bookstores if they cannot walk out with a new book....

New residents can greatly alter the places where they settle, having an impact on local economies as well as on the political complexion of these communities. Demographers have outlined two sources of population change: natural increase – the ratio of births to deaths – and migration flows to or from other locations. Migration, in turn, can involve moves within the United States or moves between the US and other countries. Recent estimates for 2007 and 2008 from the US Census Bureau provide some insight into the variability of population change across America....

The high turnout of older voters and the lighter turnout of the young certainly helps to explain the difference between last year’s presidential election and last week's Republican victories in the gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey. President Obama even had his grass-roots political organization, Organizing for America, involved in those campaigns to mobilize the voters who turned out for him last year. But in both states, turnout of younger and minority voters was down, as it has been in previous off-year contests....

With the House and Senate getting closer to a vote on healthcare reform, President Obama has already lined up another major legislative priority: immigration reform. Historically, the subject of immigration has elicited as much controversy as anything coming out of the current healthcare debate. Furthermore, opposition to immigration tends to peak during economic downturns, when many Americans view newcomers as a threat to their economic security. A solid majority of Americans believe that immigration should be subject to greater control and restriction....

The economic crisis is in large part about a rising tide of personal debt. Much of this debt has resulted from costly housing and bad home loans. But there’s another big source of debt: credit cards. Surveys show notable personal and geographic differences in the way consumers borrow and spend. These attitudes about personal debt may influence people’s judgments on other issues, such as the size of the national debt....

As of April 2009, US military deaths in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan totaled 5,679. That’s according to MapTheFallen.org, an independent organization that charts the deaths of US soldiers (and whose numbers can differ from official reports from the Defense Department). Where have those deaths hit hardest? The data from MapTheFallen.org can be analyzed on the county level, which is exactly what we’ve done for Patchwork Nation. Without question, the agricultural “...

It’s taken just a few years for the blogosphere to become an important source of information. Businesses, political organizations, media outlets, and all sorts of writers have quickly seized upon the communicative power of the blog, in some cases deemphasizing other forms of communication and older forms of advertising. Internet use in general has been concentrated among younger populations, as numerous surveys have shown, including a January study by the Pew Internet & American Life Project....

Some people might say that labor unions argue about environmental regulations costing jobs simply to quash more governmental regulation. But others point out that environmental policy, like virtually any other policy, involves real trade-offs. Jobs in industries such as energy production, mining, pulp and paper, petroleum refining, and steelmaking are all at stake. The health of the environment is also at stake....