Do You Live in a Wal-Mart State or a Starbucks State?

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By way of Columbia University via the all-things-rural blog Daily Yonder come these interesting (albeit unsurprising) maps showing Wal-Mart and Starbuck density, state by state. (The darker the state, the higher the number of stores per capita.) Not too many surprises here. As you can see, the Southeast has the highest concentration of Wal-Marts, while Starbucks are dense on the West Coast. Also unsurprising is the red state/blue state correlation. As Daily Yonder points out:

Blue states don’t have many Wal-Marts (except for New Hampshire). Red states don’t have many Starbucks (except for Colorado).

But is it really a fair comparison? Sure, both are giant chains, but one sells coffee and the other sells, uh, everything. The Northeasterner in me thinks it’d be a whole lot more interesting to compare Starbucks to its regional arch-nemesis, Dunkin’ Donuts.

With its “America runs on Dunkin'” ad campaign, the famously pink-and-orange donut chain has been playing up its proletarian appeal, branding itself as the coffee shop for regular, workaday Americans. From the “America runs on Dunkin'” website:

Mom and dads. Students and senior citizens. Blue collar, white collar, and every collar in between. Dunkin’ Donuts is how everyday people get things done, every day.

Starbucks, on the other hand, has made its name on making us feel like connoisseurs.

The vast range of Starbucks coffees and our expertise on the subject await. Find out what’s being served in stores each week and follow it up with everything you might ever care to know about our roasts.

Even better than a map: Preference for Hillary vs. Obama correlated with preference for Dunkin’ vs. Starbucks. Come forth, ye budding demographers.

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THE FACTS SPEAK FOR THEMSELVES.

At least we hope they will, because that’s our approach to raising the $350,000 in online donations we need right now—during our high-stakes December fundraising push.

It’s the most important month of the year for our fundraising, with upward of 15 percent of our annual online total coming in during the final week—and there’s a lot to say about why Mother Jones’ journalism, and thus hitting that big number, matters tremendously right now.

But you told us fundraising is annoying—with the gimmicks, overwrought tone, manipulative language, and sheer volume of urgent URGENT URGENT!!! content we’re all bombarded with. It sure can be.

So we’re going to try making this as un-annoying as possible. In “Let the Facts Speak for Themselves” we give it our best shot, answering three questions that most any fundraising should try to speak to: Why us, why now, why does it matter?

The upshot? Mother Jones does journalism you don’t find elsewhere: in-depth, time-intensive, ahead-of-the-curve reporting on underreported beats. We operate on razor-thin margins in an unfathomably hard news business, and can’t afford to come up short on these online goals. And given everything, reporting like ours is vital right now.

If you can afford to part with a few bucks, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones with a much-needed year-end donation. And please do it now, while you’re thinking about it—with fewer people paying attention to the news like you are, we need everyone with us to get there.

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