Republicans and Democrats think their states are great for totally different reasons

“I come from the land where we manufacture Pez!” J.R. Romano, chair of the Connecticut Republicans, bellowed before a packed auditorium.

The sentiment came during the Republican National Convention’s roll call, a process in which each state is supposed to orally cast its votes for the presidential primary candidates. But give an amateur politician a microphone and an audience of 24 million viewers, and, well, things change.

The modern roll call vote has become an odd tradition in American politics — one in which each speaker doesn’t just casts votes but extolls what exactly is so great about his or her state.

As such, it’s a fascinating view into how differently each party values its home state.

I went through transcripts from the DNC and RNC and collected the “brags” of all 50 states. In the interactive chart below, you can sort to see your state.

To find what Democrats and Republicans said about your state, click on the highlighted portion (“your state”.)

Republicans and Democrats brag about fundamentally different things. Twenty-five of 50 Democrats enumerated on the civil rights achievements in their states, compared with two Republicans.

Republicans, on the other hand, were nearly three times as likely as Democrats to boast about job creation — and twice as likely to brag about their sports teams’ performance.

In most cases, Democrats and Republicans have dramatically different visions of what makes their states “great.” And this “polarization of brags” shows just how much the value of a community differs by political ideology.

The maps below show what Republicans and Democrats from each state bragged about the most passionately.

Occasionally, Democrats and Republicans were unified on the best things about their state.

Bourbon, for instance, was extolled by Kentuckians from both sides of the aisle. Minnesota’s parties bonded over a mutual admiration for the late, great Prince. And both Nevada speakers celebrated Las Vegas as an entertainment hot spot (though the Republican misattributed it as his state’s capital — it is Carson City, not Vegas).

But these shared admirations are a rarity.

We lumped the things each state’s DNC and RNC speakers mentioned into several categories. Here’s how they break down across party. (The figures below represent the number of states that mention the given category.)

Republican state members are really proud of job creation — so much so that they argued over who was best at it:

Arizona: “The hottest state in the country for job growth”

Georgia: “The No. 1 state in the country for business and business growth”

Texas: “The greatest job-creating state in the country”

Utah: “The No. 1 state in economic growth and job creation”

There are also apparently no less than four US states that are “the most Republican” place in the country, according to those states’ officials:

Idaho: “The most Republican state in the nation...We are so Republican that when we say the Pledge of Allegiance, it is to the *Republicans* for which it stands.”

Michigan: “The birthplace of the Republican Party”

Oklahoma: “The reddest state in the union”

Utah: “The most reliable Republican state”

Having very few Democratic officials was a point of pride among Republican speakers. Maine bragged of having “only one remaining Democrat federally elected official,” and later in the evening, Texas celebrated itself as “a place where no Democrat has won statewide office since 1992.”

Republicans also expressed a fierce adulation for their sports teams: 16 of 50 Republican state delegations shouted out a sport. This included Connecticut, or, as Romano referred to it, the “home of the WWE, where men are men and women are champions.”

But when it came to championing women (and other minority groups), Democrats took the cake.

One of the starkest differences in values between Democrats and Republicans seems to be their acknowledgment of minority groups.

While Republicans focused on athletic and economic dominance of their states, Democrats homed in on civil and minority rights. At the DNC, 25 states mentioned minority groups, compared with two at the RNC.

Democrats nodded to the contributions of African Americans, Hispanics, women, and the LGBTQ community. Eleven different states’ Democratic parties paid homage to their Native American populations, including Alaska, which is home to 229 federally recognized tribes.

Republicans, not so much.

There were only two GOP shout-outs praising a minority community: “Home to the only Hispanic member on the Republican side of the aisle” (Illinois), and “10 percent of the nation’s historically black colleges” (North Carolina) — both of which unintentionally advertise their lack of diversity.

If there is one trait that crosses partisan lines, it is just the utter weirdness of what representatives choose to say with literally millions of people watching.

In addition to their chest puffing over job growth and minority appreciation, many speakers — both Democrat and Republican — had some strange things to say about their states. For instance, before casting 25 votes for Donald Trump, the Republican speaker for Arkansas felt a pressing need to remind everyone that his state has “delicious catfish.”

Here’s a small selection:

Arkansas (R): “The best duck hunting on Earth”

Delaware (D): “The state that brought you Kevlar, and nylon, and Gore-Tex”

Florida (R): “A paradise where you vacation but we all live”

Michigan (D): “We created the middle class”

Minnesota (R): “Home of Spam”

North Dakota (R): “The only state to actually grow younger”

Oregon (R): “Where Nike made ducks and beavers cool”

Wisconsin (D): “Where workers make things, from ships ... to beer”

Washington (R): “Home of the national Christmas tree”

But aside from this mutual strangeness, there seems to be a strong divide in what Republicans and Democrats value about the places where they live.