In late September 2026, the Yemeni journalist Hussain Albukhaiti, a Houthi-aligned commentator based in Sanaa, publicly asserted Yemeni claims to the Saudi provinces of Najran, Jizan, and Asir, claiming they will be conquered and annexed if the current war escalates. His unrealistic statement fits a long pattern of Houthi-linked rhetoric treating the three provinces, which were ceded to Saudi Arabia under the 1934 Treaty of Taif, as occupied Yemeni land. According to Wikipedia, the treaty gave Saudi Arabia only “temporary sovereignty” over these lands, but the Saudi government regards its control as permanent.
Houthi Threats map
Currently, the Houthis control most of western Yemen, the most densely populated part of the country. They claim, however, to be the legitimate authority for the entire country. As a result, the Houthis reject southern secessionism and present themselves as defenders of Yemeni unity and sovereignty against external (especially Saudi and U.S.) influence, while running an authoritarian administration that suppresses rivals inside their zone. The map posted below shows the current geopolitical reality along with Houthi dreams of expansion.
Houthi Reality and Dreams map
It is not coincidental that much of this territory is primarily inhabited by Shia Muslims. Only southern Asir and some interior portions of Jizan, however, are inhabited by followers of Zaidi Shia Islam, the sect of the Houthis. Najran is mostly inhabited by Sulaymani Ismailis, who follow a distinctly different branch of Shiism.
Saudi Arabia Religion map
These two Shia sects differ significantly in their current interpretation of jihad. Zaidi ideology emphases resistance to tyranny but adds the modern political program of anti-Americanism, anti-Zionism, and alignment with Iran, as expressed in the slogan “God is great, death to America, death to Israel, a curse on the Jews, victory to Islam.” Hussein Badr al-Din al-Houthi, founder of the Houthi movement, regarded armed jihad against the United States, Israel, and their allies as a religious priority. Ismaili traditions, in contrast, emphasize “greater Jihad,” or the internal struggle against the base desires of the self. Ismailis are associated with esoteric beliefs, and the largest Ismaili sect, that is the Nizaris, is noted for its liberalism, rationalism, emphasis on education, and cosmopolitanism.
It is difficult to say, however, what the Sulaymani Ismailis of Najran currently believe. Like other Ismailis, they have historically practiced taqiyya (or precautionary concealment of belief), understood as a practical response to persecution and a way to protect esoteric knowledge. Given the hostility of the Saudi government to Shia beliefs and practices, such concealment has become very important.
As I wind down the current series on the 2026 Colombian election, a brief post on elevation and the election results seems in order. Colombia has major elevation differences, with relatively densely populated areas located in both lowlands and high plateaus. To see if there is any correlation between elevation and voting patterns, I outlined the parts of the country that are over 1000 meters and then superimposed the resulting outline on the 2026 election map. I did the same with a population density map and with the country’s basic political map. This highland outline is intricate, as Colombia has three great cordilleras (mountain and plateau systems) that are separated from each other by the deep valleys of the Magdalena and Cauca rivers. In the far south, however, the three ranges essentially converge.
As can be seen on “political/elevation” map, there is essentially no relationship between elevation and voting behavior at the national level. In Colombia’s core region, highland and lowland areas alike voted for the rightwing candidate, with important exceptions noted in previous GeoCurrents posts. In far southern Colombia, in contrast, both highland and lowland areas voted for the leftwing candidate.
Colombia Departments and High-Elevation Areas Map
Colombia 2026 Election and High-Elevation Areas Map
Colombia Population Density and High-Elevation Areas Map
At the regional level, however, correlations between elevation and voting can be found. As the paired maps of Antioquia show, the department’s highlands tended to vote for the right while its lowlands tended to vote for the left. There are, again, some significant exceptions to this pattern. Although I am tempted to look into these seeming discrepancies, it is time to move on to different topics.
Antioquia Colombia: Topography and the 2026 Presidential Election
As discussed in recent GeoCurrents posts, the northern and central parts of Colombia’s Andes region – the core area of the country – voted heavily for the narrowly victorious rightwing candidate, Abelardo do le Espriella, in the 2026 election. Several important left-voting exceptions were also noted: Bogotá with its industrial “suburbs,” and indigenous-majority districts. Another cluster of left-leaning municipalities located in northeastern Tolima Department (see the map below) calls for further investigation. As it turns out, some interesting historical and geographical factors are at play here.
2026 Colombian Election Tolima map
Let us begin with the historically important municipality of Honda. Although situated well within Colombia’s high-elevation Andes region, Honda is actually lowland town (elevation 751 feet/229 meters), as it is located in the deep valley of the Magdelena River. Although it currently has only some 25,000 residents, Honda was once one of Colombia’s most important transportation hubs. Before the early twentieth century, Bogotá had no road or railroad connections to Colombia’s Caribbean ports. Instead, people and goods had to travel up the Magdelena River to its head of navigation at Honda. Honda was connected to Bogotá by a mule road that dates to the mid-1500s. According to Wikipedia, the town’s “golden age” was between 1850 and 1910, when “all the imported goods and articles arrived in Bogotá through the port of Honda.” It has been speculated – at least by AI – that Honda’s historical connections with left-leaning Caribbean ports, particularly Barranquilla, are linked to its current leftwing voting pattern.
The old road from the river port to the capital city, the Camino Real Honda–Santa Fe de Bogotá, traversed some rough landscapes while gaining 7,923 feet/2,415 meters of elevation from its beginning to its end. The local topography and elevation differences can be seen the map posted below, which was cobbled together from two excellent Wikipedia physical maps. The route of the road is visible in the next figure posted below, which is based on a detail taken from a map of the late 19th century.
Honda and Bogota Physical map
Historical Road from Honda to Bogota map
In 1801, the great German geographer Alexander von Humboldt took an arduous canoe trip to Honda and then proceeded overland to Bogotá, where he stayed for two months. In Bogotá, von Humboldt worked with the prominent botanist and mathematician José Celestino Mutis, a key figure in the Spanish-American Enlightenment. I tried to access Humbolt’s assessments of Honda from his personal diaries, using AI as a crutch. I learned that “These emphasize practical travel difficulties, the surrounding vegetation, commerce on the river, and scientific measurements more than architectural or social details of the town.” Humboldt did note, however, that the inhabitants of Honda were “disfigured by goiters,” presumably due to iodine deficiency.
Northern Tolima, Colombia and Left-Voting Municipalities Map
Most of the other leftwing-voting municipalities of northeastern Tolima Department are located on the Magdelena River south of Honda and hence have somewhat similar historical and geographical conditions (see the map above). The exception is Líbano, a plateau town of some 36,000 inhabitants. I was initially surprised by Líbano’s leftwing election returns, as it is a coffee-growing district that was established in the mid-1800s by settlers from Antioquia Department. Today, the plateau zone of Antioquia and Colombia’s coffee-growing areas more generally are noted for their political conservatism. This is a familiar story to me, as I studied in graduate school under James Parsons, author of Antioqueño Colonization in Western Colombia (1968, University of California Press). As stated at the beginning of the book:
The temperate uplands of the northernmost Andes of western Colombia are the home of the energetic and thrifty Antioqueños, the self-styled “Yankees of South America.” They are shrewd, aggressive individualists whose extraordinary colonizing genius and vigor have made them the dominant and most clearly defined population element of the republic. Their long and effective geographical isolation in the interior highlands of Colombia is reflected in a determined conservatism and a marked cultural particularism. Being Antioqueño means more to them than being Colombian.
James Parsons Antioqueno Colonization in Colombia map
My perplexity was, however, relieved by further investigation. Líbano, it turns out, has a fascinating and unusual political history, one that still heavily influences its political orientation. As AI (Grok) performed extremely well in this instance, I will simply paste in its interpretation rather than put it in my own words:
Líbano (Tolima) has a distinctive historical tradition of radical Liberalism, early socialist/communist organizing, and lasting progressive political networks that set it apart from many nearby highland coffee-growing municipalities, which more often lean conservative or right-leaning. This explains why it backed Iván Cepeda (Pacto Histórico) in the 2026 presidential runoff while much of the surrounding area supported Abelardo de la Espriella.
Líbano was founded in the mid-19th century by Liberal settlers from Antioquia/Viejo Caldas (led by figures such as Isidro Parra). It developed as a prosperous coffee municipality in the northern cordillera of Tolima and became a known Liberal stronghold (“the Red City”). Liberal governments encouraged its growth as a party redoubt.
In July 1929, roughly 300–armed artisans, peasants, and workers (linked to the Partido Socialista Revolucionario and inspired by the Russian Revolution) briefly seized the town and nearby areas in what historians describe as one of the earliest organized communist/socialist insurrections in Latin America. It was quickly suppressed, but the episode embedded a durable local identity of agrarian radicalism, labor organizing, and left-leaning dissent. [Former] President Petro has publicly referenced the “Líbano bolchevique.” This memory continued to shape local politics and even influenced later guerrilla fronts.
During mid-20th-century partisan violence, Líbano remained a predominantly Liberal area that experienced guerrilla self-defense activity and later leftist organizing. It produced or sheltered progressive figures and retained networks tied to agrarian struggles, coffee-worker issues, and opposition to conservative dominance.
The influential Jaramillo political family (notably Alfonso Jaramillo Salazar, a longtime Liberal leader, physician, governor, congressman, and health minister, plus relatives such as Guillermo Alfonso Jaramillo, a Petro-era minister, and Mauricio Jaramillo) built strong local clientelist and progressive ties. In recent cycles, “jaramillismo” and Liberal factions in the area aligned with or voted for Pacto Histórico candidates rather than traditional or right-wing options. Local coverage treated Líbano as a key northern Tolima bastion for Cepeda/Pacto Histórico.
The electoral geography of Colombia follows a modified “core/periphery” pattern, one in which the central region of the country tends to vote for rightwing candidates while the outer areas tend to favor leftwing candidates. As the previous GeoCurrents post showed, racial/ethnic differences contribute to this pattern. For example, Black Colombians, who generally vote for the left, are highly concentrated in the (peripheral) Pacific region. The indigenous peoples of the country are also concentrated in peripheral areas and also vote heavily for the left.
Indigenous Colombians, who number roughly two million and constitute some 4.4 percent of the national population, have a complex distributional pattern. As the first map posted below shows, the highest indigenous percentages are found in the far-eastern lowlands of the Amazon and Orinoquía natural regions (see the second map below). In 2018, Vaupés and Guainía departments were recorded as more than 70 percent indigenous, while Vichada and Amazonas registered more than 50 percent. Relatively high indigenous percentages are also found in the Pacific region of the west, in parts of the Caribbean region of the north, and in parts of the southern highlands. La Guajira in the far north is only slightly less than 50 percent indigenous. In contrast, the north-central part of Colombia has very few indigenous inhabitants.
Departments of Colombia by Percentage in Indigenous Inhabitants Map
Natural Regions of Colombia Map
But although the indigenous population percentage of far eastern Colombia is high, the total number of indigenous people in the region is relatively low, as it is very sparsely populated. Vaupés Department, for example, has only some 45,000 residents. As the combined map and data set posted below shows, most indigenous Colombians live in the western half of the country, where they are concentrated in a few particular areas.
Indigenous Population by Department in Colombia map
As the pair of maps posted below shows, the highly indigenous municipalities of western Colombia supported the leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda, in the 2026 presidential election. Not coincidentally, one of the few left-voting areas in the central highlands is dominated by an indigenous group, the Pijao people. Intriguingly, as noted in Encyclopedia Brittanica, the Pijao were “thought to be extinct” in the 1950s, but in the 1990s the remaining community fought for and gained official recognition. The Pijao language, however, is no longer spoken.
Indigenous Peoples in the 2026 Colombian Election map
The electoral situation among the Zenú people of the Caribbean, the second largest Colombian indigenous community, is not clear on the maps posted above. Closer investigation of Cordoba Department, however, shows that the three core Zenú municipalities, where they form a clear majority, voted for Cepeda. But several other municipalities in the region that have large Zenú minorities or slight majorities voted for the rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella. This voting pattern reflects local differences in the rural areas of the Caribbean region of Colombia that were analyzed in previous GeoCurrents posts.
Cordoba Department Colombia Indigenous People and the 2026 Election Map
Intriguingly, in Guainía Department in far eastern Colombia, two areas* with substantial indigenous majorities voted for de la Espriella. These results, however, are probably not indicative of local political views. As can be seen in the final figure posted below, both districts have small populations and low turnouts. It seems like that most of the indigenous inhabitants of here did not, or were not able to, vote. Eastern Guainía is a very remote area with minimal infrastructure and little modernization. Even basic demographic data here is highly uncertain. Although ChatGPT and Grok provide nearly identical population figures for Puerto Colombia (1,980 and 1,971), Gemini AI (Google) gives a wide range: 1,870 to 4,700. Although far less precise, the Gemini figure could easily be more accurate.
Guainia Department Colombia Indigenous Population and the 2026 Election map
*Although Colombia’s departments are mostly divided into local administrative districts called “municipalities,” that is not the case throughout the country. As noted in the Wikipedia article on Guainía Department, “There are two municipalities in Guainía: Inírida, its capital, and Barranco Minas. The rest of the territory is subdivided in corregimientos departamentales, a pending figure due to public disorder.” Grok AI, however, tells me that the official designation of such districts has been changed to “áreas no municipalizadas” that are administered directly by the departmental government, citing a Spanish-language Wikipedia page.
A recent GeoCurrents post suggested that race played a significant role in the 2026 Colombian presidential election. The racial factor is easily seen in the voting patterns of Black Colombians, of Afro-Colombians, who number between five and seven million, constituting some nine to 14 percent of Colombia’s population. As the map to the left in figure posted below shows, Afro-Colombians are heavily concentrated in the Pacific coastal region. As the map to the right reveals, this region voted heavily for the losing leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda. Many of the municipalities in this region are more than 80 percent Black, and almost all of them gave more than 80 percent of their votes to Cepeda. As Black Colombians have a roughly 80 percent poverty rate, it is not surprising that they favored the leftwing candidate.
Afro-Colombians and the 2026 Election Map
The correlation between Afro-Colombian identity and leftwing voting is not, however, as close as it might appear. A lack of correspondence is seen in some parts of the racially mixed Caribbean region. As can be seen on the paired maps posted below, a few heavily Black municipalities are scattered across northern Colombia. Many of them voted strongly for Cepeda, but several favored the victorious rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella. As the next map shows, the most conservative-voting Black-majority municipalities have relatively small populations and can be considered substantially rural.
Northern Colombia Black Population 2026 Election map
Northern Colombia Black Population 2026 Election map 2
Curious about the differences between Black voting patterns in the Pacific and Caribbean regions of Colombia, I queried AI (Grok) about possible explanations. The response seems convincing, at least at a superficial level:
Pacific Afro-Colombian communities (Chocó, parts of Valle/Cauca/Nariño) tend toward higher isolation, stronger ethnic/organizational identity, and alignment with left/progressive platforms addressing territorial rights, violence, and exclusion. Caribbean Afro-Colombian populations are often more integrated into mestizo-majority coastal societies, with greater influence from traditional parties, cattle/agriculture economies, and patronage networks. Group consciousness and ethnic voting are real but weaker or more conditional there.
Of the conservative-voting Black municipalities seen on the map above, Altos del Rosario is the most intriguing. Approximately 82 percent Afro-Colombian, it gave 63 percent of its votes to de la Espriella. Altos del Rosario is noted for its high poverty level (roughly 70 percent), its meager infrastructure, and its poor public services. In its 2024 mayoral election, it narrowly selected an unconventional leftist, Juan Carlos Romo Pérez, who goes by the name “Happy.” A relatively young politician, Romo Pérez is from La Guajira Department in far northern Colombia, which has a sizable indigenous population. He represents the Movimiento Alternativo Indígena y Social (MAIS), a political organization that advocates eco-leftist policies.* On gaining office, he focused on infrastructural development and quickly gained widespread support. According to AI, “a mid-2024 survey placed Romo Pérez near the top among mayors of small municipalities in the region, [with an approval rating of] around 82–83%.” In April 2026, however, he was hit with a corruption scandal. Charged with the “improper handling of public resources,” Romo Pérez was suspended from office for three months without pay.
I have a difficult time understanding how a community like Altos del Rosario could elect an eco-leftist mayor in 2024, give him strong approval, and then turn to a hardline conservative presidential candidate in 2026. Perhaps the corruption charges played a major role, but I suspect that the main factor is the differences between local and national politics, as mediated through patronage networks. But without further investigation, this is unfounded speculation.
Examining Black-majority municipalities in Colombia that voted for a rightwing presidential candidate made me wonder whether any Black-majority counties in the United States supported Donald Trump in 2024. As I am quite familiar with the two maps posted below, I initially doubted that any could be found. But after investigating the issue, I found 10 such counties, mostly located in Mississippi and Georgia. As can be seen on the next map posted below, these counties are characterized by both narrow Black majorities and narrow Trump victories. Heavy Republican voting by White residents, as would be expected in the rural South, along with low Black turnout, could easily explain these seeming discrepancies. Nationwide, moreover, roughly 15 percent of Black American voters nationwide opted for Trump in 2024. If replicated locally, such a voting pattern could easily swing a closely contested local election in his favor.
U.S. Black Majority Counties 2024 election maps
Trump-Voting Black-Majority Counties 2024 Map
The most curious Black-majority Trump-voting county Issaquena County, Mississippi, which has the largest African-American majority (62 percent) in the set. But note on the map that Issaquena gave Trump only a slight plurality of its votes, 47.6 percent. Kamela Harris essential lost the county because it gave an inordinately high percentage of its votes to third-party candidates, some on the far right, some on the far left, and others unclassifiable. Such skewed election results partly reflect the county’s very small population (1,338). Only six residents of Issaquena voted for Claudia De la Cruz of the Marxist/Leninist Party for Socialism and Liberation (PSL), but that still represented almost one percent of the county’s total votes.
* Main aspects of the MAIS platform include: Defense of human rights and “Mother Earth”; Transformation of socio-economic, territorial, cultural, and political structures to achieve equity, peace, and buen vivir; Unity in diversity, ancestral indigenous wisdom, environmental harmony, participatory democracy, and ethical/transparent politics; An alternative economic model respecting different visions of development and environmental protection.
The previous GeoCurrents post on the 2026 Colombian election argued that Colombia, like most Latin American countries, does not have the stark urban/rural electoral divide that now characterizes the United States. The post showed that in Colombia’s conservative central region, cities and rural areas alike generally voted for the rightwing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, with the important exception of Bogotá.
Colombia’s Caribbean region, however, exhibited a different pattern. As can be seen on the first map posted below, this part of the country solidly favored the losing leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda. But as the second map shows, de la Espriella triumphed in many of the region’s municipalities (or local districts), often by a significant margin. Most of these right-leaning areas are in the interior portion of the region and thus have significant connections with Colombia’s conservative central highlands, although quite a few are near or even on the coast. More important, most of these conservative-voting areas are characterized by low population densities. In contrast, the largest cities of the region all favored the left. A degree of urban/rural political differentiation thus seems evident.
2026 Presidential Vote In Colombia’s Caribbean Region Map
2026 Presidential Vote In Colombia’s Caribbean Region, Municipalities, Map
The urban/rural political divide in Colombia’s Caribbean region, however, is not pronounced. As can also be seen on the map posted above, the Caribbean municipalities that voted most heavily for the left actually tend to be located in more peripheral areas. A map limited to Bolivar Department (posted below) allows us to explore these patterns in more detail. As can be seen, four of the five municipalities containing the department’s largest cities were carried by Cepeda. But some of the “bluest” (rightwing-voting) as well as some of the “darkest magenta” (leftwing-voting) municipalities are sparsely populated and essentially non-urban. As a result, we can only generalize about the political orientation of the Caribbean region’s largest cities, which favored the left, although not overwhelmingly. No generalizations seem possible about the department’s lightly populated municipalities. Here, local factors tend to be far more important than population density. In particular, the Colombia’s Caribbean countryside has long been noted for its “political machines” and patron-client networks, which can largely determine election results at the local level.
Bolivar Department 2026 Colombian Election Map
Although Colombia’s Caribbean region has been tending left in recent elections, it does not have the consistently leftwing orientation that characterizes the Pacific coastal region and the southern highlands. As can be seen in the map set posted below, in 2018 five of the region’s seven departments favored the victorious rightwing candidate Ivan Duque, over Gustavo Petro of the left. Four years later, Petro swept the Caribbean region and won the national election. Conservative Colombians hoped that de la Espriella would have a better showing in the region in 2026, as he is a native son. Although born in Bogotá, de la Espriella was reared in Monterío, the capital of Cordoba Department, located roughly 31 miles (50 km) from the Caribbean Sea. He speaks with a costeño (Caribbean coastal) accent, has supposedly identified himself as “costeñísimo,” and used the slogan “costeño vota a costeño” in his campaign. This regionalist strategy was not successful.
Colombian Presidential Elections 2014-2026 Map Set
A recent GeoCurrents post suggested that the electoral geography of the United States has strikingly deviated from that of Latin America during the 21st century. In the U.S., population density has become one of the main influences on voting patterns, with cities favoring candidates on the left and the countryside preferring those on the right. An analysis of the 2026 presidential election in Peru revealed no such divide, as both the primate city of Lima and its metropolitan area voted strongly for the (narrowly) victorious rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori.
Could an urban/rural electoral divide be emerging in other Latin American countries? As Colombia recently held a presidential election, also narrowly won by the rightwing candidate, it bears examination on this score. At first glance, it seems to fit the pattern found in the United States better than that of neighboring Peru. Bogotá, by far the largest city in Colombia, gave the leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda, a seven-point victory, even though the province that almost surrounds it favored the right-wing candidate, Abelardo de la Espriella, by roughly same margin (see the map posted below).
Colombia 2026 Presidential Election
In Bogotá and its larger metropolitan area, which extends into Cundinamarca Department, socio-economic class was a much better predictor of voting behavior than population density. As can be seen in the middle map of the figure posted below, which shows the densely settled “urban zone” of Bogotá proper, the northeastern neighborhoods strongly supported de la Espriella while the southwest strongly favored Cepeda. Not coincidently, the former area is the wealthiest part of Bogotá and the latter is the poorest part. As can be seen on the map to its left, the metropolitan parts of Cundinamarca had a mixed voting pattern. Here the strongest support for the left was found in the municipality of Soacha, a major city itself with a population of nearly 900,000. Not surprisingly, Soacha is described by Wikipedia as “an important industrial zone [that] is home to mostly working-class families.” Intriguingly, in the capital district of Bogotá, the area that voted most heavily for Cepeda is Sumpaz, a high-elevation, low-density locality in the district’s far south that is described by Wikipedia as “completely rural, with no city services.”
Bogota and Its Metro Area in the 2026 Colombian Election Map
In other parts of Colombia as well, voting patterns rarely reflect the urban/rural divide. Instead, the strongest influences are socio-economic class, regionalism, and ethnicity/race (as we shall see in this and subsequent posts). As can be seen on the map posted below, all the country’s largest cities* favored the candidate who triumphed in the departments in which they are located, often with roughly similar margins. In short, in Colombia’s 2026 presidential election regional political culture figured much more prominently than rural/urban differentiation.
Cities & Departments in the 2026 Colombian Election Map
Not all Colombian departmental capitals, however, voted for the candidate favored by the department in which they are located. In Boyaca, for example, Tunja, the capital and largest city, supported the left while almost all other parts of the department voted for the right. But a closer look at Boyaca’s voting patterns shows that urbanism was not the decisive factor. As can be seen on the map posted below, the cities of Sogamoso and Duitama, which are almost as large as Tunja, favored the right, although narrowly in the latter case. The decisive factor in Tunja’s leftwing orientation is probably its large university. As the map also shows, the three other parts of Boyaca that voted for Cepeda are not densely populated. Two of them are reported – by AI – to have strong labor organizations associated with mining and heavy industry, whereas the third has a very large indigenous minority. Again, class and ethnicity outweigh any possible urban/rural electoral divide.
Boyar Department in the 2026 Colombian Presidential Election
The two additional figures posted below also seem to indicate the general lack of correlation between population density and voting behavior in Colombia. The paired maps show that three of the country’s most densely populated departments, as well its three least densely populated ones, supported the leftwing candidate, Ivan Cepeda.
Population Density and Voting in the 2026 Colombian Election map 1
Population Density and Voting in the 2026 Colombian Election map 2
The maps posted above, however, might be misleading, as they examine voting patterns at the departmental level, giving them a low level of resolution. The analysis thus far has only shown that cities in Colombia’s right-leaning departments also tend to support the rightwing candidate, or at least did so in the most recent presidential election. It still remains to be seen whether rural areas in left-leaning departments also supported the leftwing candidate in the same contest. That will be the subject of the next GeoCurrents post.
If Colombia had the same urban/rural electoral divide that characterizes the United States it would lean more to the left, as it is a much more urbanized country. Colombia’s intensive urbanization is unfortunately concealed by most official statistics. The Wikipedia article “urbanization by sovereign state,” for example, ranks the U.S. as slightly more urban (83.3%) than Colombia (82.4%). But different countries define “urban” in different ways, and the U.S. Census Bureau employs a broad definition, classifying any small census-block area that has at least 5,000 inhabitants or 2,000 housing units as “urban,” even if it is far from any sizable city. Using different definitions and methodology, the UN’s “World Urbanization Prospects 2025” determined that only 35 percent of the people of the U.S. live in actual cities, as opposed to 62.5 percent in Colombia. Measuring “rural” and “urban” populations is, however, notoriously difficult, and finding general agreement on a single metric is probably impossible.
One problem is the fundamentally different spatial patterns of “urbanization” in the United States and most other countries, including Colombia. Most Colombian cities are densely populated, and there is usually a sharp divide between the city and the countryside. The United States is characterized by more of a gradient. Few of its cities are thickly settled by global standards, and density tends to gradually decline from urban cores to outer cities, to inner suburbs, to outer suburbs, to exurbs, and finally to the actual rural zone. Dispersion, moreover, often extends to the smallest towns and hamlets (or “census-designated places,” as used by Wikipedia). A tiny moribund settlement in the American West can occupy a larger area than a substantial town in Colombia or Europe.
* Excluding those located within the metro areas of larger cities.
The three northwestern coastal departments of Peru, Tumbes, Piura, and Lambayeque all voted solidly for the victorious rightwing candidate, Keiko Fujimori, in the 2026 election, giving her, respectively, 64.4%, 57%, and 58.9% of their votes. By Peruvian standards, these three departments are roughly average in terms of social and economic development (see the maps in the previous post). All three have agriculturally oriented economies, and all have long favored conservative, market-oriented policies.
One distinctive socio-cultural feature of northwestern Peru is its relatively large proportion of Afro-Peruvians. Black Peruvians constitute 11.5 percent of the population of Tumbes, 8.9 percent of the population of Piura, and 8.4 percent of the population of Lambayeque, the highest figures in the country. One might expect Afro-Peruvians to favor leftwing candidates, which is certainly the case in Colombia regarding Afro-Colombians (as can be seen on the final two maps posted below). Unfortunately, racial electoral data in Peru is not available. It has been noted, however, that Afro-Peruvian issues received little attention in the 2026 platforms of all Peruvian political parties. If Black voters in Peru did favor the leftwing candidate, Roberto Sánchez, then the dominant mestizo population of the northwest must have voted even more strongly for Fujimori than the total departmental tallies would indicate.
This penultimate post on the 2026 Peruvian presidential election examines the relationship between the electoral results and socio-economic development at the departmental level. Not surprisingly, the rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimori generally supported the interests of the business community and the wealthier segments of society, whereas the leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez focused more on marginalized communities and the poorer segments of society. One might therefore expect Fujimori to have done better in Peru’s more economically productive departments, as reflected by per capita GDP figures. But as it turned out, departmental GDP per capita was a poor predictor of election results. As can be seen on the paired maps posted below, Sánchez won the most economically productive department, Moquegua, as well as many of those in the second-highest tier. He also won the lowest-ranked department, San Martin, and many of those in the second-lowest tier. By the same token, Fujimori took a majority of votes in some of the most economically productive provinces (Ica) and some of the least (Ucayali).
2023 Peru Per Capita GDP by Department Map
There are several reasons why GDP per capita at the department level does not indicate voting behavior, both in general terms and in the 2026 Peruvian election. Most important, high figures do not necessarily mean high median wages and salaries, especially in resource-dependent economies. Peru’s Moquegua Department has an elevated per capita GDP figure because it has relatively few people but highly productive copper mines and processing facilities. The productivity of the mineral sector, in turn, spurs demand for higher wages and enhanced social services, boosting leftwing candidates. Similar dynamics are at play in other Peruvian departments, such as Pasco in the central Andean region. They were formerly common in the United States, where mining-dependent counties were once reliable strongholds of the Democratic Party.
Peruvian departments with relatively low per capita GDP figures generally have small mining sectors and are characterized by poor infrastructure and extensive subsistence-oriented agriculture. As would be expected, most departments in this category supported the leftwing candidate, Roberto Sánchez. But again, there are important exceptions. The eastern lowland province Ucayali, for example, has the fourth lowest per capita GDP in Peru (according to ChatGPT), yet it supported Keiko Fujimori. Ucayali has experienced rapid population growth in recent decades, concentrated in its capital city, Pucallpa, which grew from 170,000 residents in 2000 to 326,000 in 2017. The department’s economy is heavily dependent on natural resource extraction, particularly logging. Many people in the department are concerned that the environmental and indigenous-rights policies of the political left would threaten that economic foundation. Many others, of course, are more concerned about environmental degradation and cultural survival. The election results suggest that the former group slightly outnumbers the latter (the department gave 52.56 percent of its votes to Fujimori and 47.44 percent to Sánchez).
It would be interesting to map the departments of Peru by median income and compare the resulting map with that of the 2006 election. I was not, however, able to locate reliable data. Instead, I mapped the country’s departments by the UN’s Human Development Index (HDI), which combines several social and economic indicators. I turned to AI for the most recent HDI data, but again ran into reliability issues. At first glance, the best set of numbers seemed to come from Grok, which I mapped accordingly (see below). Grok put Ancash Department in first place, but Google AI (Gemini) claims that Lima (both the province and the separate metropolitan region) rank in the top position. ChatGPT, to the contrary, put Moquegua and Arequipa in the two highest slots. More significantly, it ranked Ancash in a significantly lower position, stating that:
Áncash isnot among the top five [Peruvian departments by HDI]. In the most recent UNDP report, Áncash is highlighted for having one of the largest reductions in human development once inequality is taken into account (one of the country’s highest inequality-adjusted HDI losses), even though its overall HDI is around the national middle range.
This ChatGPT response made me want to map its Peruvian HDI rankings, both in conventional and inequality-adjusted terms. But although the chatbot kept telling me that the data that I wanted is readily available, it refused to provide it. Here is its first and third responses:
ChatGPT Response 1:
I can absolutely produce:
A complete ranking of all 25 departments by HDI (2024 values).
A complete ranking of all 25 departments by inequality-adjusted HDI (IHDI/IDH-D).
A comparison table showing:
HDI
IHDI
percentage loss due to inequality
change in rank after adjusting for inequality.
ChatGPT Response 3:
I can’t accurately show the full ranking because I don’t have the actual 2024 department-level values. The official 2025 UNDP Peru Human Development Report makes the complete ranking available only in its downloadable Excel annex (“Anexo 1 – IDH 2017–2024 a nivel distrital“), not in the report text or any searchable web page. The web index confirms the annex exists, but it does not expose the rows of the spreadsheet
Peru 2023 HDI by Department Map
If I had unlimited time and patience, I would turn to the “Excel annex” in question for the data that I want. But my time and patience are limited, and I had hoped that AI would be able to do such work for me. Perhaps I should pay more money for the AI services that I us.
But despite such frustrations, the basic human development patterns of Peru are clear: HDI figures are quite high along the coast and are significantly lower in the highlands and in the eastern lowlands. Such patterns do not correlate well with those found on the recent electoral maps. The high-HDI coastal region, for example, is politically divided, with the northern segment leaning right and the southern segment leaning left.
Finally, I would also note that different AI providers also gave somewhat different figures for per capita GDP by province. These differences can be assessed by comparing the data provided by Gemini (Google), ChatGPT, and Grok, which can be seen in the maps posted below. Gemini (Google) provided an actual map (sourced from Reddit), whereas the other two provided data that I mapped myself. I have also supplied a map based on 2014 data provided by Wikipedia. These various sources in combination tell us that the per capita GDP of Lima Department and Lima Metropolitan area have dropped relative to the rest of the country since 2014. This relative decline probably stems from the growing significance of the mining sector in Peru’s national economy.
2023 Peruvian GDP Per Capita by Department and 2026 Election Results Map 2
Comparing an elevation map of Peru with a map of its 2026 presidential election shows that most highland area voted for the defeated leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez. Tension between the people of the Andean plateaus and those of the economically dominant coastal region and its metropolitan center of Lima are deeply engrained, giving the highlands a distinctly leftwing orientation. But the same maps also reveal a few exceptions to this rule. The most interesting one is the province of Oxapampa in the eastern part of the department of Pasco.
Highlands of Peru in the 2026 Presidential Election
Pasco is as a sparsely populated department, with fewer than 300,000 inhabitants, that is rich in mineral resources. Its capital city, the mining center of Cerro de Pasco, sits an elevation of 14,210 feet (4,330 meters), making it one of the loftiest cities in the world. Pasco’s eastern province, Oxapampa, is situated on the eastern side of the Andean divide, with elevations ranging from 17,400 feet (5,300 meters) at the highest peak (Huaguruncho) to 660 feet (200 meters) in the Amazonian lowlands of the east. Most of Oxapampa’s roughly 100,000 inhabitants live the mid-level elevation zone in the western part of the province, which is the area that supported the rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimoiri in the Peruvian presidential election of 2026.
Oxapampa’s conservative voting behavior may be linked to its settlement by German immigrants in the mid 1880s. The unusual history of the province is outlined in the Wikipedia article on the village of Pozuzo:
In the 1850s, Peruvian President Ramon Casilla proposed building a railroad from the capital city of Lima across the Andes Mountains, and onward to the navigable rivers of the Amazon Basin. Part of the plan (the only part realized) was to import German and Austrian Catholics to settle on the eastern slopes of the Andes and in the tropical rainforests of the Amazon region, then populated only by indigenous people. In 1855, the Peruvian leader signed an agreement with German traveler Kuno Damian von Schütz-Holzhausen to recruit 10,000 Germans and Austrians to emigrate to Peru and establish colonies on the eastern flanks of the Andes. The Peruvian government agreed to pay the cost of the passage from Europe to Peru of the emigrants and the cost of transporting them overland to Pozuzo and other areas designated for their settlement. …
On arrival [in Peru], Schütz found that the Peruvian government had done little to prepare for the arrival of the colonists and their transportation to Pozuzo. The colonists undertook a difficult journey on foot and mule to reach Pozuzo, starting from the port of Huacho, reaching an elevation of more than 4,700 metres (15,400 ft) crossing the Andes, to Cerro de Pasco, onward to Acobamba (Ambo) and, constructing the road en route, to Pozuzo. The town was established in 1859 by 172 of the original 302 colonists who had departed Europe together. Many had deserted en route or had died or been killed during the journey.
The population of the German settlers rapidly increased in the early decades, but their descendants eventually intermarried extensively with other Peruvians. Their culture gradually became more Peruvian than German. Some aspects of German culture, however, have persisted, helping make Oxapampa an important tourism destination in recent years. An AI assessment of the current ethnic composition of the province runs as follows:
In the town of Oxapampa, the German cultural presence is significant but not dominant. Many residents have partial German/Austrian ancestry, reflected in surnames (e.g., Schmidt, Müller), Tyrolean-style architecture, festivals, food (e.g., local beers), and some traditions. However, extensive intermarriage with mestizo, indigenous (e.g., Yanesha), and other groups means “full” or dominant German descent is limited. Nearby Pozuzo (founded by the original colonists) has a stronger enclave feel, with estimates of ~1,000 people of more direct Austro-German descent in a district of ~5,000–9,000.
Not surprisingly, language and ethnicity were major factors in the 2026 Peruvian presidential election. As can be seen in the maps posted below, the defeated leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez had his best results in areas where Spanish is not the majority mother tongue. In Peru’s southern highlands, Quechua remains the most common first language, especially in rural areas. Sánchez’s campaign highlighted the concerns of the historically marginalized indigenous peoples. In particular, he promised to transform Peru into a “plurinational” republic, recognizing the distinct national identities of non-Spanish-speaking communities and abandoning the idea of the country as a “nation state” defined around a singular political identity. The move from “nationalism” to “plurinationalism” has already been institutionalized in Bolivia and Ecuador, and has been proposed as well in Chile, Argentina, Guatemala, and Costa Rica. Although popular in indigenous communities and among the left more generally, plurinationalism is opposed by the right and is not popular in many of Peru’s Spanish-speaking communities.
Spanish Languages & Peru’s 2026 Election Map
Quechua Languages & Peru’s 2026 Election Map
Indigenous languages are also spoken across the lowlands of eastern Peru, but most have small numbers of speakers who are not well integrated into the national society. The Spanish language is dominant in most of this sparsely inhabited but rapidly growing region. As the map of lowland indigenous languages posted below shows, only two provinces in eastern Peru have clear indigenous majorities: Purus (in Ucayali Department) and Condorcanqui (in Amazonas Department). Interestingly, these two provinces had completely different voting patterns in the 2026 election. Condorcanqui overwhelmingly supported Sánchez, whereas Purus strongly supported Fujimori. The vote-count in Purus, however, is almost certainly not representative of the province’s indigenous character. Only some 3,200 people live in Purus, and its indigenous communities are small, scattered, relatively isolated, and divided among several different language groups. It seems likely that the votes cast in this province came mostly from the economically dominant Spanish-speaking population. It is a different story in the more populous province of Condorcanqui, which has almost 50,000 inhabitants. Most of them are members of the Awajún (or Aguaruna) ethnic group, who number some 70,000 and have achieved a significant degree of political organization. As noted in their Wikipedia article:
In the later half of the 20th century, the arrival of Protestant and Jesuit missionaries, the building of roads, and the construction of an oil pipeline created substantial tension between the Aguaruna people, poor agricultural colonists, state agencies, and corporations. In response to new threats to their way of life the Aguaruna began to organize a political and social response to defend themselves on the basis of principles consistent with other rights of indigenous peoples.
Amazonian Languages & Peru’s 2026 Election Map
Given such political organization among the Awajún/Aguaruna people, it is not surprising that Condorcanqui overwhelming supported the leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez in the 2026 Peruvian presidential election.
Although almost all non-Spanish-speaking areas of Peru supported Roberto Sánchez in the election, it does not follow that Spanish-speaking areas correspondingly voted for Keiko Fujimoiri. The coastal strip of southern Peru and the large inland city of Arequipa in the same area, for example, are strongly Spanish speaking, yet gave Sánchez solid support.
Arequipa, Spanish Languages & Peru’s 2026 Election Map
The second and final round of Peru’s 2026 presidential election was razor close, with the victorious rightwing candidate Keiko Fujimori receiving 50.11 percent of the vote and the defeated leftwing candidate Roberto Sánchez receiving 49.89 percent. Not surprisingly, election maps reveal a country politically divided along geographical lines. The next several GeoCurrents posts will examine Peru’s electoral division, looking at its various dimensions. The current post considers the urban-rural split, which is essentially the opposite of what is found in the United States and most other wealthy countries. In the U.S., population density has recently become one of the best predictors of voting behavior, with rural areas and small, non-metropolitan cities favoring the right and highly urbanized areas favoring the left. In Peru’s 2026 presential election, the rightwing – or perhaps far-right – candidate, Keiko Fujimori, triumphed largely due to support from the country’s largest city.
This electoral population-density divide can be glimpsed in the maps posted below. The first shows that a substantial majority of Peru’s 1,838 districts voted for the losing candidate Sánchez, which indicates his substantial support in less-densely populated areas. The same map also show that most major cities supported Fujimori. But important exceptions to these generalizations are also revealed. As can easily be seen, Sánchez won in all the major cities of southern Peru. The following three-map set also indicates that Fujimori received some of her strongest support in extremely low-density districts in the far-eastern part of the country. Obviously, population density is not the only factor at play, as will be explored in later posts.
Peru 2026 Election Cities Map
Peru 2026 Election Population Density Map
What really gave Fujimori her edge was her strong support in the Lima metro area, by far the largest urban area of the country. Roughly 35 percent of Peru’s people live in Lima and its adjacent port city, Callao, and she received roughly 64 percent of their votes, taking every district. As would be expected, Fujimori did especially well in the wealthiest neighborhoods, most of which are located near the urban core. These tendencies can be seen by locating the elite districts of San Isidro and Miraflores on the electoral map (see the map posted below). Not surprisingly, Fujimori took a smaller share of the vote in the poorest districts of Lima, which, according to AI, are Puscana and Puente Piedra. Yet she still received more than 60 percent of the vote in impoverished Puscana.
Metropolitan Lima 2026 Peruvian Election Map
An urban shift to the right is also evident in left-voting southern Peru. Although Sánchez easily won Arequipa Department, taking 64 percent of its vote, the election was more evenly contested in the city of Arequipa, Peru’s second largest. As can be seen in the next map set, the central part of the city is mapped in a much lighter shade of green than its outskirts and adjacent rural areas. Fujimori won several districts near Arequipa’s urban core. She did especially well in Yanahuara, which, according to AI, is “one of the most affluent and desirable districts in Arequipa.” In Cusco, the second-largest city in southern Peru, Sánchez had better results, as Fujimori lost every district in Cusco Province (a subdivision of Cusco Department). But again, the city itself is a lighter shade of green than its outskirts. Here Fujimori’s best performance was in relatively well-off Wanchaq district. Her worst performance by a large margin was in Ccorca district, which, according to AI, “is characterized by Andean indigenous communities, subsistence agriculture, and limited urban development.”
Arequipa and Cusco 2026 Peruvian Election Map
In Peru, as in true in most of Latin America and indeed over much of the world, rural areas and small cities tend to have lower levels of social and economic development than large cities. As a result, it is not surprising that the less urbanized parts of Peru tend to support candidates on the left who seek redistribution of wealth and power. Yet it is also true that the poorer parts of Lima have low levels of economic development and pronounced poverty. As a result, I am surprised that they supported the rightwing candidate in the 2026 election. Clearly, other factors must also be considered.
Since the fall of Syria’s Assad Regime in December 2024, I have been wondering what would become of the Druze people and the areas in which they are the majority population. Particularly important is the Jabal al-Druze, or “Mountain of the Druze,” which is clearly visible on satellite images of southern Syria (see the two maps posted below, with different international borders). Syria’s new president, Ahmed Hussein al-Sharaa, now portrays himself as a moderate and has vowed to protect the Druze and other minority groups. But al-Sharaa, who recently went under the nom du guerre Abu Mohammad al-Julani, was once a member of al-Qaeda and was a founder of the Al-Nusra Front, another hard-core Islamist group deeply hostile to the non-Muslim Druze.
Jabal al-Druze in Its Geopolitical Environment, Satellite Imager Map 1
Jabal al-Druze in Its Geopolitical Environment, Satellite Imager Map 2
Not surprisingly, the situation in the Jabal al-Druze remains tense. On March 20, 2026, Israel bombed Syrian military sites in the vicinity, claiming that it did so to protect the Druze. Roughly 150,000 Druze live in Israel, where their men serve in the national defense forces (IDF]); according to Wikipedia, “Druze men have one of the highest enlistment rates in the country, at over 80%.” After the attack on Syrian military assets, Israel’s defense minister said that “We will not allow the Syrian regime to exploit our war against Iran and Hezbollah to harm the Druze. If necessary, we will attack with greater force.”
Shortly after these events, Mario Nawfal, an influential but controversial Lebanese-Australian entrepreneur and political commentator based in the UAE, made some strong claims on X (“Twitter”) about an emerging Druze state being “midwifed” by Israel in Syria’s Suwayda Governorate, which includes the Jabal al-Druze (see the figure posted below). I find Nawfal’s comments intriguing yet exaggerated. But I view that map that he used to illustrate his post as highly misleading.
Mario Nawfal’s Map of an Emerging Druze State in Syria
Nawfal’s map does a decent job of showing two sizable areas with Druze majorities in southern Syria, which he depicts in green (compare his map with a map of Druze distribution posted on the blog Informed Comment, which is reproduced below). The problem lies in his depiction of the area between these two Druze-majority zones. He has colored this area brown but has given it a green outline while placing within it the label “Autonomous Druze Territory” along with a depiction of the Druze flag. Such mapping implies that any emergent Druze state or autonomous territory would include this area. This prospect is not only highly unlikely, but any attempt to create it would almost certainly result in a deadly and protracted conflict. The brown area on Nawfal’s map includes Syria’s Daraa Governorate, which is overwhelmingly Sunni Muslim (around 97 percent by most estimates) and hostile to both Druze and Israeli geopolitical designs. It also has more than twice the population of the Druze-dominated Suwayda Governorate (over one million as opposed to fewer than 500,000 inhabitants). (Note that M. Izady’s detailed map of language and religion in the area shows a sizable Christian area in eastern Daraa. But Christian numbers here were small to begin with and have dropped significantly in recent years.)
Druze Distribution Map from Informed Comment
M. Izady Map of Language and Religion in Southern Syria
In my opinion, the situation of the Druze in both Syria and Lebanon deserves far more attention than it has been receiving. As if often case, the more intense conflicts in the larger region tend to crowd out important but less heated geopolitical struggles.
Armed conflict over the past few weeks in southern Syria between the Druze and Bedouin militias receiving help from the Syrian military have taken over a thousand lives. As reported in the Kurdish press, Tawfiq al-Hijri, Deputy Head of the Foreign Relations Office of the Spiritual Presidency of the Druze Community in Syria, argues that “jihadist elements within the state [are] planning a systematic purge of minority communities. What we’re facing is nothing short of genocide. … Their ideology cannot be changed. They seek to subjugate or eliminate all minorities—starting with Alawites and Druze, and targeting Kurds next.”
Tawfiq al-Hijri may be exaggerating the threat, and the situation in southern Syria is certainly complicated, as GeoCurrents will explore in subsequent posts. But it is difficult to deny the Druze of Syria find themselves in a precarious situation. As adherents of an esoteric sect that grew out Islam but is no longer within the folds of that faith, the Druze find themselves targeted by Sunni extremists, many of whom are now officials in the Syrian government. Although the county’s leaders have officially abandoned the jihadi path, it is understandable that Druze leaders remain unconvinced.
Wikipedia Map of the Military Situation in southern Syria July 2025
The geographical focus of the current conflict is the As-Suwayda Governorate, which covers 5,550 km2 (2,140 sq mi)and is home to some 375,000 people, 90 percent of whom are Druze (seven percent are Christian, and the remaining three percent are Sunni Muslims, as of 2010). The core of As-Suwayda is a basaltic plateau known as the Jabal al-Druze, or “Mountain of the Druze.” The Jabal al-Druze is clearly visible on satellite images of the region (see the figure posted below). Although having a semi-arid Mediterranean climate with only around 14 inches (364 mm) of annual precipitation (in the city of Suwayda), the region has fertile soils and supports a large agricultural population.
The Jabal al-Druze in Syria, Satellite-Image Map
Despite its cultural and geographical significance, the Jabal al-Druze appears on relatively few maps. It is nowhere to be found, for example, in Apple Maps, where a search for “Jabal al-Druze” first took me to a place in India called “Jabal” and then to “Jabal al-Nour” in Saudi Arabia (see the figure below). More disturbing, Apple Maps labels the plateau in question as “Jabal al-Arab,” or “Mountain of the Arabs” (see the second figure below). This maneuver effectively erases Druze identity from the region and could easily be interpreted as an intentional insult to the Druze community.
Apple Maps Labels Jabal al-Druze as “Jabal al-Arab”
Apple Maps’ “Depiction” of “Jabal al-Druze”
The Jabal al-Druze is admittedly sometimes called “Jabal al-Arab, as well as the “Jabal Hauran,” but these are secondary names, at least as framed by the Wikipedia article on the region. Although the chatbot Grok tells me that “some sources suggest [that the name Jabal al-Arab] predates the Druze-specific designation or was used in certain historical contexts to describe the same volcanic highland,” ChatGPT more pointedly states that the term is “pan-Arab or nationalist in tone, and has been used more frequently by the Ba’athist government of Syria, which promotes Arab identity.”
Left unsaid by ChatGPT was the fact that the Arab-Nationalist-Socialist Ba’ath Party of Syria long sought to undermine the sectarian identity of the Druze and other Arabic-speaking minorities and subsume them within the majority ethnic formation. Such policies were violently implemented under the rule of Adib Shishakli in the early 1950s. According to the Wikipedia article on the Druze:
Shishakli believed that among his many opponents in Syria, the Druze were the most potentially dangerous, and he was determined to crush them. He frequently proclaimed: “My enemies are like a serpent: The head is the Jebel al-Druze, the stomach Homs, and the tail Aleppo. If I crush the head, the serpent will die.” Shishakli dispatched 10,000 regular troops to occupy the Jebel al-Druze. Several towns were bombarded with heavy weapons, killing scores of civilians and destroying many houses. According to Druze accounts, Shishakli encouraged neighboring Bedouin tribes to plunder the defenseless population and allowed his own troops to run amok.
Although later Ba’ath government, including that of the recently deposed Assad regime, protected the Druze from Sunni extremists, memories of these earlier events remain powerful. Recent attacks on the Druze community by Sunni Bedouin tribes and elements of the Syrian state have a disconcerting resemblance to those of the early 1950s.
The term “Jabal al-Arab,” used by Apple Maps thus seem to me to be an ideologically laden substitute for “Jabal al-Druze.” At the very least, it tells us nothing specific about the region, quite unlike the more commonly accepted term. The extent to which the Arabic-speaking Druze even consider themselves to be “Arabs,” moreover, is unclear and contested. As I was unable to find much useful information on this issue, I turned to AI. ChatGPT’s response to my query seems reasonable (although the term “mainstream” in the second paragraph below is unnecessary and misleading):
ChatGPT: Some Druze do consider themselves Arabs, especially in the sense of speaking Arabic and being part of the broader Arab cultural and historical sphere. In this view, they may identify with Arab nationalism or see themselves as part of the Arab world.
Others distinguish themselves from Arabs, emphasizing their distinct religious and historical identity. The Druze faith is separate from mainstream Islam, and some Druze prefer to be seen as an independent ethnoreligious group with roots in ancient Middle Eastern cultures, possibly tracing their heritage to pre-Islamic or even non-Arab origins.
The chatbot Grok, in contrast, suggests that most Druze do accept an Arab identity, albeit subordinate to their religious identity. Yet even if that is the case, I imagine that most Druze people would find the label “Jabal al-Arab” offensive.
As I have criticized Apple Maps in this post, it is fitting to examine the labeling practice of its main competitor, Google Maps. Google’s mapping program has no designation for the region itself, using labels only for towns and cities; in my initial query, moreover it told me that “Google maps can’t find “Jabal al-Druze” (see the figure posted below). When I re-queried the program after zooming in on the region, however, I was taken to the highest elevation in the region, also known as Jabal al-Druze. In this instance, Google Maps clearly outperforms Apple Maps.
Several recent GeoCurrents posts have emphasized similarities in the electoral geographies of the United States and Canada. But there are also some major differences, particularly regarding state/province voting patterns and levels of economic development.
In the U.S., the wealthiest states tend to favor the left-leaning Democratic Party while the poorest states tend to favor the right-leaning Republican Party. As can be seen in the map first posted below, in 2024 presidential election all but one of the states that gave Kamala Harris the highest percentage of their votes have relatively high median household income figures. Intriguingly, however, that state that most strongly supported Harris, Vermont, has only a mid-level income figure. By the same token, states with the lowest median household income figures supported Donald Trump in 2024. Yet the state that most strongly supported Trump, Wyoming, has a relatively high median income figure (see the second map below).
2024 U.S. Election Income Level and Harris Vote map
2024 U.S. Election Income Level & Trump Vote map
In Canada this relationship is largely inverted. In the 2025 Federal Election, provinces with the lowest median income levels strongly supported parties on the left, whereas the province with the highest income level, Alberta, strongly supported the Conservative Party (see the first two maps posted below). The correlation between economic development and conservative political orientation is more clearly apparent when comparing the 2025 electoral map with the map of per capita Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by province. As can be seen, the two provinces that strongly supported the Conservative Party, Alberta and Saskatchewan, have much higher GDP figures than Canada’s other provinces. (Canada’s three northern territories admittedly have high GDP figures and low levels of support for the Conservative Party, but they also have very small populations.)
Conservative Vote in the 2025 Canadian Election map
Canada Income Level by Province Map
Canada GDP by Province Map
This seeming economic-electoral discrepancy between the United States and Canada is easily explained, at least at the upper end of the GDP spectrum. The productive economies of the two conservative provinces, Saskatchewan and Alberta, are heavily based on natural resources and agriculture, and in Alberta fossil fuels play a particularly prominent role. In recent years, Canada’s Liberal government has pursued a carbon-reduction agenda that has restricted the oil and natural gas industries, and extractive processes more generally, angering many voters. Such policies have helped spur an independence movement in Alberta and, to a lesser extent, Saskatchewan
The independence movement in the western Prairie Provinces also gains strength from Canada’s system of “equalization payments,” which effectively transfers funds from wealthier to poorer provinces so that “reasonably comparable levels of public services can be provided at similar levels of taxation.” In 2025, the three westernmost provinces will not receive any equalization payments, whereas all the eastern provinces, including Ontario, Canada’s economic core, will receive such payments. The equalization-payments map, posted below, not surprisingly figures prominently in Alberta independence movement.
