Kenneth C. Martis

Kenneth C. Martis is an American political geographer notable for his mapping and documentation of the electoral history of the United States.

However, the House did certify and seat ten “Unionist” members from three seceded states, five from Virginia, three from western Tennessee and two from southern Louisiana (elected after the New Orleans area was occupied).

In 2023, the American Association of Geographers published a Member Profile telling the story of the genesis of examining the political geography of Congress.

The percentage pie chart on the lower right gives a visual view and specific numbers for the partisan divide in each House.

The map and pie chart on the lower left show the geographical pattern and partisan make-up of the Senate.

This partly accounts for the discrepancy in number of seats lost in the East and gained in the developing frontier West.

During the Civil War the Confederate Constitution set up a government with a president and a legislature, which was composed of a Senate and House of Representatives.

The Confederate congressional atlas maps the districts, characteristics, elections and roll call voting behavior of this institution.

The illustration shows the Union occupation status of the 106 districts of the Confederate House of Representatives in late 1863 and early 1864.

The Union occupied areas mostly supported the increasingly stringent legislative proposals of Confederate President Jefferson Davis with respect to measures like conscription, impressment and habeas corpus.

In 2002 the Atlas of American Politics: 1960-2000, was published, which Martis co-authored with J. Clark Archer, Stephen J. Lavin, and Fred M. Shelley.

These atlases cover a myriad geographical aspects of the fall 2012, 2016, and 2020 elections on the national, regional, state and county level, and each contain nearly 200 maps, graphs and illustrations.

For his work on the historical geography of Congress and American politics he has received support from the National Endowment for the Humanities, National Science Foundation, Association of American Geographers, Everett McKinley Dirksen Congressional Leadership Research Center, Huntington Library, and the Newberry Library.

Kenneth C. Martis is a Professor Emeritus of Geography at West Virginia University and is the first social science awardee of that institution's highest academic honor, Benedum Distinguished Scholar.

The Association of American Geographers describes his lifelong work as having “fundamentally shaped our awareness of political patterns in the United States.”