It’s interesting that even when you break down to the granular county level the Republican parts of the country form a largely contiguous bloc while Obamaland is an incredibly fragment archipelego:
The non-contiguous McCain-voting counties are almost a trivial portion of the whole. And even Obama’s large contiguous blocs (greater New England, a big Great Lakes region, to belts on the Pacific Coast, several blocs of heavily black counties in the south) are scattered and there are tons and tons of little islands all across the country. The contiguousness or lack thereof has no real significance, of course, but it’s an interesting dramatization of the Democrats’ base in cities and inner suburbs. I wonder if anyone’s familiar with any good work on what accounts for the anomalously progressive views of rural New England. What’s the matter with Maine?
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