Does Red vs. Blue = Rural vs. Urban???

While there are exceptions, it seems like this is pretty much the way things stand now.

Democrats = Party of Urban America

Republicans = Party of Rural America

http://www.princeton.edu/~rvdb/JAVA/election2004

The red states aren't as red as they'd have you think.

We really need to avoid the "red state" blue state" box. The RW corporate media wants to paint it that way, but this proves that it ain't that simple.

I guess that's true, but Maine, NH and VT, three very rural states went blue.

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All purple and bruised

More like red states with Huge Blue cities.

"moral values" baloney. Makes traditional sense, too. Rural people are more isolated/independent/less sophisticated. Urban people have more interdependence/cultural variety/education. Urban people are closer to the world community than the rural populations.

I live in rural Maine....out of 1800 voters in my town, it split 55/45 for Bush. But the urban southern part of the state carried it for Kerry.

I live in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom, the most conservative and republican part of the state and we voted for Kerry. In fact, we elected two progressives to the state house. If you're familiar with the kingdom, you know that there are far more native Vermonters than flatlanders.

Educated and worldly vs. not educated and not worldly. At least in my experience. I live in CT. People who have never left the State or only gone to neighboring RI and don't really have any interaction with people of different cultures and who never got past HS tend to vote Republican. On the other hand, people who have higher levels of education and intermingle with different cultures and do more traveling tend to be Democrats, or at least Moderate. There are "Rednecks" in CT, and there are very open minded people in LA. Just my experience.

in a large way. In Marion county (which is the primary urban county in which Indianapolis exists) Kerry won 51% to 49%. But in the counties that border Marion (which contain the suburbs of Indianapolis) they went Bush 75% to 25%

Expensive fuel prices would economically motivate the abandonment of rural America and suburbia much like the effect that mechanization had on Great Plains agriculture during the first half of the twentieth century.

Moving to areas of higher population densities and greater diversity is the only way of breaking the grip of evangelical white fascism that has sprung since 1980. Also maybe people will start to care about how public education, transportation and taxation policies are implemented.

The ruins of red America will be serene and bucolic as they are plowed under with a crop of hemp later to be turned into millions of barrels of bio-diesel.

Hey,

But that's because of a large African American population and a significant Native American presence. While I'd prefer to see the R/D divide as rural/urban, I reluctantly conclude that the Civil War is still a huge factor. (Not that it explains Iowa-- what the hell is wrong with them?) Older Southern white males-- and I speak as one-- are all too often incapable of voting for a northern Democrat as president because it rubs salt in their "wound." The so-called "wound" being "you can't have slaves anymore." Only a minority of their ancestors had them in the first place, and a huge number of poor Southerners died fighting for the rich man's right to own slaves. But you can't talk sense to these people about race or religion or anything else.

As a dissident liberal Southerner I have never felt such an absolute loathing for working class Southern Republicans as I do right now. They vote against their own self-interest because they are obsessed by racism, and any candidate that might help African Americans is their enemy.

CYD

I just wanted to say thanks for your efforts before this thread gets buried, as it surely will.

The maps show there are(actually)Democrats in the South. The Mason-Dixon Line seems to have migrated as far west as California and north to the Canadian border.

Alabama Democrat, home of the

Southern Poverty Law Center
400 Washington Avenue
Montgomery, AL 36104


http://www.splcenter.org/center/history/history.jsp

We have been and are working for a better America for all.....

For instance, most counties in Maine went blue (although not necessarily by an overwhelming margin), and they certainly can't be considered "urban" whatsoever, other than Cumberland county (Portland). In the red states however, the few blue counties are predominantly urban areas (or large college towns).

-SM

On edit: the same thing applies to Vermont as well...
On second edit: I see someone already answered this...

I would like to say that I do not have a college degree, or any part thereof. (I read so I am self-educated beyond my high school diploma), I am a Christian, and I live in a very rural area south of Tulsa, OK. As soon as you all try to peg someone as one way or another, you will find you are wrong.

It's like trying to stand in line at the polling place and guess who is voting liberal or neo-con based on the way they look. You might just be in for a few surprises if you were able to know who folks actually voted for.

there are some truly great cities in the red states.