I want to talk frankly about the south hate here

[Hippo_Tron]

188. The county red to blue map shows a slightly different picture...

Outside of New England, the West Coast, Colorado and New Mexico (with rapidly increasing Hispanic populations), and the Great Lakes states, the pattern is largely the same. Urban areas vote Democratic and rural areas and small towns vote Republican. There's plenty of Republicans in upstate New York. It just happens that New Yorker State residents are fortunate to have enough of an urban population that those people are a minority in that particular piece of geography that was arbitrarily defined hundreds of years ago.

Take New York City, Albany, Syracuse, Rochester, and Buffalo and collectively give them the vote share of their state that New Orleans has. New York's voting patterns will suddenly look a lot like Louisiana. Take Baltimore City, Baltimore County, Montgomery County, Prince George's County, and give them the vote share that Jackson has. All of a sudden Maryland's voting patterns look a lot like Mississippi. Take Philadelphia and Pittsburgh and give them the vote shares of Montgomery and Birmingham. Suddenly you've got Alabama.

All over the country you have the same pattern. Where there's sparsely populated areas, there's Republicans. Some people are just fortunate enough to live in states where there's a large enough urban population to out-vote the crazy.