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When the 2008 election threatened to embarrass the right out of its usual endless gloating, endangering their well-rehearsed lines about how “America” really agrees with them so get over it, they had to strike back somehow. Accordingly, right-wing newsmax.com came up with a county map purporting to show that “America Is Still a ‘Red’ Nation.”

Map 1

Well, I’ve been playing around on the New York Time’s wonderful “Electoral Explorer” page, and I’ve discovered something very interesting. The red America you see above isn’t the real America.

First of all, let’s take a look at a better, more nuanced county map that uses shades of blue or red to show how strongly Democratic or Republican particular counties are, courtesy of the Electoral Explorer.

Map 2

Except, this isn’t the whole country. It isn’t even the real country. As you may notice, certain areas are blank. Those are the counties with at least 200 people per square mile. The map above only gives the more thinly populated counties with under 200 people per square mile, and, as you can see, while Obama carried some of them (in blue), McCain won these counties overall, 56-43%.

Here are the other, more densely populated counties, where Obama won by a nearly identical margin of 57-42%:

Map 3

You might well wonder, with these mirror-image results, how Obama wound up with a decisive victory. Map 3, above, looks like just a few counties strewn all over the place, while Map 2 looks like the vast majority of the nation.

Well, that’s the funny thing. The counties on Map 2 are actually only 30% of the electorate, and a similar share of the population. Those few-and-far between counties on Map 3 are 70%.

This isn’t Abraham Lincoln’s America any more. The population today is very urbanized and concentrated. That doesn’t mean we’re all crammed into one corner of the country. We now have big cities all over the place, not just in the north-central/northeastern corridor the way it used to be. The 70% includes urbanized counties in all but four states (Alaska, North Dakota, Montana, and Wyoming, all won by McCain, by the way). It’s also true that many counties within the 70% are suburbs rather than “inner cities.” Mind you, we’re talking the inner suburbs—densely populated areas that tend to cluster closely around large cities, not far-flung exurbs. Other 70-percenter counties contain smaller but significant “inner cities.” Even in Kansas, a state many think of as the essence of rural America, the five Map 3 counties (all in the Kansas City, Topeka, and Wichita areas) contain 54% of the electorate! Out of such components—along with more obvious ones, like the Northeastern Megapolis—is made up the 70%.

This 70% of the population, dense but scattered all over the country, is the real America. The thinly populated 30%, where McCain won, is the not-real, not-truly American America—you know, the people who just have to be different, who can’t or won’t fit in with ordinary folks. We’re talking rednecks and yahoos, hicks and evangelicals—people who, instead of playing basketball like regular people, bowl and watch NASCAR. These are people with such an itch to do their own thing, they eat at Applebee’s instead of an arugula-dominated salad bar, drive SUV’s instead of hybrids, and have unwholesome small-town values instead of urban sophistication.

Okay, before I offend anyone, let me make this clear. I don’t really believe any of what I just said. I take it for granted that every part of this country is the real America, and I certainly don’t believe in the silly stereotypes I’ve just enumerated. I’m just making a satirical point here.

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