Could it be a religious divide?
I think the answer is yes.
I so thought; I hadn't seen the map for months. Unless African-American, Baptists seem to be out of reach to Barack Obama. Contrast the Roman Catholics, a much more cosmopolitan lot. This could be bigger than the urban-rural divide. It helps explain why some urban areas in Texas (notably Amarillo, Lubbock, Wichita Falls, and Abilene) are out of reach for liberals and why Tarrant County (even if it contains Fort Worth) is more R than D despite being highly urban. It also explains the regional divide within Florida (go north in Florida to find the political South) .
The Catholic Church may have a theology that looks cranky to any devout non-Catholic -- but know well that the Catholic Church is very rationalist on economics and science. The Catholic Church may have wanted Catholic immigrant families to toe the line on theology, but never wanted Catholics of any origin to become a permanent underclass. It has first-rate colleges -- try naming a first-rate college associated with the Baptist Church. To be sure, "leading church body" does not itself imply a majority, but it can say much about local attitudes. A religious body that holds the majority of both Filipino-Americans and Polish- Americans is by necessity cosmopolitan. Baptist Churches are as far from cosmopolitan as is possible. But if one lives in a community with a Catholic plurality one will surely encounter some ethnic and cultural diversity. Where I live, the Mexican-American immigrants seem to imitate the plurality of Polish-American Catholics who were there first at the least in educational and vocational achievement. They could have hardly picked a better model.
The last Democratic nominee to win all but two of the states (the exceptions were Oklahoma and Virginia, both of which he barely lost) with large swaths of red was Jimmy Carter.
... this map can show that Missouri is much more "southern" in politics than Florida or even Texas.
