Why did Bush flip so many counties?

[PragmaticPopulist]

The election of 2000 seems to be where the urban-rural divide really started taking effect, but why did it happen in just 4 years? Here's a map to give a perspective:

(couldn't get results for Alaska's state house districts)

Just look at all the dark blue counties, which are Clinton-Bush counties. Compare that to just 3 county-equivalents that went from Dole to Gore (Orange County, FL, Charles County, MD, Franklin City, VA)

While I know Dole was a weak candidate, and polarization was not as high back then, it still seems like quite a dramatic shift, even for 2000. Since then, there hasn't been much of a shift from this map, relatively speaking. What was it that caused this semi-permanent realignment?

[President Punxsutawney Phil]

four letters: G-U-N-S. Gore chased the suburban Northeastern voter and surrendered the dark blue counties on that map to Bush.

[Sumner 1868]

2000 was more of a realignment than 1980.

Bush benefited from several different factors, but the two most obvious are being a Southerner helped Bush double down among white Southerners, and Gore's environmentalism hurt him several Democratic unionized resource-extraction bastions.

four letters: G-U-N-S. Gore chased the suburban Northeastern voter and surrendered the dark blue counties on that map to Bush.

Columbine also did far more to inspire social conservative panic about culture than gun control efforts, so that tragedy probably boosted Bush a bit.

[darklordoftech]

Lewinsky, religion, guns, environmentalism, Gore lacking Clinton's southern charm, Dubya's southern/western charm, no Gingrich for Gore to scare the elderly with, the usual 8-year party switch, lack of Clinton's incumbency effect, Gore running away from Clinton.

[The Mikado]

How has no one mentioned that counties will shift en masse when the country goes from the Dem winning nationally by 8.5 to the Dem winning nationally by 0.5? The 8 point swing in the popular vote will swing a lot of places.

Look at how many counties Trump carried that Romney didn't, and that was just a swing from D winning 3.8 to D winning 2.1 nationally.

[darklordoftech]

Columbine also did far more to inspire social conservative panic about culture than gun control efforts, so that tragedy probably boosted Bush a bit.

What was Columbine's role in inspiring social conservative panic about culture? Joe Lieberman, who was Gore's running mate, was the leader of the "video games cause children to become violent" movement.