ConKiller...have you ever been to Atlanta, Miami, Orlando, Charlotte, Dallas, New Orelans or Memphis. They are much more rural than Maine, New Hampshire, Rhode Island arent they
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Those cities are all more Democratic than ME, NH, or RI...
Atlanta; the core of I-285 is basically a mix of democrats of both races. The outer core (Cobb, east Gwinnett, Forsyth, Cherokee, Milton et al) is the type of suburbanites you find in "The Blind Side"
Miami is very strange. Its one of those areas where the suburbs are more liberal than the city. The city is very swing due to the cubans but the suburbs (especially the jewish ones) can be liberal
Orlando is lean democrat. Its amazing how the area went from being hard-core R to Democrat in just 20 years.
Mecklenburg County is similar to Orlando in that until 10-15 years ago, it was solid R and flipped Democrat rather quickly. The counties surrounding Mecklenburg are republican although not as much as other southern suburbs.
As for Dallas, the dem areas are basically south of I-30, and in parts of Mesquite, Grand Prairie, Irving. Except for some black areas of Fort Worth and Arlington, you won't run into any democratic areas for another 200 miles in either direction.
New Orleans usually goes 75-80% democrat in most elections, but I know that Metairie and Kenner to the east often go republican
Memphis traditionally (although not so much today) was a city where race was the best predictor of your political affiliation. Germantown, and the eastern parts of the county vote republican but it never shows up in the county returns as they are outvoted by the urban core of Memphis which is a black majority city and gave Obama something like 75-80 percent.
