It's interesting to compare 1956 to 1964.
Ok, yeah so it's definitely Maryland that gave the region to Obama. That's an amazing margin of victory in a relatively small state, but it's also a good argument that MD and maybe DE don't fit well into the region. The South Atlantic states from VA to FL could be described as lean GOP as a whole but when you add MD to the region it totally swings it. Kinda cool.
Someone wrote that there were made attempts in the '70s to shift MD, DC and DE to the Middle Atlantic, but the Bureau of the Census wanted to keep consistency. 
I don't understand the eye rolling. These divisions literally only exist for statistical purposes. Changing them makes comparing results impossible.
