Purple America

As we exit November, a final observation about this month's presidential election:
This is a map of 2008 presidential election results by county. Sure, some places are redder than others, and other places are bluer than others. But as this map shows, there are red counties in "blue" states, blue counties in "red" states and, most importantly, an awful lot of purple all over the place.

People and pundits alike talk about "Red" and "Blue" America because it's an easy-to-grasp heuristic of the nation's political geography. But it's not an entirely accurate reflection of reality.

This and other interesting maps of the 2008 election can be viewed here.