The urban and rural divide

The map above represents the county-by-county results of the 2000 presidential election. I post it because the 2000 results were the closest of recent time (with Bush winning the electoral college by only one vote over the required majority and Gore winning the popular vote by 0.5%). And yet with the results about as even as possible, the map looks overwhelmingly red.

Although there are obvious anomalies, the map illustrates the historic urban/rural divide that has characterized American national elections throughout the 20th Century and beyond. Basically, with the concentration of population in cities where liberal strongholds developed, a geographical divide with the largely conservative small towns occurred. This was perhaps best exemplified by divergent attitudes to the Volstead Act.