Red State/Blue State Myth

I'd just like to take a moment to point out the myth of the Red State and the Blue state. Presented below are the electoral maps by county rather than by state for the last three elections. (Red=Republican, Blue=Democrat)

Here is 2008:

The Democrats won this election by about 6%. Ok, I can see that. The heavy population centers are all blue. Here is the 2008 electoral map by state:


Now, some of the things this juxtaposition shows are no brainers: New England is in the back pocket of the Democrats just as the South is owned by the GOP. However, some of what we see should cause some concern... Look at Oregon. That red state went blue. As did Nevada! And the blue state South Carolina went red! Maybe this was an anomaly. Let's look at 2004:

By county:

By state:
Take a look at California, Illinois, Michigan, and Oregon! Somehow those states went blue. And New Mexico somehow went red. Take a look at the 2008 Nevada and the 2004 Nevada. That little county in the northwest corner switched the state from red to blue!

Now, here's the most interesting one:

2000 by county:

2000 by state:

Remember, the blue candidate actually received more votes than the red candidate! So, what can we learn from this? Cities decide elections

Let's take a detailed look:
Pennsylvania: on all three maps, PA goes blue. Where are the blue specks? Philadelphia and Pittsburgh.
Illinois: Also a blue state. Where is the blue located? Chicago and outside of Saint Louis, MO.
California: Sacramento, San Fransisco, Oakland, Los Angeles, San Diego,
Ohio: The two times Ohio managed to go red, the Dems failed to get Cincinnati
As Detroit goes, so goes Michigan. As Green Bay and Madison goes, so goes Wisconsin.

I've done some pain staking research. I looked up the population of all of the cities in the United States that have over 100,000 people. Then I catalogued the population of each state. I added the total population of "City-Dwellers" and compared that to the total population of each state. Any one care to guess what I discovered?

In Red States: The majority of the time, less than 25% of the states population lived in a 100,000 person city. In some cases, they didn't even have a city totaling 100,000 people.

In Blue States: The majority of the blue states had over 40% of their population living in 100,000 person cities.

As you know, JMO doesn't like to point out problems without offering solutions. In today's electoral process, rural and suburban voters are left out in the cold. I propose an electoral college for each state. Every county gets a certain number of state electoral votes based on the population of that county then they are tallied to determine which candidate carries that state. The numbers would be the same as each State House of Representatives. I believe this will balance out the desires of the more rural citizens with those that live in the big cities. I will endeavor to do more research regarding this solution.

In the meantime, here are the Electoral College maps broken down by county one after another for easy comparison: