Horizon

It's really a multiparty nation - not red states, not blue states, but a wash of purple.

But that's not been true historically of the South since the demise of the Whigs.

It will be interesting to see if this balance is just a transition from a conservative Democratic "Solid South" to a conservative Republican "Solid South" or if the region will keep contested general elections.

I think the winner-takes-all electoral system has obscured the fact that no state is completely for or against one party (though I would admit to some extent the existence of red and blue regions within states).

For Alan's point see e.g. the extremely varied 2004 Presidential election results by county for California. California is, however, more like a country than a state in many ways, so maybe it's not a typical example.

Aren't most states like that, though? Pennsylvania is so big that there's little connection between the furthest eastern and western counties beyond the sentimental (and there's not much of that).

Perhaps things have changed but in my parents' day people from eastern Pennsylvania thought of western Pennsylvania simply as "coal regions" full of hillbillies. Information doesn't seem to have crossed the mountains either. My dad didn't read the story of the Homestead strike until he was past seventy.