Why do lovely parts of the country vote Republican?

[Ignacio Upton]

A pet peeve of mine in whenever I see these maps of the country covered in red for the Presidential results, I get this impression that 90% of the land mass is full of Freepers. However, many of these regions that fall under "Freeperville" are some of the most beautiful in the country. Upstate NY, Central PA, rural OH, the Blue Ridge Mountains in VA, and the gorges and scenic areas of Utah and Colorado are ALL RED! Ditto to Eastern Oregon and Eastern Washington, and Alaska too.

[Ivan Sputnik]

1. People in "red" areas

(the ones who vote, anyway) tend to think that a disproportionate amount of their tax money goes to immoral "blue" and/or urban areas. The power of myth is very very strong -- something the Republicans understand.

[Arugula Latte]

2. Plus they want no government regulation on cutting trees, mining,

extracting oil, and the like.

[XemaSab]

3. You forgot the Sierra Nevada mtns

n/t

[Terran]

4. Good question.

I've thought this myself. I think where I live, central Missouri, is really really beautiful, and it's mostly conservative. My theory is that a lot of these people are somewhat brain-dead to the beauty of the natural world. If they were more in tune with reality, maybe they wouldn't vote so foolishly.

[izzybeans]

5. Rural = Less Communication Technology = less Cultural

Literacy

[MalachiConstant]

6. personal theory:

education. i don't think its a coincidence that the most educated states are also the most liberal/democratic. for example:

the northeast, home to the ivy league colleges, MIT, the 8 billion colleges in boston/new york, nyu, pitt,

california has stanford, cit, and one of the best state university systems in the country.

dc has georgetown, american, gw, howard.


liberals "tend" to be more educated (of course there are exceptions) and college campuses, and areas with a higher population density of more educated people tend to be more liberal. even in red states the blue cities tend to offer a lot of higher education opportunities and better educated citizens.

i'm sure there are tons of other factors, i just happen to see education as playing a large role in people's political outlooks.

[fishwax]

7. all parts of the country are lovely

well, most, in their way ;):)

Blues have plenty of lovely areas: california coast, great north woods, the pacific northwest, hawaii, new england :)

[GoddessOfGuinness]

8. Because their churches

are all bought and paid for by the Pat Robberson types.

[madrchsod]

9. god`s country and freeper heavan

..iowa,illinois-wisconsin--minnesota -borders area

[PittPoliSci]

10. central pa isn't that great.

you can catch the same sights here in western pa, and we're still blue.

[Jamastiene]

11. The reason those places are red AND scenic is because

those places aren't well developed economically and most of the people are not only poor but ignorant. I hate to say it but many of the people in this beautiful area of the country where I live are so out of the loop as far as their awareness of the world outside the borders of this tiny little town that they honestly don't know any better. Education is not valued in the red areas of the country. People have no economic opportunities and that coupled with lies drilled into their skulls by local leaders wanting to keep their cash flow moving while oppressing the locals are the reasons I see locally. I can only answer for my area though.