Not quite red, not quite blue

In one map by Mark Newman of the Department of Physics and Center for the Study of Complex Systems at the University of Michigan, a reminder that there’s no such thing as a truly blue or a truly red state (Vermont being the exception that proves the rule):

Several things immediately stick out. The famously Democrat California is actually majority red by the square mile. There are noticeable swaths of blue in the South, including the not so tiny El Paso County, Texas.

This being the map of the 2012 presidential vote, someone who’s never seen a US population density map before might reasonably ask how the candidate of the blue ended up winning. That’d be because roughly no-one lives between the Tornado Alley and the Golden Coast: