All you have to do to back up the urban vs. rural argument is look at a map of voting results by county. Areas around big cities are overwhelmingly blue, even in red states. Except maybe Salt lake City! (Just kidding -- I haven't looked at Utah.) Seriously, though. There are a lot of democrats in the south, so I reject the north vs. south argument. And there are a lot of democrats in the red states -- some of which only narrowly gave over their electoral votes to Bush -- so I too reject the state vs. state argument.

I reject both arguments. It's more urban vs. suburban than anything. Jaqueeba in Minneapolis and Mary in Eden Prairie live in the same urban center, but how do you think they voted?

And Vermont -- one of the most rural states -- supported Kerry. Houston -- one of the nation's largest cities -- supported Bush.

The people who voted for Bush are the same white Protestants who drive on the highways into the city centers every day for work, then refuse to vote for the very urban funding that offers them their livelihood.

Byf, how do you explain Edina going Democrat for the first time in near forever? Edina epitomizes suburbia and is the site of the first enclosed shopping mall in the country. It's not so much suburban vs. urban as it is urban vs. rural.

Houston is an anomaly. Atlanta, Madison, San Francisco, Buffalo, Philadelphia, Austin, Chapel Hill...cities in both red and blue states went for Kerry. That was one of the only constants in this election.

Andy hits it on the head, but he has to be careful. Agriculture drives a lot of the economy of Minnesota, Wisconsin, and many other states. To suggest that the economic engine of Minnesota is the vitality of St. Paul's insurance industry is to discount the hundreds of thousands of farmers that earn just as much money as the adjusters on Selby.

But the bottom line is that the issues rural voters like to "worry" about, including gay marriage, underfunded schools, poverty, homelessness and diversity, are only confronted when living in true cities. Funny, ain't it, that cities vote Democratic?

I guess it's a little hard to draw a black and white distinction. But America is more urban/suburban than rural; therefore, voter turnout (by number, not percentage) is higher in urban/suburban areas than in rural areas. Like Houston is an anomaly, so is Edina. There is a smattering of suburbs that voted for Kerry, like Royal Oak, Michigan; Berkeley, Calif., etc. There are simply not enough rural votes for Bush (or any candidate) to have ridden that wave. If that were the case, he'd have been stumping in places like Valentine, Nebraska, instead of Cleveland and Saginaw.

And why do you say that the issues you listed above are only confronted in true cities? I grew up in rural Michigan and confronted more poverty, homelessness and underfunded schools than I did in Minneapolis. How about Lake County, Michigan, one of the most rural counties in the state but also one of the blackest and poorest? (Another anomaly, maybe ...)

Maybe you can't boil it down to urban/rural or urban/suburban at all. Every place is different, and trying to simplify it in such a way is probably counterproductive.

Byf, I guess it depends on what your idea of "urban" is. My hometown, La Crosse, Wisconsin, is the center of a Metropolitan Statistical Area, the standard measure of an urban place as defined by the US Census Bureau. San Francisco, my current home, is the center of an MSA as well. While San Francisco epitomizes urban-ness in this country, I don't think the same can be said for La Crosse. Residents of the La Crosse MSA are "urban" by definition, but do not share the urban mentality of the Bay Area, or of Milwaukee for that matter.

Bush didn't campaign in rural areas of Nebraska because he was far ahead in polls in that state. He didn't campaign in rural areas of California (yes, they exist) because he was far behind in polls in that state. He campaigned in Cleveland, but he also campaigned in Onalaska, Wisconsin, on the fringe of the urban/rural distinction in the La Crosse MSA. He visited dairy farms in rural Wisconsin, gaining attention from media outlets in both rural and urban areas. He also campaigned dozens of times in West Virginia.

Looking at only the urban and suburban voting patterns on CNN.com (http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/US/P/00/epolls.0.html) it's arguable that Kerry might have won the election if the rural votes weren't counted. Since they were, Bush won. This distinction matters as much or more than the much pooh-poohed "values" nonsense.

I misspoke when I said that many of these problems are only confronted in true cities. I believe it's because of the population density and the sheer numbers of people who come into contact with crumbling schools in the inner cities of our country and who are accosted by panhandlers daily that bring these issues to the surface in urban areas. But your examples perfectly demonstrate the anomaly that is poor rural residents voting for the presidential candidate who doesn't share their economic interests. We must also be careful in assuming rural residents are all poor...they're not, just as not all residents of San Francisco are dot-com millionaires.

I should clarify by saying that in true cities many social problems that don't exist in other places are more urgent. As an example, a bum would most likely be thrown in jail if found walking the streets of Edina, yet dozens of homeless people live on the streets just a few miles away in downtown Minneapolis. In addition, the density of homosexuals living in the cities of Minneapolis and St. Paul make gay-friendly policies in those cities more important, politically, to elected officials. Underfunded schools exist in rural areas, no question, but such a dichotomy between rich and poor schools is more apparent when comparing the Minneapolis School District and its sagging facilities to those in Edina or Eden Prairie.

In these metropolitan areas, the stark differences between the affluent and the impoverished are more clearly defined, the gay voices have at least a portion of the government's attention, and in these areas the differences between the two parties' policies are easier to comprehend. I believe that is why the Democrats are more successful in urban areas.

What you say is true. I still think the line is more clearly drawn between suburban and urban than between rural and urban/suburban, simply because of the sheer number of suburban voters -- who tend overwhelmingly to vote Republican, just as urbanites vote overwhelmingly Democratic. And suburbanites are far more guilty than rural dwellers of reaping the benefits of the city (and ignoring the gay people in the suburbs) without paying for them.

Jaqueeba? Classy...