Byron – I’m sure there are statistically fluent cornerites who can explain more ways that’s a dumber-than-rocks map, but here’s a simpler way of looking at it: The military vote. Bush had a 16% advantage over Kerry among veterans in 2004. In this voluntary poll of active duty military, Bush walloped Kerry 73 to 18 percent. As a voluntary poll, it’s obviously less reliable, but it seems a fairly good indication that Bush’s support among the military crushed Kerry’s. It’s doubtful that the red-state/blue-state analysis has more explanatory power. As you note, the Kos map really just reflects population clusters and the limitations imposed by limited space for such maps. In other words, it seems more likely that voting patterns among soldiers from Mass tracked with voting patterns in the military more than they did with the voting trends in Mass. Do we really think privates hailing from Western Mass vote like Robert Reich? And, it’s worth noting, most of the Blue states are actually pretty red in the rural areas. And there’s little reason not to think soldiers came from those regions.