But late McCain weakness showing in places like Montana and Georgia did lead me to expect that at least one or two of the close but usually reliably red states would fall into Obama’s column. Virginia and NC were the two places I felt were likely to stay red in the end. What’s a bit surprising to me is that NC, VA, and IN went for Obama while MO went for McCain. would have thought that if Obama got the former 3 he would certainly have carried the latter one.

An interesting thing to note when you look at the electoral map is the strong correlation between population density and color. City mouse blue, country mouse red. States with growing populations and burgeoning metropolitan areas are driving blueness. NC has gotten much bigger, and you can see Denever kind of driving blueness as the major midwest metropolis.

Pro sports franchises are a good rough proxy for population density. How many of the states with 3 or 4 or more major pro sports franchises went red? How many of the states with only 0 or 1 franchises went blue, aside from the New England states?

I’m astonished that Obama took Indiana though – I was not expecting that at all, despite how tight it was in the polls before the election.