I hear a lot about state strategies...how about county strategies?

[greekspeak]

Someone here posted a link to CNN with returns from the last presidential elections. There are very suprising results there about individual counties. When you look at, say, a Missouri map, it looks like Kerry totally won 3 counties and St. Louis City. The truth is that there are a lot of counties he only lost by a little bit, a hundred votes or less, certainly 10 points or less. It does not look nearly so glum when you look at these results. I think in Missouri alone there were a good couple dozen counties that would fall into this catagory. Several in other states too. It is the people in this less-than-sure counties that could be a gold mine for dems. Just a thought. Flame away.

[snowbear]

1. The maps are deceiving...

For sure.. :crazy:

This one at Fund Race is kind of mind-boggling, but I'm not sure how accurate it really is--

http://www.fundrace.org/moneymap.php

[greekspeak]

3. The state maps I saw on the CNN site varied more than on that map

Some counties were old drunk guys nose red, some were close to cobalt blue, but there were a LOT I had to click on to even tell what color they were, because the colors were so washed--close to white.

EDIT: Here is a link to one of the map pages.

http://www.cnn.com/ELECTION/2004/pages/results/states/MO/P/00/index.html

Look at some of those counties that are WHITE in Missouri. Look how many are very pale pink. Most of those are counties that Clinton won with in 92 and 96.

[Son of California]

2. This is true

very true.

My family on my mother's side are all farmers, as rural as it gets, and real blue-blooded Dems to boot!

Don't forget that a lot of those rural votes are Dem, and are Dem because they don't trust the Republicans to look out for the little guy.

Should this be a point we try to drive home in 06 and 08?
Why not.

I think, in the process of getting caught up in trying to trump so called Republican "Defense Credentials" we forgot that important image of the Democrats fighting for the little guy who has no one else to fight for him. This speaks well to rural voters in many of the states that in the past we have given up for lost.