Red state, blue state. One state, two state...

As amusing as I find this T-Shirt, I think that the media and some politicians are overemphasising the whole red state/blue state thing. Maybe it's just because I grew up in New Jersey, a blue state, and currently live in a blue state (Maryland), but voted for Bush. The fact is, though, that even the most liberal of places has some Bush voters (including Baltimore, where 17% of people went Bush), and the most conservative places have some Kerry voters. It's easy to declare that all Republicans are pickup-driving farmers who shop at wal-mart and have more guns than teeth, or that all Democrats are atheist PHD's who live in stylish lofts and drive Toyota Priuses, but any party that does that will lose, because the general public is much more diverse than that, and there is a fair amount of crossover from both sides.

There are two articles I think summerize this well - this Beleiefnet piece I found on Dean's World and this Weekly Standard article exerpted by Jeff at Protein Wisdom. The first article looks at religious views from both sides, while the second looks at the crossover of people in states that I mentioned above - saying that there are no red and blue states, only different shades of purple.