Enough already, about “red states” and “blue” states. I’m tired of hearing everybody talk about it, frankly. I think Republicans are taking far too much comfort in it, and Democrats are bashing themselves far too much too.

I’ve been emailing with friends in New York who seem to feel that they’re surrounded by nothing but backwoods, redneck, red-state folks. First off, not all Republicans are backwoods, rednecks. And second off, what am I, chopped liver? I live in a so-called “red state.” Heck, I live in a so-called red county. But, I can tell you from first hand experience, Democrats even in here sometime.

Point is, it seems to me the whole “red/blue” dichotomy” is overblow and oversold to us. There are no TRULY red states, and there are no truly blue states. The bluest of blue states has a solid minority of Republicans, and vice-versa…

I knew this intuitively, because I have lived it my whole life here in Texas. But, low and behold, just after the election, somebody actually did research. You know, a real academic type with spreadsheets, charts, graphs and stuff like that.

The first thing I found, was this blog and this really cool purple map created by Jeff Culver. As you can clearly see, there is not one truly red state (even Utah….). Nor are there any solidly blue states (not even Mass…) Almost every state falls somewhere along the spectrum, and most states trend more toward purple than either red or blue.

A real academic, Robert Vanderbei , created this map here that shows the same theory, only done on a county-by-county basis. He’s also got a lot of useful and interesting info on voting and populations densities, and things like that.

I’ve seen some other maps that twist and contort the US based on population and voting. But I just like the good old red/blue/purple distinctions….because it makes it so utterly clear that we are not one or the other…we are BOTH.

To my mind, that means Democrats ought not to be so depressed, and Republicans not too proud.

All this caused me to get into songwriter mode, and I’ve written my own post-election song, called “Purple Land.” You can learn more about it here. You can hear a demo (that I’m already dissatisfied with…) by going here .

Here’s to our Purple Land!