I'm sorry if this has already been discussed; I've been away from YN for a while and am too lazy to look through any more than 3 pages of posts. With that disclaimer out of the way, here goes:

A couple months ago, I was reading Ted Rall's Op/Ed column and he commented that he found it rather ironic that New York City and Washington D.C. were voting for Kerry. After all, these were the two places that had suffered most from the terrorist attacks, and they had the most to fear: über-urban areas make natural, logical targets for terrorists. Let's not beat around the Dubya: Bush made fear a central part of his campaign. "You'll be safe with me; with this other guy, who knows?" could have been his campaign slogan (and for all practical purposes, was).

It's a well known fact that urban America tends to lean left while rural America tends to lean right. It's common sense that New York City is more likely to be attacked by terrorists than Crawford, Texas. It's an interesting contradiction. When you look at how counties voted (the map uses blue for Bush and red for Kerry, sorry for any confusion) you can further see that most of America voted against its supposed "danger level."

It stands to reason that higher populated counties are going to be more urban. Obviously, there's no steady, direct connection between the two (seeing as how counties vary in size), but it's ultimately one of those common sense things. Let's look at the county Bush got the most votes from; such a place is bound to be urban, right? And indeed it is. The gigantic, heavily populated Los Angeles County gave Bush a whopping 1,076,225 votes, more than any other county. And Los Angeles would be a pretty likely place for a terrorist attack, right? It might be enough to disprove my entire theory if Los Angeles County hadn't actually voted overwhelming for Kerry, sending him off with 1,907,736 votes.

Bush's second strongest county was (I'm ashamed to admit it was located in Arizona) Maricopa County, which includes Phoenix and its surrounding areas. I suppose Phoenix would be as likely a big city as any to fall victim to a terrorist attack, and Kerry didn't even do too well there. Yet, I'm inclined to believe that if terrorists were going to strike Arizona (which sounds kind of unlikely to begin with) they would actually hit Tucson, because it contains the state's big Air Force base. And who did Tucson's Pima County vote for? You guessed it: Kerry.

The five counties that had the widest percentage-wise victory margin for Bush are all located in Nebraska, Idaho, and rural Texas (I'd say "rural Nebraska and Idaho", but I try to avoid redudancy). You show me a terrorist hell-bent on destroying Nebraska or Idaho and I'll bake you cookies for a month. On the other hand, the five counties that had the widest percentage-wise victory margin for Kerry include DC, San Francisco, and Bronx. All highly populated ideal targets.

For another example of this phenomenon, consider the state of Colorado. It was a case study of urban vs rural. In the weeks leading up to the election it was widely regarded as a swing state simply because pro-Kerry Denver and Boulder were nearly cancelling out pro-Bush everything else. If Colorado were to be attacked by terrorists, where would they aim for? Almost certainly Denver or Boulder.

Nationwide, the areas most in danger of a terrorist attack actually voted for Kerry. Go figure.

Source: Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections

I tottally agree, I was saying that the minute that I saw the votes, It's obvious that the most likely hit places voted for Kerry and if you take New York as an example it really strengthens the theory. Most people not from New York don't know that upstate New York is republican and they just figure all of New York votes democrat. So upstate voted republican but the city, which thank god is big enough to cancel out upstate and give the state to kerry, voted democrat. I think it just shows how out of touch with the people the gov't is, there giving more anti-terrorism money to cheny's home state than to new york just cause it has a base. This isn't a regular war terrorist aren't gonna attack a base and kill a couple 100 soilders, they want to attack big cities and kill millions.

So I'm guessing the point of that post was that "those most at risk for a terrorist attack chose Kerry"? Problem is that assumes that the only issue in the voters mind was saftey from terrorism. Urban counties, as you said, tend toward Democratic candidates. I don't think this is an "interesting contradiction". I think this is more an issue of "expected and completely normal voting patterns".