As many of you have probably seen, USA Today had this big article titled "What got so many counties to shift from blue to red?"
because Bush picked up 153 counties, whereas only 11 flipped to Kerry.
http://www.usatoday.com/news/washington/2005-01-31-red-america_x.htm
Not sure if this'll be too long, really, but I'll extend since I'm not an experience diarist :)
Now while clearly ever vote and county was important this past year it's typical of the SCLM to oversimplify and sensationalize the numbers. Per Wikipedia there are 3086 counties in the US, meaning, that 153 counties represents just under 5% of the counties in the US. When you consider Chimpy's vote went up by about 3%, this isn't all that amazing. When you further add the fact that Red Counties tend to be smaller (and per the Sean Hannity Model Love County, Texas, population 67 has equals Los Angeles County, population 9,519,338), I think this overall shift is b.s. They added to their numbers in GOTV - simple as that. Useless Today cites Monmouth County as emblematic of this shift, but it's really the opposite case - this is a former-R stronghold that the Dems have had increased success.
Don't know if this is the most useful diary, but I had to vent seeing marginal numbers screwed around with making a mountain out of an elephant pile as usual.
-Mutt