Publius: Very interesting insight...
New England is where American political parties go to die.
Upon reflection, there is a lot of truth in this. And it's not only the Federalists in early American History and the Democrats in recent history.
After all, where was the last redoubt of the Rockefeller Republicans? As late as the Eisenhower administration, Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont were all referred to as "rock-ribbed Republican states", were they not? Even Massachusetts was the preserve of the Republican Lodges.
The ascendancy of Goldwater conservatives in the Republican party eventual flushed out the Rockefeller Republicans -- a decaying breed whose only surviving members are Sens. Snowe, Collins and Chaffee, all centered in New England.
I'd never thought of it quite that way, but New England does serve as a kind of political boneyard, doesn't it?
Except the Populists were midwestern and southern; the "know-nothings" were everywhere, but not particularly in the NE; and the dixiecrats southern.
During the New Deal when the Republicans were on the ropes and in danger of extinction, they were restricted to New England, where they evolved their Rockefeller Republican strain as a defense.