You need to look into the demographics of all those blue areas. You are proving our point, but you don’t know enough about the South to understand it.
And likewise - you don't know enough about me to know where I'm coming from. Like the fact that my grandparents were from the South and I lived in the South for many years.
Maybe you don't know enough about the North to understand it - like the fact that the North is NOT just the large metropolitan areas. We have more farms in Michigan than any of the Southern States.
Take a close look at the election results from the so-called "liberal" states and just see how close many of those elections were. More Michigan residents voted for George Bush than residents of Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas, or Virginia. Florida & Texas were the only Southern states to cast more votes for Bush than Michigan did.
Just as all Southerners are not gap-toothed, cousin-marrying rednecks - all Northerners are not gun-grabbing, tree-hugging liberals.