DELIVERANCE

The late Joe Bageant book Deer Hunting with Jesus reminded me of a voting map I saw years ago which shows that Appalachians tended to vote for conservatives.   I wasn't able to find that map but I did find a map of Appalachia at TPM:

In God's frontiersmen : the Scots-Irish epic by Rory Fitzpatrick I found a map which shows the early settlement patterns of the Scots-Irish in America (p. 111):

Fitzpatrick also provides a map of Ulster showing where many of these Scots-Irish came from (p. 21):

Thanx to the NY Times, I found two graphs which display the Presidential voting patterns by county for 2008 and 2004.

2008:

2004:

The significance of these patterns is explained by Cameron Joseph in The Atlantic:

The states that are dominated by the Scots-Irish and Scots-Irish culture have voting patterns atypical to the rest of the U.S. Voters there, once solidly New Deal Democrats, have been voting increasingly for Republicans at the national level since the 1960s, as the Democratic Party has grown increasingly socially liberal and dovish.