The Wall Street Journal has a story the thrust of which is that liberal vs. conservative, Blue vs. Red areas are often urban vs. rural areas as well. The authors make the argument that rural vs. urban is perhaps the best indicator of people's political orientation.
This makes intuitive sense to me. Part of what is going on here is conservative people moving to rural areas to avoid urban pollution, traffic, crime, and taxes.
Interestingly, the authors only mention this self-sorting behavior with respect to rural young people moving to the city. They don't seem to notice older city folk moving to the country. That suggests they identify with the former, as would many journalists who as a group are almost compulsively progressive/blue/urban.
