The New York times ran this story on June 9, 2008.

Rural U.S. Takes Worst Hit as Gas Tops $4 Average but most interesting was the map on its front page:
it shows counties hit hardest by price of gas going pass 4 dollars a gallon with folks spending up to 16% (or prob more) of their income on gasoline. The brownest, mostly in the south and midwest, are the hardest hit. The purple states, coastal states, have higher income and least hardest hit in term of spending their income on gasoline.

You can almost superimpose that map with the 2004 red states vs blue states – just substitute Blue for Purple, and Brown for Red.

I don’t know exactly what this means but it certainly will effect the presidential election 2008. If it’s “the economy, stupid!” it might means the republicans are even in more trouble than ever before. Or are they?

Election 2008

Living in the Shadow of the Recession