Update: Michelle Malkin says:

Yes, the country is divided. Divided between gracious winners and mud-slinging, hypocritical whiners who have nothing else to do now but point to their emotional boo-boos and decry the dirtiness of politics.

Update: Jared at Thinklings writes in his post Days of Whine and Poses:

The Left has reaped the whirlwind it started.

He also thinks the next few years it will be entertaining to watch the lefties deconstruct more.  Me, not so much the last three have been pretty painful… I hope they are faster learners…

Update: Other blogs that I frequently read are using the same graphic:

Eric @ Fireant Gazzette:

Granted, since we’re a republic of states, those state lines really are meaningful; I’m not trying to minimize that fact or argue otherwise. This is just a different perspective than what we usually see.

Daniel @ Behind the Wall of Sleep:

Do you still see a fortress? I do not; far from it. Instead, I think this shows how integrated we are, Republicans and Democrats, all mixed-up together. You want to know what else? I bet if you went a little deeper, and looked at the voting district results, you would see even more mingling. And, if the data were available, at a house-by-house level, or a voter-by-voter level, you would have to admit that we live cheek-and-jowl, side-by-side, right next to one another.

It’s not a fortress, sir. It’s a nation.

To buttress Daniel’s point, goto CNN’s Election map.  This map intrigued me by its presentation of the county by county totals.  You have to click through to the states, and then you’ll see a gradient view of the strength’s of each candidates total.  A strong Bush county will be a dark red, and a strong Kerry county will be a dark blue.  You can also see an individual county by county ‘strength’ map which just shows the color gradient for one candidate.  I’d love to see the final version of this map at the country level using the gradients by county, instead of the red/blue map.