I like the analysis. I'm curious about the election of counties in IL. It looks like Sangamon is considered rural while a number of distinctly more rural counties are marked as urban (Adams, Knox, for example). Tazewell is also mostly urban population. Jimrtex's thread for UCCs has the urban fraction in each of the counties he uses.
Good catch! I went back and looked at the numbers and it appears that Sangamon was included in the data as metro, but I missed it when making the maps (hand-colored, of course). There very well may be other mistakes as far as which category they've been placed in on the map/in the data, so I'm grateful to anybody who can point them out to me.
But this does bring up an important point: there are many counties where I felt quite conflicted about which category in which to include them. As I mentioned, I used a rather subjective approach in looking at these counties (with vote totals & square mileage playing big roles, along with proximity to urban clusters). A county in PA that was considered rural might be considered metro in, say, ND.
I can definitely say that one example that has been sticking out to me is St Tammany, LA (currently classified as rural). Other examples of states I'd like to revisit include PA & NC, where I feel more area could be considered metro rather than rural. It appears I have also misclassified Grenada, MS.
I thought the UCC list would be quite helpful here. It's based on specific criteria measuring the urban vs rural population in the counties, and the urban fraction is listed for each county in the thread.
