It’s interesting that urban-rural polarization has almost continuously increased over the past several decades yet decreased in New England at the same time. It used to be that Boston was heavily Democratic while rural Massachusetts was swingy, Vermont was R leaning and in 1984 New Hampshire was Reagan’s best state. There’s probably a variety of reasons for this, like it being the most educated rural white region, New England’s rural white working class being more socially liberal then the average and an influx of counter-cultural types but it is interesting how the whole region is kind of a national outlier in this respect.
Rural New England has a lot of transplants from the cities, particularly with the COVID Pandemic.
