It's interesting that it takes an economist to point out that the corollary of America being a low density country with large swaths of land where virtually no one lives is that virtually no one lives in those large swaths of land, and, when considering issues like broadband policy, we really don't have to wire Wyoming in quite the same way as New York. Look at this graphic:
That's the famous post-election map showing Bush's supposed dominance of the country. But what Bush dominated wasn't the ballots, but the total acreage. What's amazing isn't his advantage in counties, but that he could win all those counties and barely capture 50% of the vote. Sadly, we have an electoral system that makes it almost impossible to govern in a way congruent with our population patterns. What's more surprising is that, as a culture, we've somehow let "real America" be defiend as the places where no one lives, but where lots of soybeans are grown.
