In that cluster in the middle, you really see a divide, and while other factors no doubt feed into it, I think Rick [Perlstein] really nailed something important when he described the Franklin/Orthogonian divide [some weird concept of Nixon's] that Nixon and then Reagan and every conservative after has exploited to win over that mercurial middle class.

As a member of the class in question who lives in a blue city in a red state, I can tell you that what makes someone a liberal or a conservative is a constant source of discussion and mystery to people. One overheard conversation: A woman from an MBA program, joking about how the finance people and the marketing people were at odds during an election. And that most of you can probably guess which side went for which team tells me that we aren't completely unaware as a nation how this game goes. I can safely assume that pretty much anyone I meet of my age and income level in Austin is a Democrat, but that assumption is not a safe one should I venture into other parts of the state. A lot of people I know---including myself---come from "mixed" families, which goes to show that demographic predictions fall apart in this class. My oldest male cousin and I are big liberals, and my stepbrother and uncle close to my age are firebreathing conservatives, and a scattershot of female relatives mostly vote Republican but almost shamefacedly admit to having liberal social values. Why so much difference in a group that's demographically the same?