Overall, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton had much to feel good about Tuesday night. And no, she’s not giving up. While she just gently poked her opponent Sen. Barack Obama in her victory speech, she again outlined her argument about how she was the better general-election candidate.

Senator Obama’s campaign, however, was trying to put a different spin on the night.
Obama was not only in a different state, not only in a different time zone, he was campaigning in a different election. He was in Missouri, which held its primary long ago, talking about November and presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain.

The goal was to make Senator Clinton’s victory look less like a win against an actual opponent than a pickup game followed by a pep rally on her home court without significance. It was meant to blunt any momentum Clinton might claim from her landslide win.

It was also a calculated gamble, because it meant he spent barely any time in the state. And while West Virginia was never going to be Obama country, as Patchwork Nation noted Monday, a little campaigning may have helped the Illinois senator’s margin of defeat. After all, no state likes to be ignored.

For sure, in terms of demographics, West Virginia was tailor-made for Clinton. But that doesn’t take away from the scale of her victory. Every single county and every Patchwork Nation community type in the state went for her.

Clinton routed Obama in the community types that have been her strongholds during the primary season: the state’s 14 “Emptying Nests,” nine “Tractor Country” counties, and seven “Evangelical Epicenters.” She took it to him in the state’s eight “Service Worker Centers,” which have been good to her in this region of the country.

Clinton also defeated him in the state’s five “Boom Town” counties, a community type that the two candidates tend to split.

In the end, even the college students couldn’t help Obama in West Virginia. He lost all eight of the state’s “Campus and Careers” counties including Monongalia, the home of West Virginia University where he lost by double-digits. In most states, big college towns have been Obama turf.

Clinton may cite that as evidence that the tide is turning. She talked Tuesday night about how West Virginia is a swing state that the Democrats must win.

Obama will probably write it off as what happens when he doesn’t campaign in a state that favors her. He may note, too, that in 2004 President Bush won West Virginia by 13 percent, a margin that doesn’t scream swing state.

Now it’s on to the primaries in Kentucky and Oregon next Tuesday. According to the latest polls, Obama appears likely to win in the Pacific Northwest, while Clinton is poised to pick up another victory in the Appalachians.

Meanwhile, Clinton hopes her win in West Virginia was so massive that it moves some of those numbers – in Oregon as well as in Montana and South Dakota – where experts say Obama will do well on Jun. 3.

Time will tell.

We’ll spend some time over the next few days checking in with our Patchwork Nation communities in Kentucky (Hopkinsville) and Oregon (Lincoln City) to take their electoral temperatures.

While Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton came into the 2008 race with experience and the vestiges of her husband’s campaign team from the 1990s, it is Obama who has repeatedly shown an organizational advantage in the primaries.

From his ability to win in caucus states, which generally require more advance work, to his grass-roots efforts in places such as Philadelphia and its suburbs (as Patchwork Nation has noted), he’s shown a knack for well-laid plans that may extend back to his beginnings in politics as a community organizer.

Tomorrow the media and the candidates will shift their focus to the next stops on the Democratic primary circuit, Kentucky and Oregon. Both campaigns have been on the ground in those states for some time, but e-mail accounts we have set up for “pseudoresidents” in our Patchwork Nation locales show how the Obama campaign has done a better job of using the Web to establish its presence in primary battlegrounds than has Senator Clinton’s campaign.

In each of next week’s primary states, Patchwork Nation happens to have representative communities: Hopkinsville, Ky., and Lincoln City, Ore. Here’s a look at what our Hillary and Barack (as the candidates call themselves in e-mailville) devotees received in their inboxes over the past few months.

In Hopkinsville, our Obama supporter’s e-mail account was only open for eight days when he received word from the campaign on March 4 about ways to organize in the Blue Grass State. The e-mail asked our Barack fan to get together that night to watch the results come in from the primaries in Ohio, Rhode Island, Texas, and Vermont.

“Watch parties are a great way to meet other Obama supporters in your area, learn more about our grassroots movement for change, and find out ways you can start organizing your community,” the e-mail said and then offered a link with a localized map to find the nearest party.

Remember, this was for the state’s May 20 primary. All through March and April the Obama campaign sent e-mails specificially targeted at Kentucky residents with links showing how to register to vote and organize.

Meanwhile, our Clinton supporter in Hopkinsville received e-mails to come listen to former President Clinton speak on March 24 and listen to Hillary Clinton speak on March 27. There was also a message inviting the supporter to the grand opening of the campaign’s Louisville headquarters (172 miles away) on April 14. But the first true e-mail related to organizing and volunteering didn’t pop into our supporter’s inbox until April 28 – almost eight weeks after the Obama camp’s first plea.

“I hope you’ll join our talented staff and many volunteers to make our campaign here in Kentucky a huge success. You can make a real difference in helping Hillary become the next president!,” the Clinton campaign wrote.

In Oregon, it was a similar story.Our e-mail account in Lincoln City never heard from the Obama camp about viewing parties as our Kentucky supporter did, but by March 17 the supporter had received an e-mail tailored to state residents that encouraged organizing. Five days later, on March 22, a more specific e-mail arrived about volunteering and registering to vote. On March 25 came an e-mail explicitly asking for help canvassing neighborhoods.

The Clinton team, however, did do a bit better in the Beaver State. By April 15, the regional field director in Salem, Ore., reached out to our Lincoln City supporter via e-mail. That message offered a way to contact the Salem office about scheduling a volunteer shift.

Still, it was the Obama camp that had more regular contact with our Lincoln City inbox. Messages tailored to Oregonians ranged from organizing house parties to providing reminders about the state’s voter registration deadline.

The major proviso to all the e-mailing: Polls show Clinton is likely to win Kentucky regardless of Obama’s efforts.

But Obama’s Web organizational skills have been central throughout the competitive Democratic race. And if, as it now appears, he becomes the nominee, he owes at least some of his success to his online prowess.

While the Clinton campaign did have an organization to fall back on, it was formed more than 15 years ago before sophisticated Web targeting techniques were developed and took hold.

In the end, the 2008 campaign may not just be about the Democratic Party turning the page on who campaigns in the fall, but how the party campaigns, too.

His speeches now focus more intently on presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain. He has demurred on requests to debate his Democratic opponent, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton. Perhaps most telling, he has apparently concluded that he can afford to mostly skip campaigning for Tuesday’s West Virginia primary.

In fact, Mr. Obama seems to have written off the May 20 contest in Kentucky as well, calling Mrs. Clinton’s lead in the two states “insurmountable.”

Not that Obama has declared victory in the presidential nomination fight; he will campaign in Oregon, which also holds its primary May 20.

A look at how the Patchwork Nation community types break down in those three states shows why Obama is making the choices he is. The fact is that the voter communities in those states are likely to yield Clinton victories no matter how much time and money he pours into them. Her “insurmountable” lead is a result of the demographic splits between Clinton and Obama voters that have appeared throughout the primary season.

Consider West Virginia: The Mountain State has about 1.8 million people, and 60 percent of them live in voter community types that have been favorable for Clinton in the Democratic primaries: rural farm communities (“Tractor Country”), counties with younger families and many evangelical adherents (“Evangelical Epicenters”), hubs for service industries (“Service Worker Centers”), and places with slightly older populations (“Emptying Nests”).

West Virginia has none of Obama’s two most reliable community types, big cities (“Industrial Metropolis”) and places with sizeable African-American populations (“Minority Central”). The representation of college towns (“Campus & Careers”) is a decent size, accounting for 20 percent of residents, but those communities have not always been as reliable for him as the first two.

Kentucky also holds problems for Obama, with a massive base of voters living in “Evangelical Epicenters” – more than 33 percent – and another 16 percent living in “Emptying Nests,” which has been Clinton’s most reliable voter community type. Doing the math, that means roughly half the state is predisposed to go for Clinton. Her edge becomes bigger than half when the 4 percent of the voters who live in “Tractor Country” are added in.

Obama has decided to campaign in Oregon in large part because the state’s voter community types look more favorable for him.

People in “Monied ’Burbs” make up about 28 percent of Oregon’s population, and many of them live in Obama’s kinds of ’burbs – “often quite liberal, due to the whole green-granola factor,” says James Gimpel, a government professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, and Patchwork Nation’s consultant. The state’s “Campus & Career” population, about 11 percent of the total, also tends to lean to the left, which should serve the Illinois senator well.

Maybe most important, Oregon has no “Emptying Nests” counties, which will probably hurt Clinton.

And though the “Evangelical Epicenter” population in the state is large, it is atypical, including a large subsection of members of the Mormon Church. (To keep the community types in Patchwork Nation manageable, we placed Oregon’s Mormons in the “Evangelical Epicenter” category.)

In fact, the Mormon Church has the second largest number of members in the state behind the Roman Catholic Church, according to the website Adherents.com. Historically, parts of the Church of Latter Day Saints’ “Mormon Trail” closely mirror parts of the Oregon Trail.

Because Oregon’s “Evangelical Epicenters” have such a different makeup compared with those outside the state, they may not follow the pro-Clinton voting patterns of other counties in that community type.

An examination of these community types and the voting patterns reveals that both candidates have a case to make over the next few weeks.

If Clinton wins in West Virginia and Kentucky, as expected, she will probably pound home her point that white working-class voters are with her, not Obama, and that she therefore has the best chance of winning in the general election.

But Obama can counter with a big “electability” point of his own.

West Virginia and Kentucky went for President Bush in 2004 by huge margins – 13 percentage points and 20 percentage points, respectively – and their voter makeups may make it hard for any Democrat in 2008.

Oregon was a relatively close win for Sen. John Kerry in 2004: four percentage points. It’s a state Democrats must keep in their column if they are to win the White House in November. If Obama wins it May 20, you can bet that’s something he’ll be touting.

Since Sen. John McCain wrapped up the GOP presidential nomination on March 4, he has had some trouble bringing all of the party’s voters into the fold. He hasn’t broken 80 percent of the vote in the state primaries that have followed, including Mississippi, Pennsylvania, Indiana, or North Carolina. In Pennsylvania, for instance, Senator McCain received just 73 percent of the Republican vote in a closed primary in which only registered Republicans were permitted to cast ballots.

McCain’s camp says it isn’t particularly worried about these numbers. “If you go back and look at Reagan, Bush 41 [George H.W. Bush], [Bob] Dole, George W. Bush, when the race is over and you’re not campaigning, you don’t get a unanimous vote in those primaries where you don’t campaign,” McCain adviser Charlie Black said at a recent Monitor breakfast. “In fact, that 73 [percent] is not particularly unusual.”

He’s right about the percentages. A protest vote is not uncommon after the selection process is over. He may also turn out to be correct about the prospects for McCain’s campaign in the long run.

But a few notable differences emerge when analyzing the 2008 primary results using the framework of Patchwork Nation.

First, McCain seems to have problems appealing to voters on two different sides of the Republican spectrum.

In Mississippi, which is filled with culturally conservative “Evangelical Epicenters” and “Tractor Country” counties, McCain’s challenge primarily came from former GOP hopeful Mike Huckabee, the ex-governor of Arkansas. In the 16 counties that fall into one of those two community types, Mr. Huckabee received an average of 16 percent of the vote.

In Pennsylvania, his main rival was Rep. Ron Paul of Texas and competition for votes came in the critical “Monied ’Burbs,” many of which are heavy population centers around Philadelphia. In the 11 “Monied ’Burbs” counties in the state, Representative Paul garnered an average of 17 percent of the vote. Huckabee, too, had a fairly decent showing, capturing a little more than 9 percent of the vote from the state’s affluent suburban counties.

And in Indiana’s 19 “Monied ’Burbs” counties, both Huckabee and Paul siphoned off votes from McCain at a clip of 10 percent and 9 percent respectively.

McCain’s struggle to connect with cultural conservatives is well documented, even on this site as Patchwork Nation correspondents and bloggers in Sioux Center, Iowa, (Tractor Country) and Nixa, Mo., (Evangelical Epicenters) have written. In Iowa, blogger Nick Lantinga, who directs an international network of Christians, wrote about a distinct lack of enthusiasm in his home county for the Arizona senator. Nixa’s Republican mayor Doug Marrs went a step further, saying that he won’t vote for McCain in November.

But McCain’s trouble getting the votes of ‘Paulites,’ who tend to be more libertarian and opposed to the Iraq war, may be harder to solve. McCain’s support for the war is clear and in stark contrast with Paul’s. It’s also worth noting that in Pennsylvania it was registered Republicans who went to the polls to make their displeasure known, not just independent Paulites.

McCain’s protest votes, in other words, are more than just protest votes. They are protest votes that are concerned about specific issues. In contrast, the protest vote in the 2000 GOP primaries against then-Governor Bush was more about his lack of experience or McCain’s personality.

And the diversity of viewpoints among these different segments of the GOP (and different communities on the Patchwork Nation map) creates obstacles for McCain because they are harder to reconcile. It requires building an awkward-looking bridge to bring everyone back together.

The second difference between the Republican protest votes of 2000 and the ones this year is more basic.

In 2000, the Republicans had been out of the White House for eight years and GOP voters could have been more willing to put aside differences to see one of their own in power again. But in 2008, after eight years at 1600 Pennsylvania Ave., the enthusiasm of winning may not carry the same weight.

All of that doesn’t mean all is lost for McCain. In many head-to-head polls, he is running even or ahead of Sen. Barack Obama, who is now likely to be his opponent this fall. However, it does mean that despite all the talk of the Democrats needing to put their base back together after the nomination process, McCain has work to do with his base, too.

Barack Obama won a solid 66 percent of the vote in the counties classified as “Monied ’Burbs” in North Carolina, compared with a more modest 44 percent of similar counties in Indiana.

The suburban and larger cities in the two states are quite different. North Carolina has very little of the old-line manufacturing industries that dot the Hoosier State’s cities and towns.

And the Tar Heel State has a much larger black population (22 percent, compared with Indiana’s 9 percent), a windfall to Senator Obama’s candidacy given that exit polls suggest that black voters cast 92 percent of their votes for him and that they made up 34 percent of the North Carolina primary electorate. In Indiana, by contrast, they were similarly lopsided in their support, but they represented only 17 percent of the primary electorate.

Mecklenburg County (Charlotte), for example, has a large black population (about 36 percent), and nothing in Indiana compares – no, not even Lake County, Ind. (home to Gary and Hammond). At the same time, Charlotte is not a city built on manufacturing, but on trade and services. It looks more like a Sunbelt “Monied ’Burb” than it does an aging “Industrial Metropolis.”

Obama won a stunning 70 percent of the vote in Mecklenburg, a feat accomplished with the significant assistance of Charlotte’s middle-income black population – a population that is much smaller in Indiana’s “Monied ’Burbs.”

In most other respects, however, Obama’s base remained about as geographically narrow as it was in Pennsylvania, confined to large cities and college towns. Wherever there was a substantial population of blacks and white liberals, Obama won big.

But in all other locations, Hillary Rodham Clinton racked up impressive margins that are obscured by the overall statewide tallies. In both states, she won by double digits in the most rural areas (Tractor Country), towns with aging populations (Emptying Nests), and midsize towns full of service sector jobs (Service Worker Centers).

She also bested Obama in places where Evangelical churchgoers are prominent. He continued to do well among secular liberals and the well-educated.

North Carolina has some military-heavy areas that Indiana does not, and it appears that Obama won these areas, again, on the basis of their adjacent black populations more than through the support of active duty military personnel.

A chorus of voices is now calling for Senator Clinton to step aside. Nevertheless, if Obama becomes the Democratic Party’s nominee, these figures continue to raise the question of whether he will have crossover appeal in the myriad places where he was so badly defeated by Clinton. If she becomes the nominee, one wonders whether the traditional Democratic big-city and liberal base will come back on board.

More than in past speeches Senator Obama talked like a presidential nominee. He thanked Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton for putting up a good fight, and then took on the man who is likely to be his rival in the fall: Sen. John McCain.

Clearly, the thinking was that his 14-point victory in North Carolina was overwhelming and that the squeaker loss in Indiana was close enough. He advanced his lead in pledged delegates. He advanced his popular vote advantage. His nomination became all but certain.

The results, when viewed through the prism of the Patchwork Nation map, do show some reason for optimism in the Obama camp. He won in some important places last night, particularly in Indiana, and he has made some inroads in areas that had been Senator Clinton’s core constituency.

Obama won a big “Emptying Nest” county (Allen), a community with a large share of older voters. He won a few “Monied ’Burbs” counties immediately around Indianapolis (Boon and Hamilton) that are well above 90 percent white. He also won an “Immigration Nation” county (Elkhart), which has a good-size Hispanic population.

He won those places he had to win, too. We wrote last week that the three counties Patchwork Nation classified as “Industrial Metropolis” (Marion, Lake, and St. Joseph, the respective homes of Indianapolis, Gary, and South Bend) were crucial for him. Last night, he carried all of them.

Perhaps just as important were the close margins by which he lost in “Emptying Nests,” which have been reliably in Clinton’s corner throughout this primary season. Although these counties were with her again, in Benton County, Montgomery County, and LaPorte County, her margin of victory was within 6 percentage points.

Principally, Obama was helped by the unique landscape in Indiana, which has more diversity in some of its counties because the population is spread out.

For example, Allen County, that big “Emptying Nest,” holds Fort Wayne, a city that is 17 percent African-American. And the African-American vote went for Obama by 93 percent in Indiana, according to exit polls. While Obama did keep a few of those “Emptying Nests” counties close, Clinton buried him by big margins in the majority of them, particularly those on the east side of the state, farther away from Obama’s hometown of Chicago.

In the end, however, the close results in Indiana on Tuesday may turn out to be a triumph of organization for Obama, which helped put him over the top in several counties.Throughout the primary campaign, Obama has drawn in new voters. The biggest increases in new registrants in Indiana came from the biggest Obama counties, as we noted Monday. In some places, they may have made a real difference.

Allen County, for instance, had an increase of 9,000 new voters since January, the third-largest increase in the state. Obama won that county by fewer than 8,000 votes. St. Joseph County, with all those Notre Dame collegians, had 7,400 new voters registered since January. Obama won there by about 3,200 votes.

It’s not that those votes fundamentally change the results, but new registrations across the state made the results even closer than they might have been and they certainly made the map look better for him by giving him a few more counties.

The starkest difference comes in the sheer amounts raised by the two Democrats. Senator Obama, who has been setting records with his fundraising, has outraised Senator Clinton in both North Carolina and Indiana. That marks a switch from their totals in Pennsylvania, where Clinton actually raised more cash than Obama did through the end of February.

Carolina blue has more than a tinge of green for Obama. His haul blew away Clinton’s in the Tar Heel State through the end of March –  $1.7 million to $1.14 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan group in Washington that tracks candidates’ campaign contributions. The numbers are closer in Hoosierland, where Obama had raised $641,000 while Clinton had received $559,000 through March.

The donation figures reflect the poll numbers in the states to a certain extent. Obama has a good-size lead in many polls from North Carolina and is expected to win there, while most polls from Indiana show a closer race.

But when viewed through the Patchwork Nation filter, other differences in the donation numbers in both of today’s primary states emerge. These distinctions could be telling when the polls close.

The most significant may involve the “Monied ’Burbs” counties in each state. These counties are likely to be particularly important in Indiana if the race is close, as we said yesterday. How did these affluent suburbs break down in terms of contributions to each candidate?
In North Carolina, Obama owns the group – $1 million to $626,000 for Clinton. He outraised Clinton in each of the state’s six “Monied ’Burbs” counties by fairly large margins.

But in Indiana the “Monied ’Burbs” have dipped into their wallets more heavily for Clinton who received $150,000 versus $122,000 for Obama. Clinton won the fundraising fight in six of the seven counties touching Indianapolis.

That could be troubling for Obama. In Ohio, where Clinton carried all the “Monied ’Burbs” around Cleveland and Cincinnati on primary day (and won big in the state), she had a similar fundraising edge.

What accounts for the difference in the Carolina and Indiana “Monied ’Burbs”?

Some of those counties in North Carolina – Wake, Durham, Guilford, Forsyth – are in and around the state’s university and research region. It’s an area filled with educated college folks, a key Obama demographic.

The landscape is different in the “Monied ’Burbs” counties around Indianapolis, which are more similar to the affluent suburbs around Cleveland and Cincinnati.

The fundraising numbers indicate an edge for Obama with some community types. He raised much more money than Clinton did in Indiana’s “Industrial Metropolis” (big city) counties – $352,000 to $264,000 for her. He cleaned up in North Carolina’s “Minority Central” counties, which have higher concentrations of African-Americans – raising $142,000 to her $69,000. 

In both states he also mined the wallets in “Campus and Careers” counties much more than Clinton did. In “Service Worker Centers,” too, he had a slight lead in fundraising.

For her part, Clinton beat Obama in fundraising in counties that tend to have more conservative voting records, edging his fundraising in “Tractor Country” (farmlands) and “Evangelical Epicenter” counties.

Perhaps her most consistent stronghold in the primaries, “Emptying Nest” counties, were again a reliable cash machine for her. She pulled in about $91,000 from those counties in the two states, while he received about $59,000.

Since Jan. 1, the number of voters in the Hoosier State has increased by 138,000. Is that enough to change the results of the vote on Tuesday? That depends on how close the final tally is.

Hillary Rodham Clinton has about a five-point edge over Barack Obama, according to RealClearPolitics.com’s average of Indiana polls. And some polls show the race nearly even.

While North Carolina also holds its contest Tuesday, Indiana is seen as the big battleground.

The Hoosier State’s open primary means that voters don’t have to declare party affiliation to cast a ballot. This makes it especially difficult to discern how those new voter numbers could affect the race. But filtering the new registrants though Patchwork Nation’s community types provides some clues.

The biggest jumps in registration by percentage – comparing new registrants with the total number of voters in 2004 – have occurred in two community types that have been strongholds for Senator Obama during the primaries, “Industrial Metropolis” counties and “Campus and Careers” counties.

Together those two community types have increased their rolls by more than 73,000 voters, more than half the total of new voters in the state since the beginning of the year.

Four of the five counties with the biggest increases in registrations seem likely to tilt toward Obama: Marion County (home of Indianapolis) has 23,770 new voters, Lake County (home of Gary and neighbor of Obama’s home state of Illinois) has 12,099 new voters, St. Joseph County (home of South Bend) has 7,407 new voters and Monroe (home of Bloomington and Indiana University) has 6,249 new voters.

But those numbers aren’t as clear-cut as they might appear.

First, even though those counties may prove to be Obama country and Obama has demonstrated an ability to bring in new voters, it’s unclear how strongly those places will go for Obama or how many of those new voters will be voting for a Democrat in the state’s open primary.

Second, Indiana has a complicated political landscape. Every state has its subcultures, but in Indiana, which has few densely populated areas, the subcultures are more likely to show up in counties.

St. Joseph County, for instance, contains South Bend, which is why it’s been classified as an “Industrial Metropolis.” But even though South Bend is the county’s biggest burg, it holds less than half the county’s population. In 2004, the county went for George W. Bush in the general election – which is rare for an “Industrial Metropolis,” and shows its conservative leanings. During the primaries, Senator Clinton has largely carried the counties with more conservative voting records.

Other good prospects for Clinton come from voter-registration increases in “Emptying Nest” counties, where the population is a bit older than US counties on average. She has fared well in these communities throughout the primary season. In Indiana, “Emptying Nests” have added more than 23,000 new voters since Jan. 1.

But that count is murky, too. The single biggest bump in “Emptying Nest” counties came from Allen County, where more than 9,000 residents have registered to vote. Allen County is not the typical “Emptying Nest” because it contains the big city Fort Wayne, where more than 17 percent of the population is African-American – a key constituency for Obama. So the question is: Are these new voters in Allen County coming from the county at large or Fort Wayne specifically?

The other community type in Indiana that figures to be key is the “Monied ’Burbs,” which represent the second-biggest community type in the state – after “Industrial Metropolis.” Across the US, affluent suburbs have tended to split between Clinton and Obama.

In Indiana, these 20 counties – nine of them surrounding Indianapolis – have added about 20,000 voters since Jan. 1.

The majority of these “Monied ’Burbs” counties went heavily (more than 60 percent) for Mr. Bush in 2004. Since Clinton has performed better than Obama in more conservative counties during the primary season, those new registrants in “Monied ’Burbs” will probably be crucial if the race winds up being very close.

Sen. John McCain has proposed a suspension of the federal gasoline tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day this year to give people a break. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton has one-upped Senator McCain: She not only supports a gasoline tax holiday but also advocates taxing the oil companies’ profits to make up for the lost revenue. Sen. Barack Obama, for his part, opposes the holiday, saying that it won’t save people much and that the money used for it could be better spent elsewhere.

The gasoline tax debate raises interesting issues when viewed through the Patchwork Nation prism.

No one likes the idea of paying $4-a-gallon for fuel, but in some places in the United States driving is a way of life. It’s hard to bring your steers to the auction house on a subway car, after all, and at last check no one was offering to build an extensive mass transit system through rural Iowa or up the Oregon coast.

In many Patchwork Nation communities gasoline prices have been a “top issue.” Yesterday, Kip Ward, one of our bloggers in Lincoln City, Ore., (Service Worker Centers) wrote about the big impact gas prices are having there.

But which of our Patchwork Nation communities is taking the biggest hit? That depends on how you slice the numbers.

Looking only at the cost per gallon at the corner station, Lincoln City; Eagle, Colo.; (Boom Towns) and Ann Arbor, Mich. (Campus and Careers) are having a rough time.

Not many stations are in the Lincoln City area, where the going rate is a uniform $3.69 a gallon, according to GasBuddy.com, which monitors the gasoline prices in every county across the nation. The cheapest regular gasoline in the Ann Arbor area is $3.59 a gallon, but most of the stations sit at about $3.69, according to GasBuddy.

Price updates weren’t available for Eagle, but in nearby Edwards, Colo., just down Interstate 70, the price was sky-high, ranging from $3.79 to $3.88 a gallon.

The per-gallon cost is only part of the hardship that high gasoline prices create. How much a person uses is a factor, too. By that measure, densely packed Ann Arbor has a lot of advantages. Stores are close together, and it’s possible to walk to pick up a few groceries.

In Lincoln City and Eagle, things are generally farther away and walking is often not an option.

A look at GasBuddy.com’s “temperature map,” which tracks the cost of fuel across the United States, reveals other interesting ways to consider gasoline costs in a Patchwork Nation.

The first: Prices differ depending on the state. That’s due to state taxes and the cost that goes into making the specific blend that each state requires by law.

But a larger trend is behind those state figures, says Jason Toews, a cofounder of GasBuddy. “The larger the city, generally the larger the range of prices,” he says. “Rural locations tend to be more uniform in price and those prices tend to be higher.”

So people in Sioux Center, Iowa, (Tractor Country) are likely to pay more than people in Des Moines, Iowa. People in Eagle are likely to pay more than people in Denver. And, yes, people in Lincoln City are likely to pay more than people in Portland, Ore.

What does all that mean for the presidential race?

Well, Service Worker Centers like Lincoln City and Boom Towns like Eagle are expected to be “battlegrounds” in the fall. The fact that both of these community types tend to be slightly more rural means that their residents tend to drive more and are probably taking more of the brunt of the rise in gasoline prices.

All of which is another way of saying: Wonks can chat all they want about whether a gas tax holiday is good policy, but it looks like it might be very good politics.

Yes, Mr. Wright was loud and bombastic, but he was not Senator Obama and nothing indicated that the pastor’s views represented those of the candidate. Plus, Obama used the situation to deliver a thoughtful, well-received speech on race in America.

But it appears that things may have changed after the latest round of the Wright-Obama show.

This time Wright openly embraced Louis Farrakhan, a man the majority of Americans find distasteful. Wright also showed a penchant for far-out conspiracy theories when he said he believed that the US government spread AIDS to attack African-Americans.

The Obama campaign seemed to sense something was different about Wright’s latest remarks. This time Obama’s reaction was more forceful. He said the pastor’s remarks were “divisive and destructive” and they offended him. On Wednesday, his wife appeared on CNN’s “Anderson Cooper 360” to address the issue.

Judging from the response in at least one Patchwork Nation community, the Obama campaign may be right to worry.

To gauge the fallout from the dust-up of the past week, we talked to people in Los Alamos, N.M. (Monied ’Burbs). Los Alamos, like the community type it represents, is split between the two parties going into the fall campaign. It is full of the wealthy, white swing voters that campaigns must reach in order to win the presidency. It is the kind of place where Wright’s antics could have a real impact – and to a certain extent, it looks as though they already have.

“I have seen the Obama statement and I have also talked to a number of people about his response,” Bill Enloe, chairman of Los Alamos National Bank, wrote in an e-mail. “The general feeling is that Obama appears very political and much of his original popularity as an agent for change is diminished. It is amazing to me that a shift can accrue so quickly, but I have seen a decline in his support over the past two days.”

Sharon Stover, a member of the Los Alamos Juvenile Justice Advisory Board, says she’s also heard people use the word “political” to describe Obama, and believes it started after Wright called Obama a “politician” who “says what he has to say.”

“It’s a distraction for Obama,” Ms. Stover says. “I believe Wright is hurting his chances. I’ve spoken to a few folks who do not understand what Wright’s motive is in getting in the mix again.”

That’s a sentiment the Obama campaign may share. If there is good news for Obama – at least in Los Alamos – it was New Mexico Sen. Jeff Bingaman’s endorsement this week, Stover says. “People have a great deal of respect for Bingaman in Los Alamos – he is a huge supporter [of Los Alamos lab].”

Not all residents are convinced the latest flare-up is significant. “I think a lot of people look at him and say, ‘We all have a lot of friends that say stupid things,’ ” says Jim Hall, Los Alamos’s County Council chairman. But the latest incident, he says, reinforces the doubts of those who have been uncertain of Obama.

Ron Dolin, Los Alamos County Republican chairman, expresses admiration for Obama’s political ability, but says the Wright fiasco has sowed doubts that will resurface in the fall. “The Wright thing is starting to chip away at Obama and will, I believe, hurt him in the fall,” Mr. Dolin says. “I don’t think many people in Los Alamos believe Obama is a radical like his pastor. At the same time, I think many are starting to understand he is not as moderate as his handlers are packaging him either.”

The town’s response, he says, is to learn more about Obama by picking up his books, and clarify their image of the candidate.

None of this means the Wright/Obama die is cast. It is, rather, the temperature of one community at one moment in time. But it does mean that the Wright controversy has more clearly entered voters’ consciousness – and left a mark.