If much of the electorate is driven by anger, much of that anger is driven by foreclosures.

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In an election year where voter anger has been the topic on everyone's minds, the loose confederation of groups and interests known as the Tea Party movement has been a star attraction for political analysts.

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As midterm elections approach, a look at recent poll data from the Pew Research Center for the People and the Press shows views about the economy that seem fairly uniform across Patchwork Nation's nine congressional district types. And it is not positive.

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Patchwork Nation has taken all the demographic and voting data we could get about the 435 districts - previous results, occupational patterns, income, religious affiliation, race - and identified nine types of congressional districts.

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In Patchwork Nation's socially conservative Evangelical Epicenters communities offer a unique window into the controversies of the last few weeks -- the fight over the proposed Islamic center and mosque in New York City and the proposed Quran-burning day. Religious adherence levels are higher in those places and Christian leaders have an especially powerful role.

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What the military giveth, the military can taketh away. It's not a happy lesson, but it is one that many Military Bastions, counties around armed services installations, have learned in the recent years through rounds of base closings.

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When Barack Obama won the White House, a running theme among the press was how tactically smart the Obama team was in everything from their use of the Web to their ability to see the long-term and not sweat the small stuff. However, the last few weeks have been full of perceived gaffes that have many in Washington stumped.

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How much money does it take to restart a sputtering economy? That's the question the federal government has been trying to figure out for the last year and a half. Patchwork Nation and ProPublica took a look at what impact stimulus funding has or hasn't had on the picture.

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Foreclosures make headlines. They are a big focus of the media's attention as the troubled economy continues to dominate the news. But even where banks aren't taking over properties, the collapse of the real estate market is having profound effects on local politics and county and city policymaking.

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Despite the media coverage of the political movement known as the tea party, it is difficult to tell what its impact is or will be in the fall. But let's look at what we can tell from Missouri's primary results. The Tea Party has made some inroads in Christian County, Patchwork Nation's representative Evangelical Epicenter. And yet, "tea party candidates" for the U.S. Senate and House did not do well there.

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As August arrives and people begin thinking in earnest about the midterm elections, there is a growing discussion of the impact of President Obama on November. Last week the president told a group of Democratic congressmen he may offer help, by not appearing in their districts.

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Over the course of the last 18 months, the wealthy, educated Monied Burbs of Patchwork Nation have seen a decline in their fortunes. How will that translate for Democrats in the midterms?

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In a country as complex as diverse as the United States, there aren't many issues that cut the same way everywhere. Some places may be strongly opposed, say to free trade, while others tend to be more supportive. Patchwork Nation sees and notes these differences regularly.

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There is only one Las Vegas. And if you are looking for a place to, say, eat nachos and drink margaritas while you watch a gondola go through an ersatz Venetian canal, well, your choices are obviously limited. But if you are looking for a place to simply place bets and you like the thrill of gambling, your options are numerous - and growing.

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No one doubted Arizona's new immigration law was going to have far-reaching repercussions - in areas ranging from law enforcement to unemployment. But as its implementation date approaches, some communities in the state are feeling new pains where their struggling economies may be least able to absorb it: their floundering housing markets.

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For those hoping for a quick economic turnaround, the last few weeks have been a cold splash of water in the face. A string of bad housing reports and bad unemployment news have even optimistic economic forecasters shaking their heads.

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In April, Patchwork Nation combed through registered members on the main tea party sites and found members were most heavily based in the nation's Boom Town counties - places that had grown rapidly in the first half of the last decade and since been hammered by foreclosures. Now Patchwork is back with an update.

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On Monday, the Supreme Court ruled 5-4 that the Constitution's Second Amendment right to bear arms applies to state and local gun control laws. And on Tuesday the overwhelming reaction was, now what? One thing is clear in traveling around our 12 Patchwork Nation county types. Guns have very different places and impacts in different communities that make up the United States.

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Some 15 states have passed laws that legalize medical marijuana in some form. For most of them, dispensing the drug remained a small and tentative program until October of last year. That was when the Obama administration decided to take a hands-off approach to state operations.

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Is the mood this election year anti-incumbent, anti-Democrat, anti-establishment? Is it all those things or a mix of them? There is evidence for all those possibilities. One thing is clear looking at the landscape in June: There is something different about 2010. Just look at South Carolina.

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Somewhere in the 50-plus days that raw crude has been spewing from a hole in the floor of the ocean, the Gulf oil spill became a political problem for the White House. But the problems for the president aren't the same everywhere.

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As we get further from last week's primaries, there's more to say about what's happening politically at the state level. In Montana, more minor races wound up contested, especially on the GOP ticket. Many political commentators chalked these new candidates up to the tea party movement, and some of the more contentious contests did pit more moderate Republican incumbents against harder conservatives.

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If you are looking for a unified theme out of Tuesday's round of primaries, good luck. In states holding the biggest votes of the night there were decidedly different storylines and lessons.

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There was good news last week as newly released April numbers showed home construction had grown by 4.4 percent in that month. Looked at through Patchwork Nation, there may be a bigger cause for concern in the climbing housing numbers - where the biggest improvements in the construction numbers are occurring.

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Of all the startling numbers out of the Gulf oil spill story, the most interesting one may be this: zero. That is the number of calls out of the Louisiana State legislature for any freeze on drilling in the Gulf.

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In small, mostly rural towns driven by tourism, Memorial Day weekend means more than just warmer temperatures. For these Service Worker Centers, economic recovery starts by turning five months of red ink to black.

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Across the 12 Patchwork Nation community types, there are two trends in the latest data: Unemployment is slowly, steadily dropping; foreclosures are rising. The big question: Will one of those trends win out by fall elections?

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Rand Paul's victory in the Kentucky Senate primary was hailed as the first victory for a true tea party candidate. In his victory speech, Paul himself announced he was coming to "take Washington back." Looking at Paul's win and the coming race using Patchwork Nation's 12 community types, one county type stands out as critical: the growing, diversifying Boom Towns.

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In a year where the biggest news is an unsettled electorate, everyone is looking for signposts and many think they saw them in Tuesday night's primary results - particularly in the Senate primaries in Pennsylvania and Kentucky.

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In March, NPR's Planet Money staff pooled $1,000 to buy a piece of a toxic asset -- a collection of bad mortgages, issued during the housing boom but now going into default -- and named it Toxie. Patchwork Nation is a fan of Planet Money's efforts, so with their help we decided to map where Toxie's mortgages are based.

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Over the past few months President Obama has been roaming the country talking to crowds on what the White House calls a Main Street tour. But even as the news media and politicians sometimes like to pretend Main Street is a single place, the conversations at those assorted cafés, bars and yard sales are often very different.

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Home of famously independent (or fickle) voters, the decisions voters make in Patchwork Nation's Monied Burbs can often decide an election. But looking at voter trends, 2010 is shaping up to be a very different kind of election, one perhaps driven less by the wealthy, somewhat muddled middle and more by other kinds of places.

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As Patchwork Nation has noted before, the composition of tea parties around the country varies by community type and is driven by a diverse set of issues that may -- or may not -- bring them together. In this Newshour Connect, we talked with three public media reporters to us tell us what makes the tea parties in their communities tick

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As analysts try to gauge the strength and meaning of the tea party movement there are two dominant questions: How much of the electorate do the disparate groups speak for and what is their primary objective? Those are difficult questions to answer with a group as decentralized as the tea party, but a look at a recent Pew Research Center poll and a scan of some local tea party websites is revealing.

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Standing in the spring of 2010 looking around at the economy, we think it's worth asking: What does a recovery look like? There have been positive signs lately - the auto industry looks much better and consumer confidence numbers are up - but concerns remain.

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The tough new immigration law in Arizona is bound to have a profound impact on communities in the Southwest. But in an election year, there may well be broader impacts in Arizona and throughout the region in counties we call "Immigration Nation."

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If you turned to a cable news channel in recent weeks, you may have seen a large group of "tea party" protesters, signs in hand, expressing outrage over government tyranny. To get an understanding of how big the loosely affiliated movement is and where it's based, Patchwork Nation has combed through online directories to find people who have registered with tea party organizations.

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Paul Solman tells the story of some homeowners who have stopped paying their mortgages even though they can still afford them.

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Clermont, Fla. - Mike Glantz has never been particularly politically involved. But the 70-something decided he was bothered enough by what's going on in Washington to organize a "tea party" meeting in this central Florida community.

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A group of journalism students from Syracuse University working on project called "The Young and the Wireless" traveled to most of Patchwork Nation's 12 communities to ask a short, immeasurably complex question: How would you use technology to the change the world?

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A new economic report showed March had the largest increase in new jobs in three years, but the unemployment rate held steady. Judy Woodruff talks to two economists about what those numbers could mean for the U.S. economy and American workers.

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On Friday, the March unemployment report adds more to the mix. But all these numbers represent people, and people relate to them differently. Of course, personal experiences have a lot to do with the differences. But another factor is the community where one resides.

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The state of Americans' Internet connectivity has been a big story in the past few weeks but mapping broadband networks is difficult. How exactly do the current networks look? Specifics are scarce, although the U.S. government has set aside $350 million for states to map their networks. Ohio already has a decent, if not official, measure of access and availability.

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The Massachusetts special Senate election is more than two months old now - ancient history by American political standards. President Obama carried the vote in Cape Cod by double digits in 2008. Yet, just a little more than a year later, Scott Brown essentially reversed the numbers. Is Cape Cod a bellwether for the midterms elections?

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The March edition of Patchwork Nation's Economic Hardship Index has a score of 33.5, which is exactly where it was in February. In some communities, the number has gotten a little better over the past month. In some, it's gotten a little worse. But overall, this measure of key economic indicators is high and is unchanged - a testament to the lingering effects of the recession.

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Using a collection of online directories from one of the biggest Tea Party groups, we have mapped and sorted a large number of members into the 12 Patchwork Nation county types. What we found are concentrations in particular places: agricultural "Tractor Country," the "Military Bastions" and "Mormon Outposts."

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Last week, President Obama made campaign-style stops pushing for health care reform in two different community types: a "Monied 'Burb" (in Glenside, Pa.) and a "Boom Town" (in St. Charles, Mo). His message was also different, reflecting the different audiences that the president must win over to gain public support.

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President Obama signed the $787 billion stimulus package a little more than a year ago to spur job creation during the economic downturn. Through the end of January, $283 billion had been allocated, according to a new analysis by ProPublica, a nonprofit public-interest news organization.

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The nation's unemployment rate held steady at 9.7 percent in February, but jobless rates for blacks and Latinos remain high. Judy Woodruff talks to two financial and policy experts about the disparity.

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The last bookstore in Laredo, Texas, closed its doors for good one month ago this week. This bilingual and bicultural border town in Webb County, long challenged by high illiteracy rates, is now adjusting to its new reality.

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