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

As Patchwork Nation has measured the number of tea party "meetups" in the last four months, one type of congressional district has stood out - those that have witnessed great population growth in the last decade.

Looking at foreclosures since January, it is precisely those districts that have faced the toughest times. There are 38 foreclosures for every 1,000 homes in those places. And remember, those figures are just the beginning. They equal lost home values that prevent moving for some, and lost nest eggs that mean delayed retirement for others.

In short, many in these districts are angry because there is a lot to be angry about. And these 56 districts, which are pretty evenly split between Democrats and Republicans, are likely to make an anti-incumbent shift toward the GOP next Tuesday.

However, anyone who wins a seat in Congress from these districts should take note. Many analysts believe the housing crisis won't improve for years -- the answer most give is, "it will take time." That means there is no quick fix for the foreclosure/housing price anger in those places, either.

Furthermore, this latest set of foreclosure data also suggests the housing pain is spreading out into new areas that had avoided the pain up to now. In other words, the number of angry voters out there may only grow.

Submit questions for Dante in the comments section below.

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.

Hailed by some as a new populist movement and decried by others as a simple manifestation of the far right of the GOP, the question about the grassroots group was the impact it would have on the midterms.

A Patchwork Nation analysis of meet-ups organized by Tea Party groups suggests the influence of the groups may have slowed*.

The scheduled meet-ups indicate that the groups remain a force in the 56 districts Patchwork Nation identifies as Booming Growth (those are places that have been hit hard by foreclosures), but interest in the Tea Party groups is more mixed in the rest of the district types. Some have increased slightly as Election Day approaches, others have decreased slightly.

In July and August, there were about 1,980 Tea Party events scheduled around the country, according to an analysis by Jim Gimpel, a University of Maryland professor. In September and October, there are about 2,380* (completed and scheduled). That's a decent bump, but remember that first number came during the dog days of summer and the second comes on the eve of Election Day.

In short, the numbers may not be showing a gathering Tea Party wave - as one might expect as November approaches - but rather a steady stream of anger, and one emanating most forcefully from districts where voters are experiencing the worst of the housing crisis.

What Drives the Tea Party

Counting Tea Party meet-ups is by no means a perfect system for measuring the size and strength of the loosely affiliated groups, but it offers a legitimate measure of voter enthusiasm. And looking at these meet-up numbers seems to suggest a pretty simple recipe for Tea Party passion.

Take a changing or developing neighborhood and sprinkle in a good number of foreclosures.

The three congressional district types with the most Tea Party meet-ups in September and October are the formerly prospering Booming Growth districts, the family-focused Young Exurbs and the heavily Asian New Diversity districts based on the West Coast.

Those district types are scheduled to hold more than two Tea Party events for every 100,000 people in them. They also all had more than 23 foreclosures per 1,000 homes between January and July.

What's the significance of those statistics? A large part of the Tea Party movement's motivation is anger - anger over government spending, anger over perceived government failures - and in these places, there simply is more to be angry about.

Remember, foreclosures are indicative of other problems in the housing market such as falling home values and people "upside down" in their homes (owing more on their mortgages than their homes are currently worth). Many people in these places are not only seeing foreclosure signs around their towns, they find themselves unable to move to different locales, for fear of the financial hit they will have to take if they sell.

This is something we saw up close this summer when we visited Eagle, Colo., which sits in the state's 2nd District, a Booming Growth district. Voter after voter there told us they knew people who were locked into a bad situation or they themselves were locked in one.

But you can also see the impact on Booming Growth districts in places like Nevada's 3rd District - around Las Vegas - and in the many struggling districts in Florida.

Foreclosures alone do not make for Tea Party hotbeds, of course. As Gimpel notes, exurban and formerly booming locales also share relatively unformed political identities. As new people fill new homes, a place begins to define itself. And for people in many of these districts, the anger associated with the 2010 campaign may end up carrying more formative meaning after this election.

What Kind of Impact?

So if the influence of the Tea Party movement on the 2010 midterms is more about targeted pockets or anger than a broad tidal wave, what will it mean for November?

Well, the tea partiers could have a big impact in those 56 Booming Growth districts and the 36 Young Exurb districts. Both those district types are fairly split between Democrats and Republicans. But for all the noise about the Tea Party, their supporters may not carry as much weight elsewhere.

For instance, their may be pockets of Tea Party enthusiasm in those 33 New Diversity districts, but their impact will likely be very limited - those districts lean heavily Democratic.

Meanwhile, culturally conservative Small Town America and Christian Conservative districts seem to have less Tea Party enthusiasm than other places. Those district types were among the places with the fewest meet-ups in this latest tally: less than one meet-up for every 100,000 people in September and October.

Other more closely divided district types, places like Established Wealth districts and those districts that fall into the broad category we call The Shifting Middle also don't seem especially Tea Party focused.

Of course, the Tea Party energy inside the Republican Party has already had a significant impact on GOP primaries across the country. If Ken Buck in Colorado, Sharron Angle in Nevada, Rand Paul in Kentucky and Marco Rubio in Florida all become U.S. senators, they will have done so by upending the Republican establishment's preferred candidates in their states by riding the Tea Party energy to victory.

The message? The "Tea Party" movement is interesting and new and it has been heavily covered. But it is only a slice of what is defining this election cycle. Voter anger and unhappiness in 2010 reaches far and wide, well beyond the reaches of the Tea Party.

But 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.

In a question about the economic recovery, half the people or more in eight of the nine district types say that "it will be a long time before the economy recovers." Some of those district types lean left and some lean right, voters in some are relatively well-to-do and some are poor. The dour mood, in other words, covers most of the country.

Dig a little deeper, however, and you see how those views don't necessarily follow how people feel about their own personal economic situation and they don't follow how people in those nine types say they are leaning with their votes - voters in four of the types say they are leaning toward Democratic candidates voters in other five are leaning toward the GOP.

Taken together the numbers show the economy is without question weighing heavily on people's minds, but its impact on the election in November may be harder to predict.

It's not me, it's them

The numbers come from a September Pew poll and like any poll it was a snapshot of opinion at that moment in time, but there's little reason to believe attitudes on the economy have shifted dramatically since it was conducted. And looking at the numbers there is something of a disconnect between the way voters in out district types feel about their own economic situation and how they feel about the national economic direction.

Look, for instance, at the wealthy, largely suburban districts we call Established Wealth. In those 82 districts, 53 percent of the voters say they think a recovery is a "long time" off. But when asked about their own economic situation only 20 percent see it as "poor."

In the 17 largely sparsely-populated districts we call Small Town America, nearly 64 percent of the voters say any recovery is a "long time" away, but only 21 percent describe their personal economic situation as "poor."

And interestingly, the 21 heavily African-American districts we call Old Diversity offer the reverse view. Only 40 percent of the voters there say a recovery is a "long time" off, but 34 percent of those same people say their individual economic situation is "poor." That's the lowest percentage of voters who see the tough times continuing for a long time, but the highest percentage who say they themselves are suffering.

Politically, these types are divided on where their voters may be going. While individual races may differ, the poll shows that broadly speaking: Voters in those Established Wealth locations seem ready to split their votes; Voters in Small Town America districts are leaning toward their GOP options; And voters in Old Diversity districts lean solidly toward Democrats.

The Politicized Economy

Why do these numbers look like this?

Maybe voters believe the current economic troubles are bigger than anything the government can do about them. Maybe voters see a disconnect between their personal situation and the broader economy.

Both those things may play some role, but pulling back a little there is the larger issue of the politicizing of the economy as an issue. In the most politically polarized places in America talking about "the economy" has in some ways become shorthand for talking about the Presidency of Barack Obama.

So the two communities that give Obama the highest approval ratings in the Pew poll (over 62 percent), the Old Diversity and New Diversity district types, are also the types that feel the sunniest about the national economic recovery despite the fact that people in those places don't feel especially good about their personal economic situation.

The reverse is true in Small Town America districts, where Mr. Obama scores very low (only 36 percent approval) and people feel worst about the national economic picture, but people's personal economic situations are not as bad as others.

At the same time, there are some places that apply different rules to how they see the economic situation. The Wired and Educated districts, for example see their personal economic situation as pretty decent (fewer than 20 percent see it as "poor") but 50 percent of the voters think the recovery is still a "long time" from now. And still, 60 percent approve of the way Obama is handling his job and voters are leaning heavily toward Democratic candidates for November.

The point is despite how important voters say the economy is as an issue, beware drawing too many conclusions from broad economic polls.

The U.S. economic situation is particularly difficult to understand in 2010. Voters are unsure or who or what is to blame for the hard times. Some see the current conditions as reinforcing their particular political stance. And some see it as beyond politics.

Perhaps more to the point, even with all the economic unease in the air, voters don't seem confident either party has offered a plan to set things right.

*Dante Chinni is the director of the Patchwork Nation project. *

There are usually two ways of looking at midterm congressional races, neither of them wholly accurate.

There is the tendency to see the 435 separate House races as completely individual events - an idea that all politics is hyper local. And there is the "national view" of races that they are ultimately about Democratic and Republican pickups and losses in Congress.

Patchwork Nation proposes a third way as the Election Day nears. We have 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. This approach is similar to the one we have used, with great success, in breaking down American counties.

Today we formally unveil that breakdown and map with the hope of getting a more subtle, nuanced picture of the 2010 election. What is moving voters in different types of district? How are economic and cultural forces shaping their votes?

The midterms are about more than a handful of swing districts that might flip this way or that, they are about how people living in different kinds of places think the nation should navigate through a long recession, a complicated foreign policy featuring hot and cold wars overseas, and divisive issues like gay marriage tax cuts for the wealthy.

What We'll Be Examining

With this new map and set of breakdowns we are uniquely situated to study how different congressional districts - and types of district - think those important matters should be handled. And while we acknowledge there every district is unique, we feel we can get inside some commonalities and report on larger themes in the campaign that many in the media will miss.

We will be able to track everything from where the housing foreclosures are per district and district type to where the Tea Party is holding meetings. And visitors to the site will be able to look at more basic questions like which district and district type has seen the most people moving houses in the last five years - the three districts in Nevada are truly remarkable.

Every district type has a page (like this one) where visitors can see information like occupational and income distributions, votes on key issues (the stimulus and health care bills) and voting trends in previous congressional races. In the next few weeks every congressional district in America will have a page like this on the site.

We think we can use the Patchwork Nation congressional district breakdown to study nine different storylines in the 2010 campaign. We'll be delving into those in the coming weeks.

The Nine Types

Herewith, a brief look at our nine types with brief descriptions.

Established Wealth. High-income districts principally in larger cities and their suburbs, established n eighborhoods. Full of family-aged residents employed in white-collar jobs.

The Shifting Middle. Middle-income districts in dense established suburbs and midsized cities, with family-aged residents and mixed ethnic populations, including growing Latino presence.

Booming Growth. High-population growth districts in the West primarily, with rising incomes and many residents coming from elsewhere. Employment in information and transportation industries is prevalent, as is Evangelical church affiliation.

Young Exurbs. Districts with younger age distributions, newly settled fringe suburbs and mid-sized towns, growing Latino populations; college educated populations

Old Diversity. Lower income big-city and some small town Southern districts with large African American populations.

New Diversity. Middle income districts largely on the West Coast, with significant Asian American and immigrant populations.

Wired and Educated. Highly educated, youthful districts with single householders, employment in information industries, high college enrollments, large universities, ethnically diverse and secular.

Christian Conservative. White Evangelical Christian populations predominantly in Southern and Border South states and small town/rural districts outside the South. Lower and middle income, with sizable elderly concentrations.

Small Town America. Rural and small town districts in the Midwest, Plains and in the West. Aging and declining populations, though better educated than in the South, with Evangelical and Mainline Protestant presence.

Things to Keep in Mind

These groups were identified by University of Maryland Professor James Gimpel - a consultant to the Patchwork Nation - and as he notes there are outliers among these types. Not every district is a perfect match.

As we discovered with Patchwork Nation's county breakdown, analyses like this one are not easy. Counties can be big and diverse. And that is doubly true with congressional districts, which are often drawn in odd ways to create certain voting blocks or to break them up.

Some are massive - the entire state of Montana is a congressional district, as are the Dakotas and Wyoming - and that leads to challenges.

For instance, Montana and Wyoming's districts fall into the Shifting Middle, while North and South Dakota are Small Town America. Why is that? Because even thought Montana and Wyoming are vast, their population centers are geographically small - and they are changing. The Dakotas are vast, but their population is more spread out and the states are losing population.

But we feel the district breakdown here represents a serious effort to get beyond the "horserace" coverage of swing districts and into the more complicated decisions that go into the vote in various districts.

Please take some time. Click around the map, explore your district and feel free to leave any comments or questions.

But the 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 religious leaders have an especially powerful role.

So how are people reacting to those stories in Nixa, Mo. - an Evangelical Epicenter Patchwork Nation has been visiting since 2008? It is a decidedly mixed bag, according to people we talk to there - a blend of religious tolerance combined with some anger about "fairness."

And there are differences between what we hear from church organizations and worshippers.

Church Leaders Speak Out

Many evangelical denominations made strong statements denouncing the proposed burning of Qurans by a small church in Florida.

The Assemblies of God, based outside of Nixa in Springfield publicly objected to the burning. "I don't believe that [burning the Qur'an] is respectful toward the very people we want to love into the Kingdom," said Assemblies of God Superintendent George O. Wood. "It only drives Muslims farther away from the Lord Jesus and reinforces the false notion that followers of Jesus are crusaders from the Middle Ages."

The World Evangelical Alliance urged the pastor of the church to cancel the burning - the event was later indefinitely postponed.

On a more local scale, Chad Mattingly, pastor of the Nixa Christian Church, in an e-mail called the Quran-burning idea "an embarrassment to all Jesus followers for it represents hatred and division among people of faith. Jesus said, 'You will know my followers by their love.' Also, many do not realize the common roots that Islam, Judaism and Christianity share through the line of Abraham. We worship and follow the same God, Yahweh."

And others in Nixa told us many evangelicals opposed the burning for similar reasons to Gen. David Petreaus, who is overseeing the U.S. military's fight in Afghanistan. Like soldiers, missionaries might find themselves the targets of retaliation in Muslim countries abroad.

Is Amount of Criticism Fair?

Along with those condemnations, however, there are questions by some Christians around Nixa about how Terry Jones, the pastor who proposed the burn, has been treated in the media.

A blogger in the area known as Bungalow Bill found something distressing in the way the media -- and particularly President Obama -- treated Jones. "Reverend Jones says this was a calling, as from God. Who is to question that if you have faith?" he wrote on his blog, which usually does not concern religion. He continued "Yet, Obama who claims to be a Christian, shows no respect for Jones' faith. Rather he condemns it. Now, as a Christian, how does Obama know Jones wasn't called upon by God to carry this out? No Christian should question the faith of this man."

Other Nixans who are less political than Bungalow Bill and also thought picking on Jones was somewhat unfair.

Pastor Gary Swearengin, of the Nixa Church of the Nazarene, says he agreed that the Koran burning would have stirred up emotions unnecessarily, but added "[Jones] is on the air and the media are just crucifying him. ... I probably don't agree with his plans to burn those Qurans, but I can see his thinking - that we're not making a stand for God."

Swearengin says he understands and preaches that a Christian's job is to do as Jesus Christ would and "be like him to the point where we control out emotions" but that is not necessarily easy.

Those sentiments help explain why Islam will likely remain a hot button issue into the fall. Swearengin says he considers the proposed Islamic center project near Ground Zero in New York "like spitting in the eye" of the people there. It's not a question of whether it should be allowed, it's whether it should be done.

One writer on the Southern Baptist Convention's website said called the Quran-burning idea "foolish and wrongheaded" but questioned why "an obscure pastor of a tiny congregation" would get so much international media attention while the Folsom Street Fair, a San Francisco festival devoted to bondage and leather that is attended by tens of thousands, doesn't.

Much of the coverage of the political environment this year has centered on fiscal issues - taxes, spending and deficits - but there are still broad swaths of the country where cultural issues are dominant. And as November approaches in the Evangelical Epicenters, voters are tuned in and motivated around them.

Sara Johnson contributed to this report.

And it is a lesson that the 16-county region in southern Virginia known as Hampton Roads is confronting now.

The economy in Hampton Roads is diverse, pushed by multiple drivers including trade at the area's massive ports and tourism on its beaches, but always underpinning it all has been a steady and substantial military presence. Four of the 16 counties in the region fall into Patchwork Nation's Military Bastion category - including Norfolk, home to the Navy's Second Fleet.

Now all of that is being thrown in the air after a string of announcements from the Pentagon that appear to point to a scaling down of much of the area's military presence.

Since January, the region has been hearing about how it might lose one its carriers to Florida - meaning a possible loss of 11,000 jobs. In early August, Secretary of Defense Robert Gates announced plans to eliminate the Joint Forces Command based in the region - another 6,000 jobs hang in the balance there. And just recently came word that the Navy may consider "mothballing" the second fleet.

Add it all together and the impact is vast. The military has long been considered a key part of the three-legged stool that props up the region. The people of Hampton Roads are wondering how long that will continue to be the case - and whether that stool is going to get a bit wobbly.

A Stool with Two Legs

In some ways Hampton Roads is positioned better for cuts than other Military Bastions around the country. A stool with two legs is better than a stool with none. In some Military Bastions, big cuts in nearby bases can destroy a local economy.

Hopkinsville, Ky., for instance, relies so heavily on nearby Fort Campbell it's hard to imagine what the economy would look like there without it. The manufacturing jobs that once helped push the area forward have long since dried up, as have the rail routes.

But no matter what the rest of the area economy looks like, Hampton Roads is not taking the news of its potential military departures lightly. Five different cities in the area quickly released resolutions protesting the Joint Forces elimination. Some cities are actively fighting the Joint Forces decision. Economic impact studies showed the area would be losing billions in revenue with the changes in mind.

The state of Virginia also quickly jumped in and Gov. Bob McDonnell announced the creation of a commission designed to expand the state's defense and national security facilities.

The stakes in the proposed changes are much higher than the just military jobs. In the modern military, remember, contractors are an integral part of everything from maintenance to office work. The net impact of large cuts is sweeping.

The Politics of Utility and Austerity

That's why, in some ways, the budget battles involving Military Bastions like Hampton Road are going to be fascinating to watch in the coming years as the national debt plays a large role in the national political dialogue.

The nation's Military Bastions tend to be conservative bastions as well, solidly Republican. And as voices in the GOP increasingly argue for austerity, eventually the budget axe will fall on these communities driven, in many senses, by government spending.

In announcing the elimination of the Joint Forces command, Defense Secretary Robert Gates cited as one of the reasons "the culture of endless money that has taken hold" in the military.

And so in Hampton Roads and Military Bastions like it, the arguments are likely to begin, focusing on the need or utility of the items or forces being cut. No one has argued that a program that is wasteful, duplicative or unnecessary should be saved. And in Hampton Roads, the lines have already been drawn.

Rep. Randy Forbes, whose district encompasses some of the Hampton Roads, called the decision to eliminate the Joint Forces Command "further evidence of this administration allowing its budget for social change to determine defense spending." The argument in other words is less about the need for the cuts than spending priorities.

The meaning? All the talk from politicians about needing to make cuts and trim back spending in Washington is going to face some serious hurdles. Austerity is always popular until it hits near home.

Military Bastions like Hampton Roads may find themselves with more reasons than other communities to be picky about what form of austerity they embrace.

This is cross-posted on Patchwork Nation.

Political experts have decried the White House's stepping into the New York mosque fight and the First Lady and Sasha's trip to Spain. But the move that may have raised the most eyebrows was White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs' attack of what he called the "professional left." In an interview with The Hill, Gibbs let loose on the political left saying, in one of the chat's highlights, "They will be satisfied when we have Canadian healthcare and we've eliminated the Pentagon. That's not reality."

The move was criticized because midterm elections are usually seen as a poor time to rile the party base. Turnout numbers are generally down in such years, leaving more enthusiastic voters -- i.e. base voters -- a more prominent role.

So why beat up the Democratic base? Looking at the election through Patchwork Nation, maybe there is a difference of opinion in what 2010 election is about -- or about what the Obama base actually is.

Back in 2008

President Obama's 2008 win was a fairly broad-based one. Yes, he did well in county types where one would expect him to do well - he got 68 percent of the vote in the big city Industrial Metropolis counties and 58 percent in the collegiate Campus and Careers counties. But he did especially well in the swing-voting, largely suburban Monied 'Burb counties.

He took more than 55 percent of the vote in those locales and won them by some 12 percentage points. Four years before, Sen. John Kerry won those same counties by less than 2 percent.

The burbs are critical to understanding the Obama administration for two reasons.

First, in the simplest terms, they matter a lot. They hold some 69 million people and they are big parts of some key states on the electoral map: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Virginia, Michigan, Colorado.

It is no secret that White House Chief of Staff Rahm Emanuel was extraordinarily focused on the suburbs as the key to Democratic success in 2006 and 2008.

Second, the voters in them tend to be less ideological. While all of Patchwork Nation's county types are geographic areas aggregated into larger groups (meaning there are obviously pockets that deviate from the profile) the Monied 'Burbs hold more voters that go into the election season unsure of which way to vote. There are fewer traditional "base" voters for both parties.

And in 2008, the burbs seemed to swing heaviest to Obama that fall when the economy collapsed.

How does that all fit into 2010? Despite the tough times nationally, the Monied Burbs have been pretty resilient in their support of Obama. The latest Pew Research Center data from late June showed the burbs still supported Obama overall, giving him a 52 percent approval rating. That number mirrored the 52 percent approval rating from Campus and Careers. Only the Industrial Metros gave him a higher number, 65 percent.

The burbs, in other words, have been good to Obama.

Congress or the White House?

Still, does it make sense to seek the support of those more moderate voters in a midterm year? It probably does since elections are never simply about just wooing the middle or energizing the base. It is always a bit of both.

In part, the Obama team is calculating that the actions and words of the more conservative elements of the GOP -- consider the tea party movement -- will go a long way in stoking the fires of Democratic base. Meanwhile some of the Republicans' more incendiary candidates, will turn off moderate voters. Already, in Nevada, Sharron Angle has turned out to be lightning rod that has dramatically increased the chances that the embattled and unpopular Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid might eke out a re-election victory.

Democrats are also proactively trying to recreate some of the 2008 Obama campaign magic by pouring $30 million into an effort to reconnect with those first-time voters (many of them young and minority voters) and get them to the polls even if the name Obama does not appear atop the ballot.

There was also some speculation surrounding Gibbs' comments that the Obama team is thinking less about 2010 as much as it is aiming at keeping those moderate Monied Burb voters in the fold for 2012. Voters in suburban Philadelphia and Cleveland and Detroit and Denver will be key to the administration's re-election hopes.

And despite all the talk of "what was the strategy" and even this analysis, there is at least one other possibility. It could be that Gibbs' words came from frustration and reflected his actual thoughts. In fact, that may be the most likely explanation.

That does still happen in Washington on occasion.

In the past year-plus the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act has pumped hundreds of billions into the U.S. economy. Yet, the slump continues. Why? Has the stimulus had an impact? Has it made things better than they would have been without the stimulus - a frequent argument of the Obama administration?

With the help of ProPublica, a non-profit investigative news operation, Patchwork Nation has sorted through the first year of ARRA funding and found two things, both of them somewhat disconcerting.

First, when you look at how the money was disbursed using Patchwork Nation's 12 county types, the places that need the most help have not done as well as some other communities. Second, even taking that "misplaced disbursement" into account, the money pushed into U.S. communities is significant and still sluggish economy suggests a the hole in the U.S. economy is massive.

In other words, even with the $272 billion that has been spent, according to ProPublica, the larger economic inertia seems to be a powerful force that will be hard to overcome. Would better targeting the stimulus dollars have helped? Possibly. But the barriers to significant economic improvement seem steep.

Where It's Gone

The spending in the stimulus has been far from even up to now. Some county types have seen less that $700 per person - the socially conservative Evangelical Epicenters - while others have seen more than $1,300 per person - Mormon Outpost counties. Some differences among Patchwork Nation's 12 county types is to be expected, even welcome if the money is targeted correctly.

(Reporter's note: The 50 counties holding the state capitals were not included in this analysis because that money was often spread to locales across the states.)

But the way the money reached our 12 community types shows something of a haphazard distribution not aimed specifically at places in need or places that might help jump-start the broader economy.

If the goal of the stimulus was to reach places in need, it arguably may have missed its target.

Through the first-quarter of 2010, the period through which ProPublica has broken down data, five county types had unemployment rates of more than 10 percent - the wealthy Monied 'Burbs, African-American heavy Minority Central counties, the Evangelical Epicenters, the big city Industrial Metropolis counties and the small town Service Worker Centers. Of those five county types, none received more than 1,000 per capita and only one county type, the Industrial Metropolis was in the top half of the 12 types.

Meanwhile, Tractor Country counties, which had a very low unemployment rate - less than seven percent - raked in an average of $1,282 per capita.

In short, a lot of the stimulus went to places that probably didn't need it as much.

Looking for a Jump Start

But the stimulus was about more than alleviating economic pain. It was, in theory anyway, about stimulating the economy. Did the money go to the right places if that was the goal. Arguably, it has been a mixed bag.

If the stimulus was aimed at stimulating the economy then the Monied Burbs might have been the best target for the dollars. As we have noted before on Patchwork Nation, those 275 counties have the highest median household income and help drive the consumer economy.

Through the first quarter of this year, however, the ProPublica data show that $703 per capita were spent there, the second lowest spent in any county type in Patchwork Nation.

Other wealthy communities did better though. For instance, the relatively wealthy Boom Town counties that grew rapidly in the housing boom saw a lot more stimulus dollars, about $982 per person.

But maybe more important than the how the stimulus was spread is the sheer size of it. After all, throwing $800 billion at the slumping economy was supposed to help the country more broadly. The question is was it enough.

Patchwork Nation spent the last week in Eagle, Colo., a Boom Town, and there was little doubt the stimulus was having some kind of effect. But the construction trade there is still hurting badly and while repaving roads is helping some, many more have seen little or no work. The owner of one building crane company told us he had lost three of his five machines in the last two years and was hoping just to make it through winter.

Consider for a moment the numbers here. Even at $703 per capita, that would mean an average family of four living in a Monied Burb county had received, on average, more than $2,800 in stimulus from the ARRA in the past year. That may not be a massive boost, but it is not a tiny amount either. And still the economy limps along.

And remember those are just averages. Some places have received more, some less.

Eagle County, a Boom Town, has received only about $520 per capita in stimulus money thus far. That's below the Boom Town average, of course. But, more to the point, many people there seem to feel the local economy has not yet bottomed out.

Dante Chinni is the project director for Patchwork Nation.

Here in Northwestern Montana, one needs only look at the situation happening on the shores of stunning Flathead Lake to see the housing crisis will continue to haunt communities for years to come. Residents along the largest natural freshwater lake west of the Mississippi had watched as property values climb throughout the 1990s and early 2000s.

Fueled by many out-of-staters looking for a second home with views of the glacier-carved Mission Mountains and only miles from Glacier National Park, property reappraisals including land and home soared to as much as $10,000 per foot of shoreline along the lake.

Those increased values helped push Flathead County, which abuts the lake into the Monied 'Burb county classification in Patchwork Nation. And like other communities that experienced rapid growth in real estate assessments those ballooning values came with other costs.

The Price of Value

On Flathead Lake, the complicating factor has been rising property tax bills. For the new residents who had dropped $1 million for a home, the bill was no shock, but for the residents who had owned their home for 20 years, the new levy threatened to tax them out of their homes.

In Montana, reappraisals happen every six years under state law and many residents, myself included, just received the reappraisal done in 2008. For most residents in Flathead and Lake counties that abut the lake, the reappraisal showed an increase in value, but nothing too dramatic.

The story is different on the lake.

Take, for instance, the story of the Pettinatos. Judy Pettinato's parents bought a piece of property on nearby Whitefish Lake in 1957 for a whopping $6,500. They built a home and left it to their daughter after both passed away.

When Judy and her husband retired to the home in 2008, all seemed right with the world, but then the reappraisal came. The Flathead Beacon reported, "The reappraisal showed the property's total market value in 2002 at $374,654. Pettinato said they were expecting an increase for the reappraisal, but the July 2008 market value - more than $1.8 million - was shocking, " Molly Priddy wrote last year. "Even more shocking were the estimated tax payments. The tax calculator from the Department of Revenue showed payments increasing from over $4,000 in 2008 to more than $13,000 in 2014."

A Tale of Two Tax Rates

Flathead and Lake Counties on the surface could not be more different. Flathead, with the towns of Whitefish and Bigfork, is a Monied 'Burb in Patchwork Nation. Through the last few years the average income had continued to climb as many out-of-staters, especially from California, bought property and settled there. Lake County, which we have been tracking for a year, is on the south side of the Flathead and is a Tractor Country. Largely rural and dotted with a small towns, one thin strip of the county, along the lakeshore, has seen home values climb.

And so residents of these two very different counties found a common enemy in the state reappraisals.

The Pettinatos are not alone in bemoaning their new tax rates, locked in at the moment the real estate market was at its zenith and now set until 2014. Many residents along the picturesque lakes of northwestern Montana are reeling from tax bills that are due to double or triple.

And, of course, the kicker is most of their homes are not worth those sky-high prices any more. Although the real estate implosion that has ravaged Nevada, Florida and California has not slammed Montana as much, the sky-high prices for these sought-after lakefront properties have taken a beating.

"Homes that were worth $200,000 or $250,000 have not seen their value fall that much," Kellyn Brown, editor the Beacon said this week. "But for places that were selling at $350,000 and up we have seen a real drop. You are seeing property along the lake go to auction and that just wasn't happening a couple years ago."

A recent article in the Missoulian newspaper in nearby Missoula County reported that lakefront property sales along Flathead had plummeted from $61 million in 2006 to $19 million in 2009.

It should be noted this is a common problem in places that have seen stratospheric property assessment increases in recent years. The crash has been so hard in Eagle County, a Boom Town in Colorado, that some neighborhoods have seen special assessments that cut values across the board designed to make home values more realistic and more current.

A Plea for Mercy

The drop in values in Montana has led many people to request such reappraisals from the state, but now some in the Legislature say the entire process needs reform. Not surprisingly, lawmakers who represent the lakefront homeowners are proposing more drastic changes.

One idea floated this week would allow homeowners to pay a lower tax rate if a private reappraisal shows their property value has dropped. Another proposal would base the value of the property on its most recent selling price. But the Legislature, which meets only every other year, will not take up the matter until next year and there is an election before then.

"A lot will depend on what happens in the election," Brown said. "If the Legislature is evenly split like it was last time, it may be tough to get this changed," adding that the reappraisal issues only effects some people in northwest Montana and has not been an issues in the windblown Tractor Countries of sparsely populated eastern Montana.

For the time being, the state is standing by its assessment of the property values, saying that they are comfortable with their numbers and that the appraisals of homes in the two Flathead Lake counties were deemed most accurate by an outside consultant.

And Montana at the state level is facing the same rock-and-a-hard-place issues as Washington. To wit, how can elected officials balance the economic needs of individual citizens with the larger needs of the general fund?

In Montana, the average household income is just shy of $44,000. In Flathead County, it's slightly over that, but in Lake County, the average family brings home $38,505. With property appraisals soaring along some parts of the lake, the average family can only afford so much in terms of land and taxes. But any reappraisals will shrink an already anemic tax base and that could mean trouble for communities trying to keep their services running and financial house in order.

There is no easy answer to the challenges presented, and until the housing market settles into some new norm it doesn't look like there will be.

Dante Chinni contributed to this report from Eagle, Colo. Lee Banville is the former editor of the Online NewsHour and a digital strategy adviser to the NewsHour.

Christian County is an Evangelical Epicenter in Patchwork Nation, one of the culturally conservative counties that has not found much to like about the state of the government since the election of Barack Obama. And the Tea Party has made some inroads in the area, with a decent number of registered members in Christian and the surrounding Evangelical counties.

And yet, "tea party candidates" for the U.S. Senate and House did not do well there.

The winner of the Republican primary for the Senate seat was Rep. Roy Blunt, who has been Nixa's congressman, but who tea party groups in Missouri expressly did not support. Meanwhile, the next GOP nominee for Blunt's old seat, a cowboy-hat-wearing former auctioneer named Billy Long, was also not on the tea party's favorite list. At least not with many tea partiers in Nixa.

How do we know? One Patchwork Nation source on the ground in Nixa found out with a pizza coupon.

Buy One, Get One Free ... and a Constitution

John Schmalzbauer, a Patchwork Nation blogger in Nixa and a professor at Missouri State University, wrote about a packet he recently received in his mailbox that included brochures for Republican Senate candidate Chuck Purgason and Republican House candidate Mike Moon. It also included a flier with this message, writes Schmalzbauer:

"The August 3rd 2010 primary election is vitally important. Voting 'YES' on Proposition C means no to Obama 'CARE'. Missouri will be the tipping point as to whether our nation proceeds into European Socialism or not. Your vote will give the entire nation our message from Missouri, it is vitally important you and your friends get Proposition C passed. Enclosed in this door hanger bag is a Godfather's Pizza Menu. Bring this piece of paper along with that menu and you get a Buy One Get One Free Buffet, which is good till Dec. 31, 2010 in Nixa & Ozark. Also, while supplies last, go to any IHOP in Springfield or Branson, Mo and get a FREE pocket Constitution."

The packet of materials shows the tea party movement in the area is at least organized, but the failures of Purgason and Moon show it may not be a major force in the area -- at least when it comes to pushing for candidates.

"The only winner from the packet I received was Christian County Presiding Commissioner candidate Lou Lapaglia," Schmalzbauer writes. "Lou was a favorite of at least one Democrat running for office, so he wasn't perceived in the same way as Purgason and the others."

"Billy Long got a good share of the vote. He won the endorsement of Missouri Right to Life and [former Arkansas Governor] Mike Huckabee's group, as well as former SW Missouri Congressman Mel Hancock (a real favorite at tea parties). At the same time, some conservatives didn't like him (such as the website 'Long is Wrong'). There was negative campaigning against him."

Not enough to stop him though. Blunt, it should be noted, also had the Right to Life and Huckabee endorsements. And if there is an immediate lesson out of Nixa and Christian County it is that in Evangelical Epicenters, even if there is a tea party presence, it is still the voices of the Christian Right that hold the real sway.

"I wonder about the people behind the door hanger bag (which was actually put in my brick mailbox holder)," Schmalbauer wrote. "I suspect they will vote for Blunt and Long in November. They certainly won't vote Democratic. But it appears that a slice of the tea party movement ... is disappointed today."

The Proposition C Win

Of course, tea party members did have the Proposition C victory to celebrate. Proposition C carries no weight legally but was a way for the voters of Missouri to register dissatisfaction with the health care reform bill passed this spring. It promised to "deny the government authority to penalize citizens for refusing to purchase private health insurance or infringe upon the right to offer or accept direct payment for lawful healthcare services."

But hailing the measure's victory as a win for the tea party may also miss the point. In conservative communities opposition to this year's health care reform bill goes far beyond the tea party movement. In Christian County, more people voted in favor of the proposal than any person on the ballot: 12,556 votes or 82 percent.

That's not to say the tea party isn't celebrating the win for the measure. It's just that many others are as well to. In fact, statewide Proposal C won 71 percent of the vote with more than 667,000 votes. That was more than all the votes for the GOP candidates for U.S. Senate combined.

Such is the life of a president overseeing a country roiled by economic troubles and facing the dreaded off-year election -- when the party in power traditionally loses seats in Congress.

And Patchwork Nation may be able to offer the president a road map of travel "dos" and "don't bothers" in the upcoming campaign season.

The last 18 months have not been easy on the president's approval rating -- it's down across the board in our county types -- but recent Pew Research Center polling data filtered through Patchwork Nation's 12 county types, shows there are still some places where a visit from the commander-in-chief may offer some value-added to Democrats seeking office. And there are some places he clearly should avoid.

Here's a breakdown of how the president fared in the 2008 election compared with his latest approval ratings. Scroll over for community type:

Places to Book Presidential Hotel Rooms

Specific communities vary in their feelings about the president of course, but on the whole, there are only three county types where Mr. Obama still has juice -- the big city Industrial Metropolis, the wealthy educated Monied 'Burbs and the collegiate Campus and Careers counties. And of those three, the Industrial Metropolis locales are the only places that truly stand out. Roughly 65 percent of the people in those counties approve of how the president is handling his job.

That's a remarkably stable number. Obama captured about 68 percent of the vote in those places in 2008. In short, if you live in an Industrial Metro don't be surprised if Air Force One is sitting on a tarmac near you this fall.

Unfortunately for the president, no other county type is so cut-and-dried.

Campus and Career counties still give Obama a thumbs up, but not to the extent they did in the fall. The president has an approval number of about 52 percent in the Pew data from earlier this summer, but in 2008 he captured 58 percent of the vote in those places. Some of that erosion may be due to discontent on the left that the president has not met their desires.

Meanwhile, in the 'Burbs, Obama's approval rating is down to about 52 percent. He captured 55 percent of the vote in those 287 counties in 2008. And as we mentioned last week, the factor driving discontent there is most likely the economy.

Those places are seeing an increase in economic hardship even as the economy improves. How much of that is the president's fault is obviously open to question, but the political impact is not. The 'Burbs will likely be critical this fall -- these densely-populated, swing-voting locales almost always are -- but Democrats based in those counties may want things there to improve before sending a formal invite to the White House.

Air Force One Flyover Country

Considering the relatively hard times in the United States - a slumping economy, the war in Afghanistan and the "peace" in Iraq, the debt - many of the county types in Patchwork Nation are still really quite split on President Obama. The transitioning Boom Towns, small town Service Worker Centers and Military Bastions located near armed forces installations are all in the 47 percent to 49 percent approval range. (Poll samples from Tractor Country and Mormon Outposts were too small to be statistically relevant.)

But there are a few types of counties that President Obama is not likely to go anywhere near in the coming months.

People in the conservative Christian Evangelical Epicenters give the president an approval rating of only 30 percent. Democrats never do well in those places, however, so 2010 simply looks like more of the same there. But in other county types there are more serious problems for Obama -- and presumably the Democrats.

Obama did well in Latino-heavy Immigration Nation counties in 2008. He captured 51 percent of the vote in those 210 counties. Now, though, his approval ratings there stands at about 37 percent. As immigration has heated up as an issue Obama is finding problems from people who wants laws tightened and those who want them eased.

And the aging Emptying Nest counties have soured on the president. His approval rating there is down to 43 percent after he took 49 percent of the vote there in 2008. In those places we have heard anger of health care reform, which many elderly believe will lead to cuts in programs for them.

Nothing's Set in Stone

There are a few caveats in all this, of course. Midterm elections in particular are more prone to race-by-race dynamics. Without a national, unifying top-of-the-ticket focus, many of the 2010 races will be about local or regional issues.

And there is still time for attitudes to change. Although it is getting very late, there could still be an economic turnaround or an unforeseen factor laying out in the weeds. In 2008, the fall crash on Wall Street helped seal the deal for President Obama.

President Obama's margin of victory in the suburban counties Patchwork Nation calls the Monied 'Burbs was 12 percent. Four years before, Sen. John Kerry won those 285 counties by less than 2 percentage points.

So if you were, say, a congressional Democrat in 2008 with a lot of those Monied 'Burb voters in your district, you were feeling pretty good about your prospects in 2010. Not anymore.

Over the course of the last 18 months, the wealthy, educated Monied Burbs have seen a decline in their fortunes. Last year they were seeing less economic hardship than most of Patchwork Nation's 12 county types, but lately they've been in the middle of the pack.

And this month's edition of the Economic Hardship Index shows them to be faring worse than almost every other county type.

In short, the economic pain that has been hitting the country hard for the past two years has come home to the 'Burbs. And that may mean a hard November ahead for the party in power - and hard times for the economy in general.

Suburban Pain

The Hardship Index measures the most recent economic data available by county including gas prices, unemployment and foreclosures. It then takes those figures and factors them with the basic demographic information Patchwork Nation has about its 12 county types to come up with a Hardship Score.

When we first began measuring the Hardship Index in summer 2008, many of the scores were in the single digits or teens. They are now usually in the 20s or 30s.

But the change in the 'Burbs is especially noteworthy. Last year their Hardship Score was consistently better than the average. Since May, they have been below the average. In July their Hardship Score is 38.91, well above the average of 34.13 and higher than every community type except the big city Industrial Metropolis counties, which come in at 40.52.

(On the other end of the spectrum, rural and agricultural Tractor Country has a Hardship Score of less than 28 and has seen drops in foreclosures and unemployment, which is down to 5.36 percent.)

"The dramatic difference, it seems to me, is how much worse the suburbs are scoring this year relative to before," says James Gimpel, a University of Maryland professor and creator of the Hardship Index. "California, Nevada and Florida suburban locations continue to be terrible, and were last year too, but the suburbs seem more uniformly distressed this year, like the plague has spread. Now suburban counties in Ohio, Pennsylvania, New York, Minnesota, Illinois, Connecticut, Washington, Georgia and even recession-proof Maryland and Virginia."

The numbers in the Monied 'Burb counties speak for themselves. In July 2009, Fairfax County, Va., had a Hardship Score of 12.42. In this latest Index, its score is above 38. In Montgomery County, Pa., the score went from 19 last year to 37 this year. Lake County, Ill., went from a score of 24 last July to a score of 37 this year.

Unemployment and/or foreclosure readings are up in all those counties over a year ago and over the past few months, which is the window of time the Hardship Index uses to make its measurements.

Sensitive Places

These sour numbers could have an especially heavy impact on the elections this fall because the Monied 'Burb counties are more likely to swing their vote than other county types and they base their votes more heavily on the state of the economy.

In some ways, those Democrats who saw big things in the Obama Monied 'Burb vote in 2008 were really just fooling themselves. As Patchwork Nation noted way back then, the crash in the stock market -- and the following dip in stock portfolios and 401(k) plan accounts -- was the winning issue for candidate Obama in many of the Monied 'Burbs. We saw it in Los Alamos, N.M., our Monied 'Burb watch community that fall.

But beyond concerns for the Democrats, there are bigger issues in this July Hardship Index.

The Monied 'Burbs hold more than 68 million people and they are relatively wealthy. They drive the consumer economy.

Numbers like these explain why the most recent Consumer Confidence Index was down sharply. And if those numbers don't turn around, it's hard to imagine that the Index or the larger economy will move strongly forward anytime soon.

Dante Chinni is the director of Patchwork Nation.

In 2010, however, immigration, or at least the White House approach to it, looks like it might be a rare case where there is uniformity.

Results from a recent poll from the Pew Research Center for the People and Press, broken down in Patchwork Nation's county types, show there is little support for "the way Barack Obama is handling the nation's immigration policy" across all the 12 community types that make up the Patchwork Nation map.

The county types that have been strongholds for President Obama -- the big city Industrial Metropolis and collegiate Campus and Careers counties -- "disapprove" of administration's immigration strategies. The places that largely oppose him -- the conservative Evangelical Epicenters and Tractor Country counties -- are strongly against it. And there appears to be large opposition to the president's plans in two community types that have large numbers of Latinos -- Immigration Nation and Boom Towns counties.

What is driving those numbers? A lot of it may be the Obama administration's uncertainty on immigration policy.

No Real Plan, No Real Friends

The Obama team has been somewhat uncomfortable in its approach on how to handle the issue -- more troops on the border along (angering some on the left) with a lawsuit against Arizona's new tougher law (angering many on the right) while also delaying a comprehensive reform plan -- and, perhaps as a result, no one is especially happy with the White House's path.

None of the 12 county types gives the administration an overall "approval" on immigration policy, and that is a rare feat. Even on two of the biggest bits of bad news in the nation, the economy and the oil spill in the Gulf, Obama at least still has the support of the Industrial Metro counties in the Pew results.

Immigration is one of those issues, however, where the fault lines lie in many different places -- and in communities one might not expect.

Last year, we sat in on a constituent meeting with Rep. Steve King in Sioux Center, Iowa -- a Tractor Country community -- and were amazed that half the question time was devoted to illegal immigration, with most of it spent of talk of the need for a bigger and stronger wall at the border. In 2008, we sat in on a Democratic platform drafting meeting on Chicago's South Side and heard concern from blacks in the group about how the Spanish-speaking population was changing the community. Many there wanted tighter restrictions, too.

Troubles in Immigration Nation

But the issue probably most directly impacts daily life in the nation's 200-plus Immigration Nation counties, where illegal immigrants often make up a good-sized part of the population. In these counties some 73 percent "disapprove" of the administration's handling of the immigration issue.

That's a very high number and it must be troubling to the administration for a few reasons.

First, the voters in Immigration Nation sided with Obama by four percentage points in 2008 (51 percent versus 47 percent for Sen. John McCain). That support has clearly been shaken. Second, of all the county types in Patchwork Nation, these places are probably the most attuned to the administration's effort in immigration -- and clearly they are not pleased.

It's not easy to categorize the attitudes on this issue in Immigration Nation. Our contacts in El Mirage, Ariz., an Immigration Nation community, themselves have a mixed reactions to the debate.

Our Latino contacts there clearly despise the new Arizona immigration law - and fear what it may mean even for legal immigrants - but many have uneasy feelings about the illegal friends and neighbors they have who skirted the law to enter the country.

But remember not everyone in Immigration Nation is a Latino, there are many Anglos as well and they often take a much harder line on the immigration. El Mirage is part of Maricopa County, the home of well-known illegal immigration hardliner Sheriff Joe Arpaio who has been re-elected four times since first winning the job in 1992.

So far, anyway, it seems the administration's approach has done little to win over either side in Immigration Nation. Its current lack of a strategy has left both side wondering what comes next.

Of course, no one expects President Obama to come out with a hard-line position on illegal immigration, but there is a considerable gray area in which to move and where the administration ultimately moves will mean a lot, particularly in these Immigration Nation counties.

And it may mean a lot in November. Immigration Nation counties, on the whole, tend to split their votes between Democrats and Republicans fairly closely. And if you look at the Patchwork Nation map you will see they are concentrated in states like Arizona, California and Colorado - all of which have big senate and governor's races this year.

And if you are looking for the focus of Nevada's troubles, look no further than Clark County, the population center in the southern tip that holds three-quarters of the state's population and Las Vegas. Right now, Clark is suffering through a serious bust cycle. One of every 67 homes in the county is in some state of foreclosure and the unemployment rate in the county is above 14 percent.

Busts are nothing new to Clark, or Nevada for that matter, and in the past the solution has always been simple enough: wait for a recovery and the tourists will return to America's adult playground. But this time may be different, and changing senators or the ruling party in Washington may offer little help.

Patchwork Nation has taken a look at gambling facilities around the United States and was surprised at just how widespread gambling has become. In fact, every one of Patchwork Nation's 12 county types has several casinos - from farmlands to the big cities and everything in between.

And that scattering of casinos, combined with a sluggish economy may have serious consequences for the Silver State.

The Novelty Factor

To be clear, 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.

A look at the Patchwork Nation map shows just how scattered the gaming centers are, but a breakdown by type is also revealing.

The Boom Towns have the most, by far, 510 of them - in large part because of Clark County and Washoe County (home of Reno, Nev.) are Boom Towns. But next on the list are the wealthy Monied 'Burbs counties, with 269 casinos.

The 41 big city Industrial Metropolis counties hold 65 places to do gaming - including Detroit (Wayne County) and, soon, Philadelphia. Plus there are gambling boats in and round the big cities that offer table games and slot machines.

Consider rural, agricultural Tractor Country, where there are 67 casinos - three for every 100,000 people, the most per capita in Patchwork Nation - due in large part to Native American casinos. Even the Mormon Outpost counties, heavy with members of the LDS Church, have eight casinos in them.

The Pursuit of Bigger and Better

The number of places allowing gambling has grown dramatically in the past 20 years and many big cities in particular have added casinos as a way to capture some of the gambling revenues that they watched leaving their city as casinos spread.

Detroit is a perfect example of this. The Motor City legalized casinos (three to be precise) after the city watched their residents flow across the Detroit River to lay their wagers in Windsor, Ontario, where gambling was legalized years earlier. There are cities across the country that saw similar things and made the same choices.

When Patchwork Nation began, we chose 12 locales at random to study, one for each of the county types we identified. Eight of those locales have - or are slated to have - casinos within an hours drive.

Detroit or Philly or Lincoln City, Ore., (home of the Chinook Winds Casino) will never be Las Vegas, of course. But for the people who live near those places - or any of the hundreds places that have gaming - a day at the casino doesn't involve a plane ticket or maybe even a night in hotel.

Las Vegas's good times came when times were good. There are still people who want what the thrills that city has to offer, but they may not have the money to spend there - and they may not for some time.

And those who feel they have to gamble, have elsewhere to go - all over the United States.

The law, which grants local authorities broad powers in requesting proof of citizenship, is set to be implemented July 29 and is leading to an exodus of some immigrant communities around Phoenix, according to Patchwork Nation contacts there.

"We are getting to see more empty houses as the Mexican population is starting to leave. Not all of course, but quite a lot. I see it here in Surprise" writes Sylvia Rivera, who lives in the nearby town of El Mirage but owns a business in Surprise, Ariz. And that has impacts that reach beyond the immigrant community in town and the surrounding area.

Phoenix and most of its suburbs lay in Maricopa County, an Immigration Nation county in Patchwork Nation - places marked by a large Latino population. Those Immigration Nation locales are scattered around the United States, but are based heavily in Southwest and Mountain West.

A lot of them had a front-row seat for the housing boom at the beginning of the last decade and they have suffered harshly in the last few years. And Maricopa, the most populous county in Arizona, is an especially hard-hit case.

Bank Signs Galore

May data (the latest available) from the firm RealtyTrac, which monitors the U.S. housing industry, showed there were more than 11,000 homes in Maricopa in some state of foreclosure. That was one of every 137 homes. Drive the streets of the county and at its more distant reaches finished subdivision streets give way to lots with nothing more than poured foundations - sometimes less.

How has the departure of a good chunk of the Latino community worsened the situation? Many homes in Maricopa, particularly in places like Surprise and El Mirage, were actually group homes, rented out to immigrants who needed inexpensive places to stay that they could secure without documentation.

As they leave the area, landlords are finding their properties harder to keep afloat. One landlord who rented to immigrants in the city of Surprise told the Arizona Republic he had lost two buildings to foreclosure since May and that he feared losing more.

The story has become very familiar in Maricopa says Troy Corder, who works in public relations in the area.

"We are hearing tons of stories about local businesses closing up because they serve the immigrant community," Corder writes in an email. "People are moving to California or other states with less stringent immigration enforcement. We have had a toxic mix of declining construction jobs and scared illegal immigrants."

And as that has happened home prices have plummeted. The median home price in Maricopa County has gone from $260,000 in 2006 to less than $130,000 currently, according to website Trulia. In El Mirage, they have fallen from about $230,000 to less than $90,000.

In short, the net worth and buying power of area has taken a massive hit during the housing crash and the recession - and those things may dip further now as immigrants leave and houses empty.

Problems elsewhere

Maricopa may be an extreme example of the economic troubles the new immigration law may cause but it is by no means alone, particularly when looked at through the Patchwork Nation prism. If you look around the map of the most recent foreclosure data and you will see a large number of Immigration Nation counties that have a "very high" number of foreclosures (in the fifth of five quintiles).

Of the six Immigration Nation counties in Arizona, five have "very high" foreclosures. All 12 of California's Immigration Nation counties are in the "very high" group, as are six of Colorado's Immigration Nation counties.

In all those states now, the climate around immigration has grown more charged and is making immigrant groups nervous.

Supporters of the Arizona law will certainly note that the immigrants leaving counties like Maricopa legally should not have been there anyway. That may be true. But the experience in El Mirage is a sign of just how intertwined Immigration Nation counties like Maricopa have become in the immigration fight.

Like it or not, the illegal immigrants in those places have become a structural part of how their economies operate. And removing them, suddenly, may have consequences that will almost certainly go beyond what was intended.

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.

How serious should the concerns for the economy be? Patchwork Nation, which regularly monitors key economic indicators, sadly, is not surprised by the latest stream of bad news and it doesn't see a sudden recovery ahead.

The U.S. economy is made of smaller local economies around the country (we identify 12 of them in Patchwork Nation) moved by different forces. And for the last year the unemployment rates in most of our county types -- particularly those key to a thriving consumer economy -- have remained stubbornly high. In fact, since last year unemployment rates have increased in most every county.

The big city Industrial Metropolis counties, wealthy Monied 'Burbs and growing exurban Boom Towns, have the higher disposable incomes that could spur spending and help heal the economy. But the unemployment rate in all of them still hovers around 9 percent.

And as we have noted here in the past few months, some of those recovery signs were based on one month's information and some of the "good news" itself seemed to hide deeper problems. Taking the temperature of some of Patchwork Nation's communities on the July 4 weekend offers further reason for pause.

Not Many Bright Signs

If there is a community in America where one might expect to find a sunny view, it is probably Los Alamos, New Mexico. The job base, propped up by the local government lab, is stable and seems safe overall, but still there are worries.

Bill Enloe, chairman and CEO of the Los Alamos National Bank, says the beginning of year felt better for those living on top of the mesa near Santa Fe, but things have since soured a bit. "There was a bounce in the affordable housing area, fueled by the tax incentives, but since they expired that had lost its steam. The rest of the Real Estate market continues to be very slow," he writes in an email. "It seems the concerns over Europe, the deficit, the weak stock market and how we are going to pay for health care is overwhelming any of the positive news."

Los Alamos, full of hyper-educated scientists, is the kind of place where people pay close attention to financial news from overseas -- a place where "concerns of Europe" is immediately understood as debt troubles in European economies. But the fact that Los Alamos feels concerned is a sign of how high up the income and education ladder the concerns run.

Down in Clermont, Florida, an aging Emptying Nest community outside of Orlando, Ray San Fratello, says he sees some better news in the form of new businesses, but his 16-year-old daughter and her 18-year-old boyfriend have not been able to find summer jobs.

"Many people who thought they were going to be 'retired' and live the good life have had to pick up part time work themselves to help pay for increased health care costs or just for the basics of purchasing groceries or to be able to keep up a golf membership," writes San Fratello, president of the South Lake County Chamber of Commerce. "Just not enough jobs to go around."

Meanwhile, some of the construction jobs that employed many in the area around Clermont have come back, but San Fratello wonders for how long? "Of the 322 residential business permits let out from Jan - May in the entire county, 60 percent are in Clermont. Clermont also has nearly 4000 homes previously permitted that are just sitting in the pipeline waiting for things to open up and there is 2 million square feet of commercial, retail, and office permitted and either being built or planned to be built," he writes. "This is a lot of capacity to come online. Too much, in my opinion."

If You Build It...

That last point is a key one. Much of the good times before the current recession came from the housing boom and some communities benefited from it more than others.

Take Eagle, Colorado, a Boom Town west of Vail that saw its population double with a massive development at the beginning of the last decade. That growth has ended and the town is now trying to figure out what's next, says Kathy Heicher, former editor of the local weekly newspaper.

"Things aren't good here. Building projects are few and far between. I hear local contractors complaining that all they do now is bid projects -- and they are getting outbid by people willing to work for almost nothing. I don't think the layoffs from local government are over yet," she writes in an email.

And in Eagle, one can see the larger impacts of the housing slowdown as the problems ripple through the entire local economy. "The nursery guy I buy bedding plants from told me today that he could see this summer wasn't going to be good, so he did not hire the crew he usually has," Heicher writes.

Yes, that's just one crew. But it's also just one shop in one industry. Around the town there are a lot more stories like that in carpentry and HVAC and pest control.

Take that story and multiply it across hundreds of similar towns in the 380 Boom Town counties across the United States and you get a sense of the long-term problems for the economy.

The Boom Towns have an especially hard road where housing is concerned -- think of places like Las Vegas, Nevada, and Riverside, California, where the foreclosure problems run deep -- but other places have different issues. Many of those Monied 'Burb communities are suffering from the downturn in manufacturing, and the small-town Service Worker Center counties depend on outside dollars from the 'Burbs and Boom Town to flourish.

There is nothing that says the economy won't eventually emerge from its current struggles, but there are no signs of dramatic improvement on the horizon. The economy's current troubles look deeply ingrained and broadly spread.

Dante Chinni is the director of the Patchwork Nation reporting project.

Six months into the 2010 primary season, the most-discussed new force in American politics, the tea party movement, remains something of a mystery.

Wins by Republicans with tea party backing such as Rand Paul and Sharron Angle in Senate primaries have spurred a discussion about the power of the movement within the GOP. But questions remain about who the tea party's devotees are and how big a force they will be in November.

Patchwork Nation has previously examined tea party membership - though that's a tricky word considering the loose affiliation of groups making up the movement.

In April, we 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.

A new look at the numbers reveals a movement that is changing and growing - improving its numbers in different county types. And it shows how the registrants at the two largest tea party Web sites look to be very different.

Find a Patchwork Nation map on Tea Party trends here.

A Movement in Motion

Talking about the tea party inevitably raises questions. How does one determine who members are in a group where supporters often aren't registered anywhere, who just show up at rallies or simply pass in and out through following groups on Facebook? But measuring registered members, looking at those who take the time and effort to register with sites, offers insight into the where the most dedicated members are based.

And that combined with what Patchwork Nation knows about those places gives us some sense of what might be motivating those members. As we have noted in the past, different tea party groups have different agendas.

Our latest analysis of tea party registrants shows a total of some 57,000 people on the largest tea party web sites. (That's fewer than April's numbers as a whole, but largely because there were many duplicate entries in that last batch of numbers that we have since cleaned out.) When you adjust the numbers the tea party movement has seen growth of between 35 and 40 percent in registrants on its main sites since April.

But more interesting is where the growth has happened.

"Evangelicals and southern Minority Central locations are stronger in this set of numbers than they were before. That's an area of significant difference from the earlier numbers. Southern support appears to have grown," says James Gimpel, a political science professor at the University of Maryland who is also a consultant on Patchwork.

The largest tea party membership per capita in this latest set of data comes from the rural Tractor County counties - 4.13 per 10,000 people. Those places are followed by socially conservative Evangelical Epicenters at 3.14 members per 10,000 people.

Those numbers are significant. Tractor Country would seem to be an obvious place for the tea party to catch on. As we have noted before, people there have less debt than those in other communities and they were most unhappy about the TARP program. The increase in the Evangelical Epicenters also suggests that, in some places at least, the tea party is reaching into the ranks of Christian conservatives - there had been tensions between social conservatives and tea partiers in the past.

The Boom Towns now score in the middle in membership at 2.41 members per 10,000 people.

The two county types with the fewest number of tea partiers per capita remain the most urban locales - the big-city Industrial Metropolis counties and the largely suburban Monied 'Burbs. Voters in those places voted heavily for President Barack Obama in 2008.

A Split in the 'Party'

The fractious nature of the tea party is by now a well-established point, but looking at the registrants of the two major tea party web sites - Freedom Works and Tea Party Patriots - shows a notable divide.

Freedom Works, the tea party group led by former House Republican leader Dick Armey, is the smaller of the two organizations, but it is also concentrated in more urban counties with fewer tea party members. About 40 percent of the Freedom Works registrants come from Monied 'Burbs and Industrial Metropolis counties.

The Tea Party Patriots are based most heavily in the Boom Towns, but their membership is also spread more evenly around the 12 community types - and they have much larger bases of support in the Evangelical Epicenter, Immigration Nation and Service Worker Center counties.

Viewed this way, Freedom Works might be seen as representing the nation's wealthier, more politically connected areas while the Patriots seem to be drawing off of what could be loosely thought of less-wealthy and more rural locales. In a movement already ripe with divisions, it will be interesting to note how those differences play out going forward.

Then, of course, there is the larger question of the how big the influence is a movement within a political party when the elections move from primaries to the general election in November. Even in what could be considered the tea party's two biggest wins in the primary season - Paul in Kentucky and Angle in Nevada - turnout hovered about 30 percent. Turnout will likely be much higher in the fall and the tea party voters could be overrun.

These numbers, however, at least suggest that the tea party has momentum and is making inroads into communities that could be crucial to its success as an election power in November.

The ruling lacked specifics and may raise as many questions as it answered. It applied some constitutional standard to ownership - saying homeowners had a right to own a handgun - but didn't address issues like carrying concealed weapons or even laws regulating the sales of firearms.

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. In some of the locales - like our Tractor Country community of Sioux Center, Iowa - they are an important part of life, in hunting and gun clubs. In others - places in and around major cities - firearms tend to play a different role and have a different meaning.

Graphic by the Christian Science Monitor.

See a map of total gun shops and dealers by county.

That argument was made implicitly in the opinion of Justice John Paul Stevens who wrote: "The reasons that motivated the framers to protect the ability of militiamen to keep muskets available for military use when our nation was in its infancy, or that motivated the Reconstruction Congress to extend full citizenship to freedmen in the wake of the Civil War, have only a limited bearing on the question that confronts the homeowner in a crime-infested metropolis today."

Stevens is not just talking about modern times, but a specific place in those modern times: the big cities in the counties we call the Industrial Metropolis.

How different are the attitudes in those places - and in all of our Patchwork county types - toward guns? One way of measuring is looking at where the gun shops are. After all, a gun store is not likely to stay in business where there is no demand.

Looking at those gun numbers reveals a mixed picture.

Going by simple geography, you see a much more wider spread of gun shops than you might imagine - including stores in Industrial Metro counties like Cook (Chicago) and Wayne (Detroit) and Cuyahoga (Cleveland). All those big city counties have more than 10 gun shops.

So handgun ownership may not be the major hurdle people believe it to be in terms of simply buying a firearm.

But looking at the figures broken down by capita and by Patchwork Nation's 12 county types, the numbers look very different. The most rural locales, our Tractor County counties, have the most gun shops per 100,000 people - about 10 - compared to those big city Industrial Metros, where there is only 1 per 100,000 people.

The numbers as whole seem to show a stronger predilection toward firearms in more rural locales, though there are exceptions. The growing exurban Boom Town counties have a higher number of gun stores per capita (3.67 per 100,000) than other county types that are less densely populated.

One question, going forward out of the court's ruling on Monday, is will these numbers change now that ownership of handguns is constitutionally protected? Will more stores open in those city and suburban locales now that the restrictions have been lifted?

The answers to those questions will help tell us if gun ownership and the desire for gun ownership is about laws and rules or larger cultural factors.

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.

"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana," Attorney General Eric Holder said then, adding all bets were off with trafficking across state "behind claims of compliance with state law to mask activities that are clearly illegal."

The stance assumed the various state laws were ready to actually regulate the industry. But attitudes and rules vary greatly state-by-state and county-by-county in Patchwork Nation. What has ensued is a flood of new patients and dispensaries, the corresponding complaints against them, a few hurry-up efforts to modify the laws and, in a few isolated cases, violence against marijuana stores.

Marijuana Under the Big Sky

The rationale for originally passing the laws was clear to many voters. Here in Montana, the medical marijuana referendum passed by 62 percent in 2004, a clear victory for advocates who argued that the terminally ill and other patients should be allowed to use the drug to ease their pain.

But then people started lining up for doctors at cannabis conventions -- no medical records required -- and doctors started issuing prescriptions after a 10-minute conversation over Skype.

Montana got special attention in some national media for its conventions and a mobile "cannabis caravan" operated by a Missoula-based advocacy group. One doctor was cited by her medical board for participating in a convention where she saw 150 people in less than 15 hours -- a patient every six minutes.

The developments have prompted even pro-pot Montanans to back away from some of the more aggressive medical marijuana operations.

Regarding the Montana caravans, Mike Meno, spokesman for the pot legalization lobbying group the Marijuana Policy Project, said: "The more I hear about these things, it sounds like they're not following the intent of the law. People say they might be making a mockery of the law, and I hope that's not the case."

The leading advocates for Montana's referendum back making changes to the current law in an effort to stabilize public support. Doctors also want more oversight.

"I didn't envision there would be marijuana stores on every corner of Grand Avenue and these fairs at the Holiday Inn," said internist Deric Weiss, M.D., who chairs the ethics committee at Billings Clinic. Billings is part of Yellowstone County, a small-town Service Worker Center. "Most of us envisioned it would be through your personal physician and part of a comprehensive plan of care."

More than 16,000 people are card-carrying marijuana users in Montana; 2,500 were given their "green card" in May alone. Nearly 25 percent of all patients are between the ages of 25 and 30. The No. 1 reason for the prescription? "Chronic pain."

Fueled by those numbers and a public increasingly uneasy with watching marijuana storefronts pop up in their towns, media coverage has tilted. Its focus is less on the cancer sufferer hoping to eat without nausea or the MS patient dealing with crippling pain and more on the business and law enforcement angles that surround the now hundreds of dispensaries and caregivers.

Problems in all Types of Places

And it's not just small towns raising issues in Montana. Missoula, located in the Boom Town county of Missoula, is a fairly cosmopolitan home of the University of Montana. The local paper in town here reflected the change in mood on medical marijuana.

Last Sunday, it editorialized that the situation in Montana "has passed the point of ridiculousness and is now firmly in the realm of the tragic." The paper called for our town of 60,000 to close all the storefront dispensaries and ban new ones until the state Legislature -- which only meets once every two years -- can tackle the issue.

The boom has soured many of the city and state legislators who initially endorsed the referendum. More than a dozen cities have placed moratoriums on new marijuana businesses for six months. Others have sought zoning restrictions. No one can know how it will affect the state legislative races this fall, but it's hard to imagine candidates not hitting on a subject that has voters so worked up.

And Montana is only one front in the battle for medical pot.

In Los Angeles, a big city Industrial Metropolis, the city is trying to shutter hundreds of shops as part of an ordinance aimed at limiting to 70 stores scattered throughout the city. On Wednesday, more than 170 existing stores filed paperwork with City Hall in an attempt to remain open.

Now officials will have to pour over documentation to determine if these stores meet city standards. In addition, they'll have to respond to a lawsuit filed by operators who claim legality.

In Colorado, the state moved to give local communities more control and toughen the medical oversight of patients. Gov. Bill Ritter signed two laws this month seeking to address what he called, "the chaotic proliferation of medical marijuana dispensaries in communities all around Colorado."

The new regulations allow towns to ban dispensaries and require doctors to physically examine a patient before prescribing marijuana.

Kathy Heicher, a newspaper journalist and Patchwork Nation blogger from the Boom Town of Eagle, Colo., said the situation has split her community in ways that sound familiar here in Montana.

"There was this sort of lull for a year after the medical marijuana law was approved, then the dispensary applications started coming in ... even in rural towns like Eagle," she wrote. "The issue did spur some spirited letters to the editor, and the battle isn't over yet. My neighbor, who was born and raised in this town and serves on the town board, was extremely concerned about what kind of image Eagle would project by allowing medical marijuana dispensaries."

Despite the local and state government uneasiness, business is booming and so are tax revenues. In Colorado Springs, the local government collected $123,000 in sales tax from medical marijuana stores in the first four months of 2010.

That infusion of cash as well as other related business spending puts communities in a difficult position, even in somewhat-remote Eagle.

"[T]he medical marijuana dispensaries are big sales tax generators in a time when everybody is hurting for revenue," Hischer said. "I'm a newspaper writer ... and these days it looks like the marijuana dispensaries might be one of the strongest ad accounts in our ski resort valley."

Advocates hope the patients in need won't be lost in the flurry of media coverage, but Greg Campbell, a journalist who covers the medical marijuana industry, sees a rough few months ahead.

"Whereas last year marked the beginning of the great Green Rush in the United States," Campbell wrote last week, "the summer of 2010 is shaping up to be one of consolidation and entrenchment for the medical pot industry as numerous states tweak, fine-tune and argue over their various laws."

Lee Banville is the former editor-in-chief of the Online NewsHour and is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Montana at Missoula. He is also a digital strategy adviser to the NewsHour.

In case you were wondering, 2010 is not one of those years.

Is the mood in 2010 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.

On Tuesday, polls indicate Nikki Haley will secure the Republican nomination for governor. If she does, her victory will come despite the kind of smear campaigns - about an alleged affair and her faith - that are often a hallmark of politics in that state.

Meanwhile, also in South Carolina, the Democratic nominee for U.S. Senate, Alvin Greene, won his primary despite the fact that he is unemployed, never held elected office before and spent about $10,000 on his campaign. His interviews have been of head-shaking oddities that shed no light on how he won.

At Patchwork Nation we take great pride in our ability to use demographic data and voter histories to make sense of political results, but as we have noted in recent weeks 2010 is shaping up to be an especially volatile and difficult year to understand. And South Carolina offers more evidence.

Haley Bucks a Trend

Nikki Haley has faced two attacks on her way to the Tuesday runoff election. First there were the unsubstantiated allegations that Haley had committed adultery - one of them coming from a man who claimed he had been involved with her. In addition, in the last few weeks, opponents have suggested that Haley, who is the daughter of Indian immigrants, is not really a Christian. She says she converted to become a Methodist in her 20s.

So far, there has been little sign that the campaigns have hurt Haley's chances. Her primary win did not garner 50 percent of the vote - hence, the runoff - but it was very broad-based across all the county types in South Carolina. She lost only four of 46 counties and will likely to do well Tuesday.

If you are looking for something to watch for, however, pay close attention to the state's six Evangelical Epicenter counties - Spartanburg, Oconee, Lancaster, Greenville, Chester and Anderson. Those counties tend to be socially conservative and have higher-than-average numbers of evangelical adherents. They are precisely the kinds of counties where questions about Haley's faith could resonate.

Much of the commentary about the 2010 midterms thus far has focused on economic issues - and with good reason. We've noted that the nation's Boom Town counties, which have suffered hard in the housing bust, seem especially focused on economic troubles and are something of a base of support for the tea party movement.

But culturally conservative voters are still out there. And the vote on Haley represents a kind of test case as to whether those voters are engaged on their signature issues - if indeed the voters in South Carolina believe the stories about Haley.

Alvin Greene and the Potential Democratic 'Enthusiasm Gap'

Looking at the vote in the Palmetto State's Democratic primary, there may be a few lessons to draw for that party - and they are not positive ones.

Barack Obama's presidential win in 2008 was broad-based in the sense that he did better that John Kerry did in 2004 with almost every type of county in Patchwork Nation. Mr. Obama's improvement in the black-heavy Minority Central counties, which were heavily engaged in the election, arguably won him neighboring North Carolina.

The results from South Carolina's primary suggest that in that state at least, the Democratic voters are not focused on 2010, at least not yet. In the end, Alvin Green won the Democratic senate primary because voters did not know the candidates and because of low turnout.

The number of people who vote in the state's Democratic senate primary, about 170,000, was less than half of those who voted in Haley's race: 412,000. And in the 29 Minority Central counties in South Carolina, only a small fraction of the votes were cast in the Democratic senate race. Most votes were instead cast in the Republican races.

For example, consider Charleston, a Minority Central county. There were 11,000 Democratic votes cast in Greene's race compared to more than 30,000 votes cast in Haley's race.

But in 2008, Obama won that same county with 60 percent of the vote.

It's only one state, of course, and it is just a primary, but the numbers suggest that Democratic Party is facing a serious enthusiasm gap in these places in 2010.

The question, of course, is how representative is South Carolina of the nation at large in a year where the electorate is hard to read. And that is a question everyone will be trying to answer in the next few months.

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.

On Tuesday night, President Obama gave an address from the Oval Office about the spill and told the American people: "We will fight this spill with everything we've got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever is necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy."

Is that enough for a country where some have become obsessed with watching a black cloud billow out into the ocean on a live camera feed?

Talking to people in our Patchwork Nation communities, the answer to that question in an election year seems to hinge on two things: How strongly do they support the president? And, how close are they to the affected area?

Supporters Remain Supporters

Consider Ann Arbor, Mich. As we noted before the home of the University of Michigan takes great pride in its green credentials. One would imagine it's the kind of place where the spill would have people up in arms and apparently it does. But like other Campus and Career locales, the community as a whole is strongly supportive of President Obama and he is not seen as responsible.

"People here absolutely do not blame Obama, they don't see any basis for that. There is widespread belief that BP cut corners," Mayor John Hieftje wrote in an e-mail. "Regulations need to be tightened if offshore drilling is going to be allowed and people would like to see this done ASAP. Very deep wells like this one should be outlawed."

On a more close-to-home note, Hieftje also wrote that he thought there would be bans for Great Lakes drilling on the ballot this fall.

But travel to Nixa, Mo., a socially conservative Evangelical Epicenter in the southwest of the state, and the reaction is different. The religious response can be seen in a simple drive around the area - "Pray for the Gulf" reads the sign outside the Asbury United Methodist Church in nearby Springfield.

But some in the community -- never a big fan of President Obama -- see deepwater drilling as a larger problem with Democratic Party policies, which have opposed drilling in some places like the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge in Alaska. "Would this have happened if companies were allowed to drill more on land or in more shallow waters?" local businesswoman Kristi Bohannon wrote in an e-mail.

It Depends How Close You Are

Clermont, Fla., is inland from the coast. The aging Emptying Nest community sits west of Orlando where the closest water is Lake Mineola, so even as the state's ocean shoreline struggles with effects of the spill, "the emotion is not as charged as it is on the coasts," writes Ray San Fratello, president of the South Lake County Chamber of Commerce.

"It seems that much of the anger is directed at BP, then those who favor offshore drilling for oil, then Obama in a combination Katrina reaction/hate Obama reaction," San Fratello writes.

Clermont, like most other Empting Nests, is not Obama country. Those communities were split in 2008 and in opinion surveys since then they have turned against him. But even in places that strongly oppose Obama, the spill is not a particularly heavy political topic - or really even much of a topic at all.

Out in Burley, Idaho, a Mormon Outpost full of LDS Church members, the spill in the Gulf simply doesn't seem to be on many minds. "For the most part, I'm not hearing much at all about the oil spill," writes Jay Lenkersdorfer, publisher of the local paper, in an e-mail.

"I don't think our lack of dialogue about this issue is our way of saying we don't care about other parts of the country, but we have our own discussion topics that are more relevant. We are in the midst of the wettest year in decades in Idaho, and in that this is an agricultural economy, we are worried that the sun isn't shining."

And that is something to keep in mind as the Washington and the media turn their intense focus to the spill.

The oil in the Gulf is without question an environmental catastrophe, but the nation's other struggles - from unemployment to housing to adequate sun for crops - go on. Capping the well and the cleaning the mess would help Obama politically for certain, but the list of issues on voters' minds for November is long and it varies greatly from place to place.

In this year of anti-incumbent fervor, more minor races wound up contested, especially on the Republican side of the ticket. Many political commentators in the state 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.

In the end, though, it seems Tuesday's primary confirmed a basic truth of politics: People dislike all incumbents except their own. In Montana, only one incumbent lost a seat in the state Legislature, and that first-termer lost to a term-limited state senator who decided to switch houses in Helena. So, where, to paraphrase Bob Dole, is all the voter outrage?

For a while, it looked like it was out there and centered right in the middle of the Republican Party.

Rancor in the Ranks

Just a glance at Montana shows how much the vast state leans Republican. In Patchwork Nation, the state is dominated by rural Tractor Country counties, with a smattering of small town Service Worker Centers and growing Boom Towns. Across those places, there were signs of anger.

The five-term Republican U.S. House member, Denny Rehberg, was being challenged not just by a tea party-type on the right but also a liberal Republican on the left. Some of the down-ticket races turned into rather entertaining mud fights.

One started when state Sen. John Brueggeman coordinated a radio buy with a Washington, D.C., group called Main Street Advocacy for several of the contested primaries around the state. Brueggeman said he had organized the effort to help "rational conservatives" who, during the 2008 primaries, had been targeted by some groups as liberals or even, more dramatically, "socialists."

"It kind of caught us off-guard; we weren't going to let that happen in the 2010 cycle," Brueggeman told The Missoulian newspaper.. "What they did was pretty awful. At best, it was nasty misrepresentation. ... We said, 'If that's the way they're going to play, we're going to get organized and we're going to be totally positive.'"

But rather than putting out the fire of intra-party strife, it lit one. First, the state party was forced to issue a press release distancing itself from the ads, saying, "The Montana Republican Party wants to make clear that it is not affiliated in any way with the Main Street Advocacy, nor has it sanctioned or approved of the ads being presently run by Main Street Advocacy." You can read the whole release here.

Main Street yanked the ads a few days later, but conservative groups were not going to let the effort pass without a response, which came in the form of a mailing in many of the districts where the ads had run. Sent by a nonregistered group called Assembly Action Group, the mailings accused certain lawmakers of being allied with "liberal Washington insiders working with a violent left-wing union" - words that carry a punch in rural Montana. The mailing also labeled Main Street as an elitist D.C. group committed to "working to defeat the Tea Party's conservative message."

It was all phenomenal fodder for the few political reporters covering the primary, but in the end it is hard to see what, if any, effect the tea party folks or the fight over them had on the voters. Of the 25 candidates tea party activists were pushing for in the state House races, 12 came out on top, but most of those were either incumbents or strong contenders to begin with.

In the U.S. House race, the more libertarian/tea party-friendly challenger to Rehberg only scored 19 percent of the GOP primary vote. Rehberg won every county in the state. Even in Lake County, a rural Tractor Country community where we covered the growing tea party movement earlier this year, Rehberg scored a decisive win (although, it is notable that the tea party-friendly candidate scored 25 percent - 6 points higher than his statewide average).

"[W]hen the dust settled and the final ballots were counted, it was pretty much the same old, same old in Montana," political commentator George Ochenski wrote in a column in the Missoula Independent.

The Meaning for November

That did not prevent the Democrats from taking great pleasure in commenting on the stormy Republican primary.

"Who's in charge over there?" Democratic Party Chairman Jim Elliott said to the AP. "I have never seen primary challenges like this, ever. It shows me there are deep divisions in the Republican Party, and the infighting is unprecedented."

But the Democrats shouldn't take too much comfort from Tuesday's vote out here. Although the Democrats had four candidates on the ballot to go up against Rehberg in the fall, Republicans cast twice as many votes as Democrats in the primary. In fact, in looking at the where voter turnout was particularly weak, two of the state's Boom Town counties -- Gallatin and Missoula -- stand out. The counties are home to Montana State and the University of Montana, respectively, and both saw very weak turnout Tuesday.

The two counties are key to any hopes Democrats harbor in taking the House seat -- seen as a longshot at best -- and are home to the pockets of liberal Democrats in the state Legislature.

Perhaps it would have been different if senior Sen. Max Baucus, who helped guide the health care bill through Congress, had been up for election. When talking with the tea party folks out here, it's clear they're more likely to mobilize on that national debate -- or, say, the finer points of the Commerce Clause of the Constitution or federal intrusion into banking. State budgets and the like give them less to chew on.

Of course, they do have five more months to find those Montana issues that light the patriotic fire.

Lee Banville is the former editor-in-chief of the Online NewsHour and is an assistant professor of journalism at the University of Montana at Missoula. He is also a digital strategy adviser to the NewsHour.

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.

The tea party movement had some reason to celebrate, in Nevada particularly, but not in California, where its supporters were trounced. Even the widely accepted political storyline of 2010 - incumbents are in trouble - took a hit in Arkansas, for now anyway.

Reading too much into primary results can be foolhardy. Voters, beyond the most engaged, are usually not fully tuned into the election until later in the season and Tuesday's turnout numbers bear that out: 30 percent in Nevada, 25 percent in California, 15 percent in Arkansas.

But the results in those three states do send some messages about those individual places for November. And the Patchwork Nation breakdown of the results is revealing.

In Nevada, How Much Change?

The biggest win of the night for the tea party movement came in Nevada where Republican state assemblywoman Sharron Angle won the right to face Sen. Majority Leader Harry Reid in November. Even before the vote, strategists argued that if Angle won the nomination Reid might have a better chance at winning reelection. Some believe Angle's positions, which include a desire to phase out Social Security and eliminate the Department of Education, might be seen as unpalatable to voters there.

Maybe, but look a little closer at Nevada. If there is a state where one could argue for the phasing out of Social Security - political dynamite in most places - it might be the Silver State. There are two counties that hold about 90 percent of the population in the state, the Boom Town counties of Clark and Washoe, and those two places share some key characteristics.

They are younger than most places, with about two-thirds of their population 44 years old or younger. And they are likely very hungry for change. Those counties have been decimated in the housing crunch and the recession with unemployment rates in the 13 percent range and foreclosure rates near or above 10 percent.

Add those things together - youth and an angry electorate - and you could see how the idea of phasing out Social Security might be appealing in Clark and Washoe.

Working against Angle with the young families in those places, however, might be the idea of dumping the Department of Education, which since the Bush administration has become known as a force for education reform. And some polls show Reid leading Angle head-to-head.

'Nobody Knows Anything'

Sen. Blanche Lincoln's run-off win in Arkansas seems the most stunning rebuke of the idea that incumbents are in trouble.

The win for the two-term incumbent offers proof of the old saw "nobody knows anything." Analysts on cable news channels Tuesday were writing her political obituary, but by Wednesday she was a "giant killer." But again, the numbers inside of her win suggest she has some serious challenges ahead in November.

The five biggest counties in Arkansas are all Boom Towns in Patchwork Nation. On the whole, those places tend to lean right. If you look at the numbers from the May 18 primary and Tuesday's run-off you see how that plays out in the state.

Lincoln's vote totals were below those of her Republican challenger Rep. John Boozman in three of those five counties - and in a few even the combined Democratic vote count from Tuesday was below Boozman's May 18 total.

And remember there was a lot more excitement around the hard-fought Democratic contest than the Republican one, which was an easy win for Boozman.

For Lincoln the challenge for November will be reuniting what surely is a fractured Arkansas Democratic Party and bringing out as much vote as she can in Pulaski County, home of Little Rock.

In California, Dollars, Cents and Votes

There were two big races in California on the Republican side, for governor and senator, and in the both the real story was not the number of votes received, but the number of dollars spent. The two winners outspent their opponents by large amounts.

Securing the Republican senate nomination, former Hewlett-Packard executive Carly Fiorina beat her two opponents handily, including tea partier Chuck Devore, and outspent them more than 2-to-1. And on the way to securing the Republican gubernatorial nomination, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman, spent more than $88 million.

So going forward is the lesson that big money trumps the grassroots efforts of the tea party? Some will be touting that analysis. But it's also possible that the tea party doesn't have particularly heavy representation in California. That's something we saw in our analysis of registered tea party members in April.

But the tea party has had an impact on the race. Both Fiorina and Whitman moved right on their positions on abortion and immigration and may have to track back to the center to win in November.

Look at the Patchwork Nation map of California and you'll see a lot of big city Industrial Metro counties, wealthy Monied Burbs and exurban Boom Towns. Those places tend to be less focused on social issues and more on economics.

There was good news last week as newly released April numbers showed home construction had grown by 4.4 percent in that month. But immediately analysts raised questions. They wondered whether the bump was unsustainable because it was aided by the federal government's home-buyer tax credit, which expired at the end of April.

And that's only one problem. 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.

Through April there had been about 107,000 new single-family housing units started in the United States, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. And more than 40 percent of them were located in the what Patchwork Nation calls Boom Town counties, places that grew rapidly in the first half of the last decade - and then got slammed by foreclosures and falling housing prices.

Is the building there a good thing for those places - a sign of a turnaround - or a bad thing? That question has ramifications for the entire country.

Places Built on Building

It's hard to overemphasize the impact the housing market and home construction have on the broader economy. Construction, especially home construction, provides good jobs and has a big multiplier effect in areas like furniture, HVAC and home electronics.

For the nation's Boom Town counties those effects were magnified. The home rush of early 2000s added a lot of new addresses to those places, which often have a more exurban feel, and they added a lot of wealth. People who did carpentry and landscaping suddenly found themselves able to buy new and bigger homes.

And then the market crashed and left those people with mortgages they couldn't afford and homes that had lost a lot of value.

As the NewsHour noted in its trip to Eagle, Colo., last year, a Boom Town west of Vail, the entire city was struggling through a hard time. And now, a year later, values are still lower, about 25 percent down from last year, according to Trulia.com.

And Eagle is not alone. In Las Vegas, Nev., another Boom Town, there are still 36,000 foreclosures and median sale price is less than half what it was in 2007. In Riverside, Calif., a smaller Boom Town, there are 4,600 foreclosures and the median sales price is also half what it was at the peak.

Those two places, among the hardest hit in the housing crash, are also seeing a resurgence in single-family home building. Clark County, Nev., (home of Las Vegas) has seen more than 2,000 new single-family homes started since January. Riverside County in California has seen 1,368.

On the whole, there have been 45,000 new single-family homes started in Boom Town counties in 2010. That is by far the most of any county type in Patchwork Nation. And that is despite the fact that the Boom Towns have one of the highest foreclosures rates of any of our 12 community types - at more than two per 1,000 homes.

Is that optimism or foolishness?

Starting up Again?

For all the talk of Americans reexamining their lives or changing how they live, the new building starts suggest something else may be going on - a hope to restart the housing machine. As the New York Times noted in a recent piece, the boom has already begun anew in Las Vegas.

And while the Boom Towns have had the largest number of new housing starts, the wealthy Monied Burb counties, which also have higher foreclosure rates, have also seen a mini-boom - 24,000 new single-family homes started since January.

It seems developers in hard hit areas are looking at the numbers and deciding to take a gamble on home demand coming back strong - and soon. If they are right, maybe a return to a scaled-down version of the good old days is coming.

But last week's hiring numbers last week and the recent shakiness in the European economies, offer big notes of caution. And if the gamble is wrong all those new housing starts may simply add to the inventory of empty structures in those places, extending a weak housing market in places already suffering.

Kip Ward, who owns the Historic Anchor Inn in Lincoln City, Ore., says his town, classified as a Service Worker Center in Patchwork Nation, has also been struggling with foreclosures. He told us last week his son had just bought a foreclosed home in town from the bank for half what it was listed at on the market.

"The thing is they are a building a brand new home just down the street from the foreclosure he bought," he said. "It's going to go for a lot more money. I just wonder, who is going to buy it?"

The spill is big news in the state - huge news actually - but it doesn't feel the same everywhere, and that is especially true in the capital of Baton Rouge, some 100 miles from the affected coast.

Up in the parish of East Baton Rouge, there is anger at oil giant BP, there is anger at the inability to shut down the well, there is anger at the federal government. But challenging the petrochemical industry as a whole, that's a different matter. Or it has been up to now.

Patchwork Nation has visited the Baton Rouge multiple times. East Baton Rouge, with its large racial divides, represents a Minority Central community in the Patchwork scheme.

But it is impossible to visit there and not be hit profound power of the oil industry. There are some 65 petrochemical facilities in the area, including the 150-acre ExxonMobil facility in the city of Baton Rouge itself. And the day-to-day operations of those facilities is more critical to the region than the spill.

Life Goes On

That's not to say the millions of gallons of crude leaking into the ocean is being ignored in Baton Rouge. The coastal areas have special meaning in the state.

"The oil spill is like a dark cloud over everyone's head," Pat Felder, a long-time resident, writes in an e-mail. "Our entire way of life is built around the Louisiana coast, seafood and wildlife. It is why we love it here. We have seen a reduction in the amount of some seafood, mostly oysters. ... If they do not cap it very soon, Katrina will seem like nothing compared to the permanent, or at least decades-lasting, devastation that our coast will suffer."

Kirby Goidel, who teaches at Louisiana State University, says that in Baton Rouge there's a heavy worry about the future. "While the coast is feeling the immediate impact, everyone (Baton Rouge and coastal communities) is concerned about the long-term consequences the disaster and especially about the effects on the seafood industry. This is a disaster of unknown scope and size and the uncertainty has people concerned about the future," he writes in an e-mail.

But ultimately those sentiments, while significant, are about more esoteric concerns - problems in the future or problems in the fishing industry down on the coast or problems in the state's self-image where the bayou holds a certain mythology.

The reality of Louisiana, however, is better understood looking at those petrochemical facilities around Baton Rouge. Those facilities statewide generate 17 billion gallons of gasoline annually and billions in revenue. They are key to keeping the state functioning.

The Industry That Makes the State Run

As the Obama administration has announced a desire to slow offshore oil production, including a moratorium on deepwater drilling, the strongest complaints have come from Louisiana.

Sen. David Vitter on Thursday called for an end to the moratorium. "Our workforce and economy have been significantly impacted from the oil spill, but Obama's offshore moratorium could threaten potential revenue for Louisiana and be even more devastating," he said in a statement.

And even those affected more directly by the spill don't want drilling to stop.

Reed Henderson, a state legislator who represents St. Bernard Parish, an area that has seen oil wash into its marshlands, says he understands that drilling can't stop. But he says next session he will introduce legislation to allow the state to collect royalties from companies that drill off of Louisiana's coast. That qualifies as something of a major development.

A Relationship Redefined

Henderson has been thinking about collecting royalties for a long time, long before the spill, and he's heard the arguments against it: companies will go elsewhere, taxes are bad. And Henderson, while he sympathizes with those thoughts, says the bigger issue is justice for Louisiana.

"If we're going to be the producer of energy in the country, we're going to get compensated," Henderson told us. "You can't drill anywhere else in the country. In California they say 'not near our white beaches.' In Florida they say, 'not near our white beaches.' Well, marshes are a lot harder to clean than beaches."

So why hasn't a proposal like Henderson's come out of Louisiana before now? Beyond federal interstate commerce issues (which Henderson thinks he can satisfy) there is trying to get a tax of the oil industry through the state legislature. No one likes taxes. And Henderson acknowledges, that's probably doubly true of taxes aimed at the state's biggest industry -- particularly when one gets farther from the coast.

"Will it be hard to pass through the state legislature? Sure it will be. But the time is right," he says.

Time will tell if he is correct. And when the leak eventually stops in the Gulf there will be two big questions in for the state: Did the oil spill redefine the relationship between Louisiana and the petrochemical industry - at least enough to interest the legislature in taxing it more heavily? And will there be a coastal/inland divide on how people feel about an idea like that?

For vacation towns based around boardwalks, beaches and marinas, Memorial Day weekend is often considered a preview of -- or at least a head start on -- summer, when the tourists arrive to fill the restaurants and curio shops and spend the money that makes it possible to stay in business.

A lot of those places fall into Patchwork Nation's Service Worker Center category, small, largely rural commerce centers. And many of them, a day's drive from big metro areas, take the first hit from the belt-tightening that happens in those big cities.

We saw this distinctly in Lincoln City, Ore., a Service Worker tourism hub on the Pacific Coast that sensed big economic problems in 2008 when the first few nice weekends that year didn't bring as many of the usual Portland and Salem crowd as they expected.

This Memorial Day in Lincoln City offered at least some good news. While there won't be any hard, fast tally for weeks, people there reported a slightly better three-day weekend in 2010 than in 2009 -- though trouble signs remain.

Define 'A Good Weekend'

Kip Ward, who runs the Historic Anchor Inn, says his inn actually had a nice busy weekend.

"We are doing much better than last year, but remember for us there are different factors at play," he writes in an e-mail. "When you have very poor business it is relatively easy to post big percentage gains from year to year. Plus, we are in the process of 'being discovered' lots of word of mouth etc."

On the whole he says the hotel managers and staffers he talks to around town report a mixed bag - some up a bit, some down a bit. Still, again, this would seem to be an improvement this year.

Lincoln City Mayor Lori Hollingsworth says the weekend seemed "very busy." And Allyson Longueira, editor of the local weekly newspaper the News Guard, said the local outlet mall was very crowded. "It has been relatively recession-proof, and the rainy weekend would certainly help with traffic flow to the mall," she writes in an e-mail.

The relatively upbeat news from the Oregon Coast matched what was forecast nationally. Before the weekend, AAA had estimated some 32 million Americans would travel for the holiday - up 5 percent from 2009. Lower gas prices were cited as a reason.

And if you are looking for harbingers of a growing economic recovery, that's not a bad sign to point to. Memorial Day trips to places like Lincoln City can be seen as a kind of canary in the coal mine of the American economy. It means people are feeling a little freer with their disposable income.

A Bigger Change

But the other side to that good news story is the larger change that is accompanying it: AAA also forecast that people seem to be spending less.

Ward says he's been seeing signs of that more frugal attitude around Lincoln City. "Generally around town I saw plenty of vacancy signs on Friday and even some on Saturday. This is troubling. In years past there would never be a vacancy on those days," he writes. "What I see as clear as can be is that there is a lot of downward pressure upon prices. Now like gas stations, many of the hotels have their prices posted to the street."

For Ward and his Anchor Inn, which specialize in low rates with lots of extras, that's not a terrible thing, but for some of the bigger inns, it means trouble.

Ward noted that the Sea Gypsy, just up the road from him on Highway 101, was "folding up tent." "This is (was) a very large oceanfront facility that has operated successfully for the last 40 years or so. But their formula no longer works."

Repeated calls to the Sea Gypsy went unanswered and the "reservations" and "weekly/monthly specials" links on the property's site do not work.

No one expects the economy to suddenly turn around, of course. And the effects of the economic downturn were bound to persist somewhat. But the real question for Lincoln City and places like it is are they in a temporary moment when things are bouncing back or are they experiencing a new normal.

The receipts from this 2010 summer season will ultimately tell some of that story, but for the moment, Lincoln City will take more foot traffic over the last three days as a hopeful sign at least.

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

Overall, the Economic Hardship Index, a collection of economic factors including unemployment foreclosures and gas prices, climbed to 30.5 in May, up from 21.5 in April. But that was due to the latest set of foreclosures numbers, which look uniformly bad. They rose in every community type between February and April -- and in some places fairly sharply.

Even though the trends are uniform across all 12 Patchwork Nation community types, there are some strong differences in how those trends are playing out.

Where Housing Is Headed

When it comes to the housing market, the counties that naturally lean Republican are suffering a lot of the pain.

The four community types that saw the biggest percentage increase in foreclosures from February to April were the Military Bastions, Emptying Nests, Boom Towns, and Evangelical Epicenters. All of them saw foreclosure rates increase by more than 35 percent in that time.

But no community type was particularly immune from the increase -- every type had a double-digit percentage increase in that period, except for rural agricultural Tractor Country, which has missed a lot of the pain from the entire recession.

Hardship, Foreclosures and Unemployment Over Time

Patchwork Nation is primarily focused on comparing different types of places in America, and while the differences are often revealing, the similarities can be just as telling.

The fact that these foreclosure increases are spread across all the community types shows just how deep the housing market troubles run. Some types are clearly faring better than others -- with lower rates per 1,000 homes -- but the increases are troubling. They suggest the housing troubles may have a ways to go before they end.

And remember this set of numbers came before the government tax breaks for home buying ended in April. Those breaks helped get homes off the market and helped struggling homeowners sell.

Unemployment Improves

The changes in unemployment have also been widespread. In most of our community types, unemployment rates have improved for two consecutive months. And unemployment improved in every single county type in March (the latest county data available). But the improvements have been slight.

Unemployment dropped by about three percent in March in the wealthy Monied 'Burbs. And that's three percent - not three percentage points - so in real terms it fell to 9.86 percent in March from 10.16 percent in February. That's not insignificant, but it's also not the kind of change that can be easily felt.

There are bigger drops in other places -- unemployment fell by about 7 percent in the Mormon Outposts for example -- but overall the unemployment rates are still quite high in some of the county types in Patchwork Nation.

In four types, the unemployment rate is still over 10 percent. Minority Central, Evangelical Epicenter, Industrial Metropolis and Service Worker Center counties have unemployment rates ranging from 10 percent to 12 percent.

Critical Next Months

In short, when you look at all the elements of the Economic Hardship Index together, it looks as though a fight is going on between two pictures of the U.S. economy.

The job picture, which has been so awful for so long, is slowly climbing back and could carry the economy on its back. But the housing picture, which helped bring on the economic downward spiral, is saying "not so fast."

In terms of the coming 2010 midterm elections, the next few months will be extremely important.

If the unemployment picture continues to improve -- and if the improvement quickens in places like the wealthier more populous areas like Monied 'Burbs and the Boom Towns -- the fall might not look as bad for sitting Democratic politicians.

If the housing market's woes continue and grow, it could stall out or at least dull the impact of those drops in unemployment, helping the GOP.

Then again, the economy could keep limping in its current state, creating an electoral environment that looks a lot like the economy itself -- a muddled, messy mix of arguments.

But a primary is not a general election and the candidate's recent spate of statements on topics ranging from civil rights to the oil company BP has raised questions about his chances for the fall. Some believe Paul's more libertarian views on those issues may be too far out of the mainstream to win in November.

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. There are a dozen of those counties in Kentucky, they hold close to one quarter of the population and they lean Republican.

But "leans Republican" can mean a lot of things - people side with the GOP for a number of reasons from cultural and economic ones to specific issues. And particularly in 2010 when the first true "tea party candidate" is the subject in question, voters in the Boom Towns may be looking a little closer at the ophthalmologist from Bowling Green.

Boom Town Elephants

The nation's Boom Town counties have changed a lot since 2000. They have grown and diversified - and consequently many took a hit in the housing crash. And they are places where the Republican roots are firm, even if they are not deeply planted in the soil, full of young families living in more sprawling exurban environments.

In 2008, when the country shifted to vote for Democrat Barack Obama, the Boom Towns moved toward the Democratic Party, but not enough to swing to Mr. Obama. John McCain still carried these counties by 5 percent.

And this is true in Kentucky, too. President Obama won only one Boom Town county in the Bluegrass State in 2008 - Fayette County. It should be noted however that Fayette, home of Lexington, is also the most populous Boom Town in the state with some 282,000 people.

Rand's Kind of Towns?

Still, all of that would seem to bode well for Rand Paul, particularly when you add in the fact that Patchwork Nation found that Boom Town counties have highest rates of tea party membership in the nation when we looked at those numbers last month.

But there are a few red flags in the Boom Towns for Rand Paul as well.

First, as we noted last week, even though Paul won the Boom Towns by wide margins, the turnout in those counties was not particularly high. In seven of the 12 Boom Town counties in the state turnout was less than 30 percent - including the three most populous Boom Towns and Paul's own home county of Warren.

Second, there are aspects of Paul's libertarian streak that may not be viewed as positively by voters in the Boom Towns.

It's not clear how all the young families in these communities - about 29 percent of the population is under the age of 20 - will respond to his idea of abolishing the Department of Education. And there will inevitably be questions about where he stands on drug laws - though he told Time magazine he would support federal laws.

Categorizing any set of counties' politics can be tricky, but on the whole the Boom Towns, tend to be conservative, but more pragmatic than doctrinal in their politics. They don't have the deep culturally Republican roots of the socially conservative Evangelical Epicenters or rural agricultural Tractor Country.

And what that means for a Republican with a deep libertarian stripe is very much an open question.

None of this means Paul is in trouble. Kentucky leans right politically and he will get a big advantage from that. But as his views become better known there are at least some reasons to question how he might do in that state's 12 critical Boom Towns counties.

But in each case, those results came from closed primaries -- where only registered members of each party can vote -- and each contained some special circumstances.

At Patchwork Nation, we are as eager as anyone for indicators on where the electorate is going and there are some signs in Tuesday's numbers. But it still may be a bit early for some of the large blanket statements like "the tea party has arrived" or "the establishment is on the ropes."

A few primaries in a few states do not make a trend. And even in these results there are some mixed messages.

The tea party's big night in Kentucky

The night's biggest story came from Kentucky where Senate candidate Rand Paul, who trumpeted his ties to the tea party, stomped his GOP opponent, Secretary of State Trey Grayson, 59 percent to 35 percent. In his victory speech Paul used the oft-quoted tea party line about "taking our government back."

But looking at the states through the Patchwork Nation prism, there were clearly different levels for support for Paul. His strongest support came from four county types - the growing Boom Towns, the wealthy Monied 'Burbs, the big-city Industrial Metropolis and the Military Bastions. In all of those county types he won more than 60 percent of the vote.

Those numbers show a few trends of note.

First, in three of those county types the median household income is above the national average. Many have noted that members of the tea party movement tend to be wealthier than average. (In fact, our recent analysis of registered tea party members nationally showed the Boom Towns held the biggest areas of support.) In Kentucky at least that finding seems to hold.

But there is a second finding in these numbers too.

Those four county types where Paul won the biggest percentage of support averaged the lowest levels in turnout in the state. In other words, in those places in particular, Paul's voters seemed more active than others, but voters there in general were not as engaged. It was not so much a march by the masses to take Washington back, but the mobilization of a smaller committed group of voters.

It's not clear what that means for the fall or for the tea party. If November features an election with low turnout, Paul will be well-served by that trend. If more voters turn out - that means less committed voters as well as more committed ones - it may be less positive.

But the overall conservative trend in Kentucky will help Paul quite a bit in November. The state's 52 Evangelical Epicenter counties hold the most registered voters. Paul captured 58 percent of their vote on Tuesday. That number's not as high as it was in other county types, but it proves a tea party candidate can do well with socially conservative voters - at least in Kentucky or at least with Rand Paul.

Exit Specter

Up in Pennsylvania, meanwhile, the early analysis has focused on how Sen. Arlen Specter lost the Democratic primary to Rep. Joe Sestak because he was a turncoat Republican. Many have noted how Sestak won by tying Specter to former President George W. Bush - a Republican.

But the results in Pennsylvania don't show Sestak won because he carried the most reliably Democratic counties. In fact, Sestak won every one of the state's 12 swing voting Monied 'Burb counties. And Sestak won all but two of Pennsylvania's 36 Service Worker Centers, which tend to be more conservative.

Specter won the reliably Democratic Industrial Metropolis of Philadelphia County. He won it by a wide margin, but it wasn't enough to offset his losses everywhere else.

Looking at the results this way, Specter's loss could more easily be attributed to Specter fatigue - he had served 30 years in the Senate after all. And when fall comes Sestak's bases of support might look a lot better to Democrats, provided they can bring out the vote in Philadelphia.

Incumbents' Reckoning?

Even the one message everyone has taken away from Tuesday -- incumbents are in trouble -- isn't completely clear. Out in Pennsylvania's 12th District, Democrat Mark Critz won the seat of his former boss, the late John Murtha, by essentially running as an incumbent -- the heir to Murtha.

Does that mean Critz election proves some grand point? No. In a rough economy incumbents probably are in trouble in 2010. But it means the mood of the electorate is not necessarily as easy to measure this year as you might think.

And big proclamations out of Tuesday may not carry a lot of weight nationally come November.

In March, the 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. They are watching how it breaks up and dies.

Patchwork Nation is a fan of Planet Money's efforts, so with their help we decided to map where Toxie's mortgages are based and how they match what we have seen in the larger housing market and economy in our 12 community types. And Toxie shows in a close-up way much of what Patchwork Nation has been documenting for the past year.

There is plenty of blame to go around in the housing crisis -- from lenders to borrowers -- but when you get down to it, some communities played a bigger role than others in the crash that nearly brought down the economy.

One Asset's Far Reach

Toxie is only one asset, of course -- just one bundle of bad mortgages in a sea of thousands -- but her far reach (and we think of Toxie as a gal due to her name) can be measured in many ways.

First, even though she is only one bundle of bad debt, Toxie's 2,400 bad loans (Countrywide mortgages originally issued in 2005) reach into some 280 counties. At Patchwork Nation, we are watching 24 counties across the country particularly closely, with bloggers or news organizations tracking what's happening in each. Seven of those 24 counties have at least one of Toxie's loans.

But a better way of understanding Toxie is to break down where her mortgages exist using our 12 county types. When you do that, her lineage becomes more clear. Toxie was born of some of the wealthiest counties in America.

More than half of the loans in Toxie -- about 1,500 -- came from just two county types - the wealthy Monied 'Burbs (about 900 loans) and the more exurban Boom Towns (about 600 loans). Those communities have higher-than-average median household incomes and have been hit hardest by the foreclosure crisis.

Add in the big city Industrial Metropolis counties (some 350 more loans) and two-thirds of the asset comes from wealthier locales.

Meanwhile, other county types in Patchwork Nation hold hardly any of Toxie. The nation's Service Worker Center counties, small town communities scattered across the country, have only 37 loans in Toxie. The socially conservative Evangelical Epicenter counties, based heavily in the south, have only three loans in Toxie. Both those county types have median household incomes that sit below the county average.

In other words, NPR's toxic asset, born of bad Countrywide mortgages in 2005, is largely a creation of the upper middle class. How does that jibe with what we know about the housing crisis in general?

Just Another Toxic Asset in the Crowd

Well, it may be that the most exceptional thing about Toxie is how completely typical she is. Over the past year, the county types with the highest foreclosure rates -- not just the highest number of foreclosures, but the highest rates -- have consistently been the three community types that dominate Toxie, and usually by a fairly wide margin.

For much of the past year the foreclosure rates in those three county types -- the Monied 'Burbs, Boom Towns, and Industrial Metros -- have been at two per 1,000 homes or higher, and often quite a bit higher. Most other communities were at one per 1,000 homes or lower. Rural, agricultural Tractor Country counties have never broken 0.5 per 1,000 homes. (Toxie has no loans in Tractor Country.)

None of this is to engage in finger-pointing, but as the news fills with more accounts of populist outrage in America, it serves to note that, where the housing crisis is concerned at least, the problems seem to have largely emanated from communities that have more wealth and power than others. And those are some of the same places where the outrage is loudest, as we have noted on this blog.

That doesn't mean that everyone in those counties is to blame for the housing mess. There are plenty of people in those communities, the vast majority, who paid their mortgages on time and never got into trouble.

And it doesn't mean their points are any less valid, of course. Bad lending practices and seeking risky loans aren't good -- no matter who's at fault.

But it does mean that at least some of the blame lies close to home.

Over the past few months he has been roaming the country talking to crowds on what the White House calls a Main Street tour. He's been to Savannah, Ga., and Macon, Mo. On Thursday, he was in Buffalo, N.Y. Next week he'll go to Youngstown, Ohio.

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 - as Patchwork Nation often notes. And for a president, what voters want to hear in a Boom Town locale like Savannah might be very different than what they want to hear in an Evangelical Epicenter like Macon.

And so with those thoughts in mind we took two of the President's more recent "Main Street" stops and created word clouds of his speeches. They show there may be a few divides in the electorate about what this coming election will be "about."

Did I Mention Small Business?

In Buffalo, Obama addressed a crowd at Industrial Support Inc., a small contractor firm that does everything from industrial sewing to circuit board assembly.

Two words stood out in the speech - "small" and "business" - in fact the phrase "small business" appeared some 25 times. That's not exactly a shock. That was the focus of the speech.

It's worth noting, however, a few words that didn't appear in the speech. Variations of the word "manufacturing" only appeared twice - even in a factory that specializes manufacturing - and "union," at least in the context of labor unions, didn't turn up once.

The absence of those words is something of a surprise, especially when the speech is being given in the heart of an aging Industrial Metropolis like Buffalo. And it may suggest a few things about the Obama team.

It may be that the administration sees the economic changes of the past few years as remaking the American economy in a fundamental way and talking about bringing manufacturing back is not a wise move. It also may be an effort to speak more directly to the wealthier, more-educated voters in that make up a large chunk of those Industrial Metros.

This was Obama the job-maker and business defender.

Time for Reform

Just a few weeks ago on the same tour, Obama the reformer was on display in Quincy, Ill. "Reform" appeared in that speech 16 times (it appeared only once in Buffalo). And the Quincy speech had a much more populist streak. Wall Street's actions in the first half of the last decade were likened to "a big casino."

Quincy, in the Service Worker Center county of Adams, is a place where the idea of reform might resonate and that speech, focusing on financial reform. The unemployment rate in the county hovers above the national average and the median household income is only about $36,000.

In the recession, Service Worker Centers like Adams County have been hit harder than other places. The small-town economies rise and fall on the health of the larger economy - they feel pain before other types of places and they recover later.

There's nothing intrinsically dissonant about the tones of the two speeches, but they reveal the different attitudes around a nation that has suffered through a long recession heading into an election year.

In Industrial Metros like Buffalo, some at the top end of the economic ladder have already begun to feel the recovery. Like the wealthier residents of Monied 'Burbs, they are seeing their stock portfolios recover. For many those people the 2010 election is probably going to be less about "bringing change to Washington" that it's going to be about getting the private sector back on the path to robust growth, if possible.

In the Service Worker Centers, the recovery probably still sounds more like a rumor than anything else. The voters there are going probably going to be more ready for candidates promising reform and change.

Those may be the dual story lines evolving in May - voters wanting to fire up the economy versus voters wanting to reform how it works. There's room for crossover between those things, of course, but there is also plenty of room for disagreement for those trying to win votes.