If you are interested in knowing the red and blue states and counties, check out the 2004 maps and text at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/. and 2006 maps at
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~mejn/election/2006/. That page also has a population density map.

... Blue states and blue counties are generally those where land is out of reach of a high fraction of the people.   ...   Read the whole article

Al Katzenberger: A Synopsis of Progress & Poverty

Is it not a notorious fact, known to the most ignorant, that developing communities, where the total wealth is small, but where land is cheap, are always better communities for laborers than rich communities, where land is expensive? Wherever one finds land values relatively low, will one not find wages relatively high? Wherever land value is high, will one not find wages low? As land increases in value, poverty deepens and pauperism appears. Where land is cheap, you will find no beggars, and the inequalities of condition are very slight. In the great cities, where land is so valuable that it is measured and sold by the square foot, you will find the extremes of poverty and of luxury. And this disparity in condition between the two extremes of the social scale may always be measured by the price of land. Land in and near the great cities is valuable, yet there you will see such great squalor, destitution and misery that you will stand aghast. ... read the whole synopsis

H.G. Brown: Significant Paragraphs from Henry George's Progress & Poverty, Chapter 4: Land Speculation Causes Reduced Wages

There is a cause, not yet adverted to, which must be taken into consideration fully to explain the influence of material progress upon the distribution of wealth.

That cause is the confident expectation of the future enhancement of land values, which arises in all progressive countries from the steady increase of rent, and which leads to speculation, or the holding of land for a higher price than it would then otherwise bring.

We have hitherto assumed, as is generally assumed in elucidations of the theory of rent, that the actual margin of cultivation always coincides with what may be termed the necessary margin of cultivation — that is to say, we have assumed that cultivation extends to less productive points only as it becomes necessary from the fact that natural opportunities are at the more productive points fully utilized.

This, probably, is the case in stationary or very slowly progressing communities, but in rapidly progressing communities, where the swift and steady increase of rent gives confidence to calculations of further increase, it is not the case. In such communities, the confident expectation of increased prices produces, to a greater or less extent, the effects of a combination among landholders, and tends to the withholding of land from use, in expectation of higher prices, thus forcing the margin of cultivation farther than required by the necessities of production. ... read the whole chapter