Patrick Ruffini put together a map showing where Ron Paul is getting his donations from. What did he find?

“This really is a Western movement, with some of the Northeast thrown in. Basically, these are the places where you would expect libertarians to be strong. But I don’t think I’ve ever seen a data set this good about the state-by-state strength of libertarianism. And the data gets more reliable every day.”

Here’s the map:

Some more analysis from Ruffini:

“The Paul movement is weakest in the Deep South and the Ohio River Valley. Ohio (and surprisingly New York) are Paul’s weakest big states.

“The differences are also fairly dramatic. One is 4 times more likely to be a Ron Paul donor in Nevada than in Mississippi. And more than twice as likely in blue Washington state than in blue New York. Alaska and Hawaii, which are not on the map, would also be colored the darkest shade of red.”

The Boston Globe ran a great (if blunt) map back in 2004 outlining their model of the 10 regions of American politics. Check out how Sagebrush mirrors Ron Paul’s support.

According to the Globe,

“This region is named after the Sagebrush Rebellion of the late 1970s, which was fueled by resentment toward the federal bureaucracy. Occupying about half the land area of the United States, it includes parts of 17 states. Most are in the West, but the region also includes libertarian-minded parts of New Hampshire and Maine.”

Does the Ron Paul map give credence to the Globe model?