In the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, nearly six out of ten voters lived in communities where the contest between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama wasn't close at all. Most voters in that hotly contested primary lived in counties where either Obama or Clinton won by more than 20 percentage points — an electoral blowout.

Clinton won 49 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties by 20 percentage points or more; most of these counties were smaller and populated by white voters. Thirty-nine of these landslide Clinton counties were in rural or exurban Pennsylvania. Obama won only two counties by a landslide, but one was Philadelphia, the most inner-city county of a massive metro region.

Pennsylvania wasn't a special case in the long-running contest between Clinton and Obama. Supporters of the two candidates not only vote separately, they live separately.

The stark geographic and racial division between Clinton and Obama "is unnerving core constituencies -- African Americans and wealthy liberals -- who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama," the Washington Post reported in late April. The "quandry for the party," according to the Post, was that Clinton might be the better candidate to win the white, working-class (and rural?) vote, but her nomination may irreparably divide the party.

This geographic and racial rift didn't happen suddenly, a division caused by Obama's discussion of small town bitterness or the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Supporters of Obama and Clinton have come from entirely different communities at least since the Super Tuesday contests on February 5th, according to a Daily Yonder analysis.