Rastus is right about the shift in industry, especially over the last 40 years or so, away from the northern states and into the WARMER states,partly this has been a result of rising energy costs, partly because due to their prior LACK of industry southern states offered business better deals and cheaper labor.
How ever as Coroner pointed out, this shift is irrelevant because the division in America is not based on regional concerns as it was in 1860 but is more of an Urban versus rural matter, take my area for example, only the southeastern third of the state is run by dems, but that area contains about 2/3 of the population. Ma is the same way, the eastern third of the state is a socialist hellhole that has imposed it's regime on the rest of state due to numbers and money, nearly all states can show a similar divide, in Maine the state is run by Augusta, Bangor, Portland and Lewiston, the remainder of the state has no effective representation in national affairs, (both Me. (R) Senators voted FOR the stimulus bill).
The hard reality is that half the population are sheep who will follow who ever yells the loudest or tells them what they want to hear. Of the remaining half 1/4 are intelligent, Patriotic, hard working people who want America to remain America, (That would be us gun clinging, right wing, religious nut, Veteran, terrorist extremists who can read and think) the other 1/4 are composed of those who are consciously trying to undermine the traditions America was founded on and a larger percentage who just don't know anything but want to be "cool" like the social elitists they admire. This "leftist" 1/4 of the population is, as in all other countries primarily drawn from the so called "intellectuals" these are people who's parents were financially secure (often inherited rather than earned) attended Prep schools and Ivy league collages where their lack of real world experience was exploited by Marxist oriented professors who also had no real world experience, but enjoy funding from anti American activists like George Soros through "front" organizations such as ACORN and the Joyce Foundation. These brain washed minions then infiltrate Politics, and the media to propagandize the masses into thinking they have all the answers, in spite of the fact that their "answers" have a consistent record of failure world wide. Look at Cuba as an example, Batista was cutting sugar cane at 10 years old, joined the Army and worked his way up to Dictator, He may not have been an ideal ruler, but under his administration Cuba had the highest standard of living in the Caribbean, It was the child of wealth Castro, and other privileged colledge socialists who reduced Cuba to it's current state of poverty where it's largest export is it's desperate population.
This well financed social elite is our true enemy, the ones we must defeat are those who who consider themselves "citizens of the world".
In order to due this we must have money and a voice, if they bribe a politician, we need to be able to bribe (or blackmail) 2, if they run a propaganda piece in the media such as the recent anti CCW show on 20/20 we need to run a dozen debunking and ridiculing it, when they lie like saying that 90% of Mexico's guns come from America we must expose it.
Do not be deluded into thinking that the alternative is secession and a civil war, it's not, the alternative would be 50 civil wars within the states like what occurred in Kansas in the 1860's