However if you look at who gets more from the federal pie, those red states get the most by far. For example, many farmers farm simply for farm subsidies (that's a government hand out). The true answer is that the northeast has been liberal essentially since being settled (many of the religious groups in the north, NY especially, were abolitionists). Left and right in the modern sense are defined by the civil war and so this sort of explains the break. However, even with the slow down of the industrial revolution, our urban areas still are the driving force in our economy. Unfortunately the current digital economy does not require the huge workforce that building cars and stuff did, and urban areas have many disenfranchised people wondering what they are going to do.