The Bad Stripe = "Greater Appalachia"

The Bad Stripe I've identified based on voting out of sync with the rest of the country and even the rest of their states, and a consistent cluster of low human development indicators - and it appears on Jayman's blog, more or less, as his Greater Appalachia. Is it because it's a boundary zone? Settled by Border Reivers?



Above: the yall zone, the border of which is basically the Bad Stripe. Note the correspondence with northern Greater Appalachia.