Atlanta has reinvented itself in the last 50 years as the "city too busy to hate." It has the nation's busiest airport; it's home to the headquarters of several global mega-brands, including Coca-Cola; and it's the hub of an emerging megapolis stretching to Charlotte.

But race still serves as the political backdrop in the state that gave rise to both Ty Cobb and Martin Luther King, Jr. Georgia's white voters gave Barack Obama the fourth lowest percentage of their vote in the nation, behind only Alabama, Louisiana, and Mississippi.

The map below from Electoral Geography shows Obama's share of the white vote per county.  He received almost half in Atlanta, Athens, and Savannah. He did the worst in the Black Belt counties of the Coastal Plains.

He did decently in the northern mountains, home to Nathan Deal (a former Democrat). These counties never had many slaves, and, as JMart has noted, areas in the former Confederacy with fewer African Americans "still retain a healthy two-party system."

What does this all mean in today's Georgia primaries? Not much by itself -- it's dangerous to draw direct correlations, and South Carolina Republicans nominated a black House candidate last month -- but it's still one of the best geographical representations of Georgia's electorate.