My colleague Mark Friesen has produced a

that gives you a visceral sense of the politics of the Portland metropolitan area.

The deep blue in the middle of Portland shows just where Democrat John Kitzhaber built up the huge pile of votes that brought him his narrow statewide victory in the race for governor.

In some precincts, Kitzhaber's margin of victory looks as lopsided as a presidential election in Egypt.

In one precinct in the Sabin and King neighborhoods of Northeast Portland, Kitzhaber won 92.2 percent of the vote to 6.7 percent for Republican Chris Dudley. There were a handful of other precincts in the inner east side of Portland that had similar results.

In contrast, the upscale Pearl District was much more competitive, with Kitzhaber "only" winning by 77 percent to 21 percent. Dudley actually narrowly won the ultra-high income Dunthorpe neighborhood just south of Portland, as well as a couple small precincts in the West Hills.

But generally speaking, Dudley didn't start winning in Multnomah County until you move east toward Gresham.

What's striking when you look at the map is how the blue precincts radiate out from Portland to adjoining neighborhoods in Clackamas and Washington counties. It's a visual representation of what journalist Bill Bishop called "The Big Sort," which is the increasing propensity of politically like-minded people to live near each other.

That's particularly the case in Washington County, which was once reliably Republican but Kitzhaber narrowly won. The neighborhoods east of 217 and south of the Sunset Highway all went Democratic, as did the rest of Beaverton.

Dudley did better in Aloha, the Cooper Mountain area and much of Hillsboro.

In general, the smaller the community and the farther out the suburb, the more likely it was to go red. And still-rural areas of the three counties also tended to go deep red. For example, in a geographically large precinct south of Molalla, Dudley won nearly 71 percent of the vote, compared to just under 27 percent for Kitzhaber.

And although Dudley lost his hometown of Lake Oswego, he did win the precincts bordering on the city's namesake lake.

One of the best features of

is that you can zoom in to the street level, making it easy to see the political typography of your neighborhood or any other.