News-Record.com

News that President Bush was due to visit Greensboro later this month got me thinking about why the Gate City is such as popular stop for pols. (Barack and Michelle Obama have been here and John McCain stopped by for a fundraiser earlier this year.)

Perhaps this interactive map from Men's Health provides an explanation. As my friend and colleague Mike Fuchs wrote recently:

Greensboro is pretty good at playing politics, so says a recent magazine survey.

Men's Health magazine ranked Greensboro as the sixth most political city in the nation.

That's based on factors including the percentage of citizens registered to vote, the percentage who participated in the most recent senatorial and gubernatorial elections, the 2004 presidential election and the 2008 presidential primaries.

So who's number 1? Raleigh.

"Clarence Lightner would be proud," the magazine says. "He was the pioneering politician who in 1973 became one of the first African American mayors of a Southern city - one in which a majority of voters were white. As it turns out, not much has changed in 35 years: Raleigh's residents will vote as if they're about to make history."