There were plenty of cars on the road, especially in the second half of the month, but the only new state on the map is Illinois. Not a toughie. The eastern third of the country seems to be moving westward en masse, with Wisconsin, Illinois, Kentucky, Tennessee, Georgia, and Florida on the cutting edge.

It being presidential election season in the U.S., I’ve seen a whole bunch of U.S. maps showing primary results and projections state by state. The convention (pardon my pun) is to color Democratic states blue, Republican states red, and (sometimes) could-go-either-way states purple. This is pretty funny because back in the day it was Republicans who were more likely to be vowing “Better dead than red.” Now it’s the Democrats — although “dead” is going a little too far.

Anyway, my hunch is that blue-state license plates are more common on Vineyard roads than those from red states. If I had the mathematical smarts to develop an algorithm that predicted license-plate sightings on Martha’s Vineyard, the major variables would be a state’s distance from Massachusetts, the size of its population, and its per-capita income. (This explains why North Dakota and Mississippi are especially hard to get: their populations are small, they’re a ways off, and they aren’t rich.) Maybe I should add blue/red to the factor list.

It’s Democratic presidents who vacation here, after all, and yes, word is out that the current president will be back this summer. With any luck the record will continue next summer.