Joe Biden may be “tired, tired, tired, tired, tired!” of hearing that some places in the country are more patriotic than others, but Sarah Palin is right: Patriotic and pro-American sentiment run higher in some areas than in others.

Naturally, how to measure patriotism is a matter of argument. One way is to look at differences in military involvement: Rural and small-town families are more likely to see their children go off into combat, and return in body bags. Or, we can turn to one of the few recent non-partisan surveys on the matter, the American National Election Study from the University of Michigan. It’s produced every election year, and the most recent data is from 2004.

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1. How strong is your love for your country? . . . EXTREMELY strong, VERY strong, SOMEWHAT strong, or NOT VERY strong?

2. Is being an American EXTREMELY important, VERY important, SOMEWHAT important, NOT TOO important, or NOT AT ALL important to you personally?

If we scrutinize the responses from large cities, suburbs, and small towns, the small towns are far more patriotic. Nearly three in every four (73.4 percent) respondents from counties of fewer than 25,000 people expressed that their love for their country was extremely strong, compared to only half of those in counties with more than 300,000 inhabitants. In the nation’s largest population centers, those expressing “extremely strong” love for country stood at only 46 percent. And over two-thirds of respondents from small counties reported that it is ”extremely important” to be American, compared to about half of big-city folk.

It is certainly possible that factors other than simple geography are at work here. The populations in small towns are older, and older people are generally more expressive of pro-American values than younger people are, for example. Also, rural areas are more Republican, and the University of Michigan survey shows a significant partisan difference in patriotism. Democrats are considerably less likely to express strong love of country than Republicans are, and less likely to think being an American is important. Of those who claimed to be “Strong Democrats,” only around half expressed extremely strong love of country, compared to three-fourths of the “Strong Republicans.” A sizable share of (but by no means all) committed Democrats are apparently embarrassed about their country and about being American.

Perhaps Governor Palin’s comment is one of those truths that is better left unspoken. The McCain campaign seems to be treating it that way. But there is certainly no falsehood in her remarks, as Senator Biden suggested.

— James G. Gimpel is a professor of government at the University of Maryland, College Park.