Biden and Palin hail from 2 states having little in common

His state is the oldest in the nation. Hers is among the newest.

His state is so small, it begs the question: DelaWhere? Hers is the largest, so big that 288 little Delawares could fit within Alaska’s borders.

The country’s choices for the next vice president - Democrat Joe Biden and Republican Sarah Palin - couldn’t hail from more opposite ends of the American spectrum - politically, culturally and geographically.

It’s not just that his state has voted for the Democrat in the last four presidential elections while hers went for the Republican. Or even his short, 82-mile train ride to Washington compared with her short distance from Russia.

It’s that his state has dog parks. Her state’s official sport is dog mushing.

“Alaska is the frontier,” said Frank Popper, a land use planner who teaches at Princeton and Rutgers universities. “I’m sure from the point of view of someone who is truly Alaskan, Delaware feels like it’s Europe.

“These are the spiritual descendents of Daniel Boone, who generally said when he could see people across the valley at night because of their fires it was time to move on.”

Palin and Biden may not be trying to represent their states in terms of the personas they’re projecting on the campaign trail, said William Frey, a demographer at the Brookings Institute in Washington. Biden has spent significant time emphasizing his small town, blue-collar Scranton, Pa., roots while Palin could just as easily be from a small town in Iowa.

But the different worlds they have represented throughout their adult lives inform who they are and their politics. That’s perhaps even more so the case for Palin, whose widely circulated image with her hunting trophy - a slain caribou - has become an iconic symbol of her life on the wild frontier.

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