The next 14 states split evenly between Kerry (Massachusetts, Washington, California, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Delaware, and Illinois) and Bush (Ohio, North Dakota, Missouri, Wyoming, Florida, Montana, and Idaho).  Only two of the Democratic states were "battlegrounds" vs. 4 of the 7 GOP states).  Montana, however, had closely fought races for Governor and the state legislature despite going easily for Bush.  In summary, these were either Democratic states OR battleground states.

But while 15 of the 24 high turnout states went for Kerry, Bush took 22 of the remaining 27.  All five Democratic localities (Maryland, New York, Rhode Island, DC, and Hawaii) were basically uncontested and at least 3 of them (Maryland, New York, and Hawaii) have Republican governors in heavily Democratic states).  Fully fifteen of the bottom 17 turnout states went for Bush with the exceptions being mini-Democratic strongholds in DC and Hawaii.

I would suspect that lower turnout states have greater barriers to voter participation including limits on voting by ex-felons, frequent "pruning" of voter registration lists (definitely include NY there) and arcane election laws devoted to maintaining the status quo.

If we want to win states in the mountain west for our 2004 election, the key is eliminating barriers and getting a bigger turnout in places like Colorado (27th), New Mexico (37th), Nevada (40th), Texas (45th) and Arizona (50th).  Maybe that is why Bill Richardson doesn't want the last election probed by recount rather than any other reason.

And yes, we lost Senate seats in low turnout Kentucky (31st), Oklahoma (32nd), Alaska (35th), North Carolina (38th), and South Carolina (47th) as well as in higher turnout Florida (16th) and South Dakota (5th).

The turnout data is available at, of all places, the Des Moines Register site.  Looking for a link between turnout and election results will otherwise yield data on recent elections from 1994 to 2002 but not the most recent one.