To me, right and left seems to correlate closely to geography and population.
In densely populated areas, big government is more welcomed by the inhabitants to combat crime, sanitation, and to keep general peace between you and your neighbour who lives within stereo-system distance of your ear canal. There's a lot of social friction in the cities that needs to be dissipated by a third-party arbitrator.
In more remote and less populated areas, that kind of intervention isn't needed as much, and is seen as a waste of tax dollars. I really saw this up in Alaska where the people up there have been taking care of their own needs for a very long time. They don't need government, or very much like it. Everyone takes care of their own sh!t (sometimes literally) and there's enough space between people that social friction is greatly reduced. Good fences make for good neighbours, but so does an acre of land between you and the next house.
Unfortunately, the makeup of people who live in remote areas are less than cosmopolitan, more homogenous, and because they're not exposed to others of a different skin colour, culture or sexual persuasion, there's less tolerance for that.