My daughter went to university in Durham. I am very familiar with it. The biggest difference if you want to make that kind of comparison is how big is your bubble. I grew up outside of SF. I would argue that Durham is really not that liberal. But what is inarguable is that you don’t have to go 30 minutes down the road and you’re in a whole different world. My daughter spoke a lot about not going out of the bubble - and the fact that there was no decent Mexican food anywhere - but that’s a whole different discussion.
I do think making unilateral statements about the south are just silly. Even if you leave aside rural vs urban which might as well be in different countries, Houston, Miami, Atlanta, Baltimore, New Orleans - these places are extremely different.
The US is massive, many of our regions are massive. Trying to layer a New England reference on some of these places is just silly. I lived in Massachusetts, and while yes comparing NYC to Portland is also silly - one did pop up from MA to buy liquor in NH, these places are geographically so close there is a whole lot more overlap culturally than the thousands of miles crossing the south.