Why is there such a strong urban/rural divide?

[CJK]

I'm surprised that there hasn't been much discussion about this considering that Obama won just 28% of all U.S. counties--the lowest ever for a winner.

The New York Times posted a map with population density and vote totals. Moving the marker, you can see that Obama and McCain's vote totals correlate almost exactly with how dense the counties are. http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/explorer.html

Is the divide mainly due to large minority populations in the cities or is something else at work here?

[memphis]

I'm surprised that there hasn't been much discussion about this considering that Obama won just 28% of all U.S. counties--the lowest ever for a winner.

The New York Times posted a map with population density and vote totals. Moving the marker, you can see that Obama and McCain's vote totals correlate almost exactly with how dense the counties are. http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/explorer.html

Is the divide mainly due to large minority populations in the cities or is something else at work here?

Ethnicity is definately a HUGE factor, as is people self-selecting where they want to live based on preferences.

[Smash255]

I'm surprised that there hasn't been much discussion about this considering that Obama won just 28% of all U.S. counties--the lowest ever for a winner.

The New York Times posted a map with population density and vote totals. Moving the marker, you can see that Obama and McCain's vote totals correlate almost exactly with how dense the counties are. http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/explorer.html

Is the divide mainly due to large minority populations in the cities or is something else at work here?

Part of the reason, but keep in mind in the south you have many rural heavily African American areas.  In many of the urban and suburban areas you have more of a need and want for infrastructure spending.  Roads for one (which is a major issue in Virginia), spending on education.  You also have the education level, especially among white voters.  Whites will college education and especially post-graduate education tend to be a bit more liberal than whites with no college.  You have a higher concentration of educated whites in urban and suburban areas than you do in rural areas.   The whole anti-intellectualism attitude that has taken shape within the GOP isn't going to sit well with your upper middle class thirty-something in Fairfax VA.

[Padfoot]

I'm surprised that there hasn't been much discussion about this considering that Obama won just 28% of all U.S. counties--the lowest ever for a winner.

The New York Times posted a map with population density and vote totals. Moving the marker, you can see that Obama and McCain's vote totals correlate almost exactly with how dense the counties are. http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/explorer.html

Is the divide mainly due to large minority populations in the cities or is something else at work here?

Ethnicity is definately a HUGE factor, as is people self-selecting where they want to live based on preferences.

I agree.  People who tend to disfavor government intervention also tend to live in more rural or isolated communities where they are less likely to be personally affected by the government on a day to day basis.

[nclib]

I'm surprised that there hasn't been much discussion about this considering that Obama won just 28% of all U.S. counties--the lowest ever for a winner.

The New York Times posted a map with population density and vote totals. Moving the marker, you can see that Obama and McCain's vote totals correlate almost exactly with how dense the counties are. http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/explorer.html

Is the divide mainly due to large minority populations in the cities or is something else at work here?

Part of the reason, but keep in mind in the south you have many rural heavily African American areas.  

Certainly, blacks (and to a lesser degree non-Cuban Hispanics) vote heavily Democratic regardless of location. But among whites perhaps the best predictor of voting patterns is urban/rural. The only other characteristics that even come close are education and religious adherence, with the former increasing Democratic vote and the latter increasing Republican vote.

[Vepres]

Actually, according to CNN exit polls, there was no statistically significant difference in the voting patterns of those with and without college degrees.

Urban voters tend to be poorer and more minority, which favors democrats. Rural voters don't get very many benefits from social programs, unlike those in more dense areas. Suburbanites are the battleground, though they favor Republicans (they voted +4 more for McCain than the national average).

Obviously infrastructure is an issue, though some Republicans support more action and funding and urbanites find them respectable.

[Smash255]

Actually, according to CNN exit polls, there was no statistically significant difference in the voting patterns of those with and without college degrees.

Urban voters tend to be poorer and more minority, which favors democrats. Rural voters don't get very many benefits from social programs, unlike those in more dense areas. Suburbanites are the battleground, though they favor Republicans (they voted +4 more for McCain than the national average).

Obviously infrastructure is an issue, though some Republicans support more action and funding and urbanites find them respectable.

Look at whites with college degrees and whites without college degrees.  McCain won whites with college degrees by 4 points, he won whites without college degrees by 18.   No category for it, but Obama very likely easily defeated McCain with whites with Postgraduate degrees (considering he won that category overall by 18)

[muon2]

In 2000 and 2004 the Republicans worked on a specific message that had appeal to rural areas. In IL there's a clear shift in votes from Dems to Reps in rural counties during those election cycles. The message that brought rural voters from the Dems, did not translate to a message with urban appeal.

[Vepres]

Actually, according to CNN exit polls, there was no statistically significant difference in the voting patterns of those with and without college degrees.

Urban voters tend to be poorer and more minority, which favors democrats. Rural voters don't get very many benefits from social programs, unlike those in more dense areas. Suburbanites are the battleground, though they favor Republicans (they voted +4 more for McCain than the national average).

Obviously infrastructure is an issue, though some Republicans support more action and funding and urbanites find them respectable.

Look at whites with college degrees and whites without college degrees.  McCain won whites with college degrees by 4 points, he won whites without college degrees by 18.   No category for it, but Obama very likely easily defeated McCain with whites with Postgraduate degrees (considering he won that category overall by 18)

Well yes. The question is why? I think it's because they make so much money that they aren't really affected much by the government's domestic actions, so they don't mind if their taxes go up.

[Smash255]

Actually, according to CNN exit polls, there was no statistically significant difference in the voting patterns of those with and without college degrees.

Urban voters tend to be poorer and more minority, which favors democrats. Rural voters don't get very many benefits from social programs, unlike those in more dense areas. Suburbanites are the battleground, though they favor Republicans (they voted +4 more for McCain than the national average).

Obviously infrastructure is an issue, though some Republicans support more action and funding and urbanites find them respectable.

Look at whites with college degrees and whites without college degrees.  McCain won whites with college degrees by 4 points, he won whites without college degrees by 18.   No category for it, but Obama very likely easily defeated McCain with whites with Postgraduate degrees (considering he won that category overall by 18)

Well yes. The question is why? I think it's because they make so much money that they aren't really affected much by the government's domestic actions, so they don't mind if their taxes go up.

Well, Obama's tax plans were raising taxes on those over $250,000 (about 2% of the country), and those with post graduate degrees make up a much larger portion of the country than those who will see their taxes raised. 

Those with post graduate degrees tend to be concentrated in urban and suburban areas, where more infrastructure spending is needed (again look at Northern VA).  They are also a group which that views education is very important, and favor more education spending.  Also the religious issue, education and religion tend to have an inverse relationship.  That isn't to say that you won't find those with a high degree of education that aren't very religious, or find those with little education that aren't religious, however generally those with a strong educational background tend to be less religious than those that don't.   The current socially conservative path of the current GOP has likely chased many of these people away.   Also, a higher % of people with post graduate degrees are Jewish than relative to their population, and Jews are overwhelmingly Democratic.

[Vepres]

Actually, according to CNN exit polls, there was no statistically significant difference in the voting patterns of those with and without college degrees.

Urban voters tend to be poorer and more minority, which favors democrats. Rural voters don't get very many benefits from social programs, unlike those in more dense areas. Suburbanites are the battleground, though they favor Republicans (they voted +4 more for McCain than the national average).

Obviously infrastructure is an issue, though some Republicans support more action and funding and urbanites find them respectable.

Look at whites with college degrees and whites without college degrees.  McCain won whites with college degrees by 4 points, he won whites without college degrees by 18.   No category for it, but Obama very likely easily defeated McCain with whites with Postgraduate degrees (considering he won that category overall by 18)

Well yes. The question is why? I think it's because they make so much money that they aren't really affected much by the government's domestic actions, so they don't mind if their taxes go up.

Well, Obama's tax plans were raising taxes on those over $250,000 (about 2% of the country), and those with post graduate degrees make up a much larger portion of the country than those who will see their taxes raised. 

Those with post graduate degrees tend to be concentrated in urban and suburban areas, where more infrastructure spending is needed (again look at Northern VA).  They are also a group which that views education is very important, and favor more education spending.  Also the religious issue, education and religion tend to have an inverse relationship.  That isn't to say that you won't find those with a high degree of education that aren't very religious, or find those with little education that aren't religious, however generally those with a strong educational background tend to be less religious than those that don't.   The current socially conservative path of the current GOP has likely chased many of these people away.   Also, a higher % of people with post graduate degrees are Jewish than relative to their population, and Jews are overwhelmingly Democratic.

Yup.

[pbrower2a]

As I recall, Obama won heavily in the 65 counties and independent cities (sure, that includes such places as St. Louis, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Richmond, and San Francisco but it also includes some places that you never heard of in Virginia unless you are a Civil War Buff or are from Virginia) and lost the rest of America. Such counties containing, Dallas, Houston, New Orleans, Atlanta, Louisville, Memphis, Kansas City (even though he lost the states in which they are)... but also of course Boston, Hartford, New York City, most of northeastern New Jersey, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Columbus, Indianapolis, Milwaukee, the Twin Cities, Omaha, Denver, Seattle, Portland OR, Los Angeles, Charlotte, Miami, Tampa-St. Petersburg, Orlando... That includes Suburbia as well as urban America.

1. Barack Obama campaigned almost exclusively in urban and suburban America. A candidate who needs a huge number of votes fast needs to go where the people are and get media saturation. That is how he won.  Go to an airport, go to a big arena, get lots of people to a rally in or near a big city with the aid of unions and the Democratic Party activists, draw the TV stations, and get plenty of coverage from willing TV stations that want some big news for 6 and 11. That works far better in Ohio (very urban) than in Arkansas.

2. Part of it is the North/South divide. The North is more urban, and the South more rural. Memphis may vote like a typical northern city -- so much that if it were grafted onto Mississippi it would have flipped Mississippi from R to D... but Tennessee outside of four large cities is very rural.

3. The GOP no longer appeals to suburban voters.  The appeal to reduced government spending implies bad public services. For years, GOP conservatives held that all that they needed to do to win suburban voters was to contrast suburbanites to "welfare queens" bleeding hard-working taxpayers to give welfare recipients rewards for bearing lots of babies while holding fast to the idea that Suburbia was the better of urban convenience and rural 'niceness'. Suburbia has gotten more raw; it has traffic jams as bad as the big cities and needs new and expensive roads. Suburbanites of a certain age either have student loans to pay off or will want them for their kids so that their kids can remain in the middle class.  Pollution is little less objectionable in Suburbia than in the core city itself.  It has such problems as crime and drugs. Reduced government? It needs it all the more.

Consider that a failure of the GOP to keep pace with the times. The GOP is well attuned to the America of Eisenhower's day, and while rural America has changed little (except where it has gone suburban or urban) urban America -- including Suburbia -- has changed.



 

 

[ag]

Keep in mind, this is not something particularly new, brought in by Obama. This has been happening for a while. Obama, obviously, did worse than LBJ nationwide, but he outperformed him easily in many major cities - and, whereas LBJ's results in his own time were staggering, far above what was seen as normal during that period, Obama's were pretty average for recent electoral cycles (in some cases he outperformed LBJ while underperforming Gore). This is a long-term shift of the cities that has bee happening for quite some time.

[pbrower2a]

Because of the ethnic mix of some cities, one would of course expect Obama to fare better than did LBJ in 1964 in the big cities.  What has happened since 1964? The growth of Suburbia. Obama could not have won the 2008 without doing so well in Suburbia as he did. The Republicans used to do well in Suburbia, but not this time.

Suburbia has genuine big-city problems, and the GOP has failed to address them. Traffic jams? Commuters stranded in traffic jams would rather be somewhere else, and they can ordinarily see government solutions (highway improvements) that cost real money through gas taxes. Education becomes more of a need for the kids whom suburbanites want to keep in the middle class, so that means higher spending on higher education. Law enforcement has become increasingly expensive in Suburbia, as has K-12 education. Promises of tax cuts and demagogic attacks on "welfare queens" that the GOP used to offer to suburbanites now ring hollow. 

Sure, Suburbia may have still voted more for McCain than the national average, but it used to vote more heavily for just about any GOP candidate. If I were a GOP figure, I would be scared of the consequences of Suburbia becoming less GOP, which implies one loss after another. It needs innovative solutions to public problems -- but these days, the GOP leadership seems to lack the intellectual flexibility and the imagination necessary for meeting the changes that have been hitting Americans everywhere.