Why are rural areas in California so overwhelmingly Democratic

[OSR stands with Israel]

According to the CNN Exit Poll: https://www.cnn.com/election/2018/exit-polls/california


Newsom won 65% of the vote in Urban Areas, 56% in Suburban Areas, and 60% in Rural Areas.


So why are rural voters in California so overwhelmingly Democratic

[OneJ]

Completely unfounded guess: The rural areas where Dems do well are Hispanic-heavy.

[Esteemed Jimmy]

Completely unfounded guess: The rural areas where Dems do well are Hispanic-heavy.

[Alabama_Indy10]

Completely unfounded guess: The rural areas where Dems do well are Hispanic-heavy.

[Adam Griffin]

Because the contiguous segment of CA counties that are both rural and GOP is relatively small: maybe 2 million people live there? Depending on how it's defined, there are additional rural areas that are heavily-Latino and areas like the Emerald Triangle that are filled with pot-growing hippies, which overwhelm the heavily-white and heavily-GOP segments of rural CA.

[DINGO Joe]

Completely unfounded guess: The rural areas where Dems do well are Hispanic-heavy.

I'm pretty confident that you could categorize this as a founded guess.

[Sir Mohamed]

Completely unfounded guess: The rural areas where Dems do well are Hispanic-heavy.

Yup, most of them are in SoCal. Rural NoCal counties are GOP strongholds. Among them Plumas County, which was once a Dem bastion. It didn't even vote for Reagan in 1966.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

Due to polarisation of politics. Whereas, red states like MO, LA and AR, populist crescent are trending GOP. Therefore, states like Cali trends strongly Dem. Even in Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego

[Some of My Best Friends Are Gay]

Due to polarisation of politics. Whereas, red states like MO, LA and AR, populist crescent are trending GOP. Therefore, states like Cali trends strongly Dem. Even in Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego

TIL Missouri, Louisiana, and Arkansas form a "populist crescent."

[Del Tachi]

The exit poll is screwy and has small sample bias (only 7% of respondents were rural).

[ltomlinson31]

Due to polarisation of politics. Whereas, red states like MO, LA and AR, populist crescent are trending GOP. Therefore, states like Cali trends strongly Dem. Even in Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego

[pppolitics]

I am from rural California and it's overwhelmingly Republican.

[100% pro-life no matter what]

My initial theory was bad exit polling, but FOX's voter analysis (which is a sort of enhanced exit poll) paints a similar story:

Urban: 71-29 Newsom
Suburban: 58-42 Newsom
Rural/Small Town: 55-44 Newsom

It also says that there is a massive gender gap in rural California, far bigger than the gender gap in suburban or urban California (I would have expected the opposite, honestly).

[OSR stands with Israel]

Due to polarisation of politics. Whereas, red states like MO, LA and AR, populist crescent are trending GOP. Therefore, states like Cali trends strongly Dem. Even in Sacramento, San Jose and San Diego

How does that have anything to do with Rural CA , lol

[ElectionsGuy]

Rural areas on the coast and around the proximity of the bay area are left-leaning, along with heavily Hispanic rural SoCal. White rural/exurban SoCal and Northeastern CA are very Republican, but maybe less of the overall "rural" sample, since basically all of SoCal is considered suburban now.

[smoltchanov]

^ Well, no one in sane mind will call Modoc or Lassen counties "liberal". As far as i understood, the counties in question were more of Humboldt/Mendocino type....

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

Because the contiguous segment of CA counties that are both rural and GOP is relatively small: maybe 2 million people live there? Depending on how it's defined, there are additional rural areas that are heavily-Latino and areas like the Emerald Triangle that are filled with pot-growing hippies, which overwhelm the heavily-white and heavily-GOP segments of rural CA.

[morgieb]

Hispanics. Wouldn't bits of the North Coast count as rural too? (which is full of pot-smoking hippies and the like)

[Figueira]

Or the exit poll is also screwy. Most of the rural counties still went to Cox

Virtually every county in California contains both urban and rural areas.

[Figueira]

The exit poll is screwy and has small sample bias (only 7% of respondents were rural).

This is true, though. California is the most urban state in the country.

That said, between the Hispanic areas and places like Humboldt/Mendocino/Santa Cruz counties, there are a decent amount of Democrats living in rural California. "Rural California" is not really a place you can make generalizations about as a unit.

[RFayette]

The exit poll is screwy and has small sample bias (only 7% of respondents were rural).