Over the course of this election season, Bill Bishop of the Austin American-Statesman has been crunching voting data and rolling out a fascinating series called “The Great Divide” (registration required). The most recent installment examines the dramatic consolidation of Democratic voters in urban areas and Republicans in rural ones.
Bishop writes:
In the 1980 presidential race, Democratic and Republican counties on average had about the same number of voters. By 2000, however, the average Democratic county had three times as many voters as the average Republican county. …
In the country’s most partisan counties — those where one party wins by more than 20 percentage points — the split is overwhelming. In 2000, the average landslide Democratic county was eight times larger than the average landslide Republican county. [By contrast] in 1980, the average landslide Republican county was more populous than the average partisan Democratic county.
These consolidations of rural R’s and urban D’s are occurring rapidly, and the candidates recognize this. John Kerry chose John Edwards as his running mate in part because Edwards’ rural ties might offset Kerry’s urban ones, writes Bishop. George Bush is also trying to play small-town America like a fiddle; he’s the first sitting president in 56 years to visit Mankato, Minn., and was the first ever to show up in Traverse City, Mich.
Recent polling, wrote Bishop, shows that rural voters give Bush a 13- to 15-point advantage over Kerry:
The division isn’t absolute. Republicans still receive many votes from urban centers. (Los Angeles County is the largest single source of votes for both parties.) Twelve of the 20 most Democratic counties, however, are in metro areas, including the District of Columbia, the Bronx, San Francisco County, Philadelphia County and St. Louis County.
But out of the 115 counties with the strongest Republican support, only four are in metro areas — one in Utah, another in Arizona, a third outside Atlanta and the fourth the president’s hometown of Midland.
Bishop continues to lead the way in documenting the changing face of the electoral terrain in this country. As Campaign Desk has noted before, this is what good beneath-the-surface political reporting is all about.
–Susan Q. Stranahan
Susan Q. Stranahan wrote for CJR.