If you look closely at the "urban-rural divide," you realize the real division isn't urban-rural, it's demographic.
Rural areas where voters are college-educated, like VT and western MA, or where voters are nonwhite, like South TX, the Black Belt, and tribal nations, are blue!
Rural areas where voters are college-educated, like VT and western MA, or where voters are nonwhite, like South TX, the Black Belt, and tribal nations, are blue!
Similarly, urban and suburban areas where voters are mostly white without college degrees, like eastern Ohio, and the WOW counties in Wisconsin, are pretty firmly red.
The urban-rural divide isn't *causing* our political differences. It's just a side-effect of deeper trends.
The urban-rural divide isn't *causing* our political differences. It's just a side-effect of deeper trends.
There is a very specific type of voter — white, religious, no college degree — that has flocked to the GOP, while every other kind of voter has been slipping away from them.
Rural areas just happen to be where most of them live, for a number of reasons.
Rural areas just happen to be where most of them live, for a number of reasons.
