One of the rules of thumb in politics is that rural America is populated by social and fiscal conservatives, so residents vote Republican. The Daily Yonder looked at vote totals in all 3,143 counties in the Nov 5 elections for U.S. House, “And we found this truism…isn’t true at all. As the geography gets more rural, there is no distinct rise in the Republican vote.” Instead, writes the Yonder’s Bill Bishop, the results show that Democrats did well in the 438 most urban counties with more than 1 million people, getting 53.5 percent of the vote. Those counties accounted for half of all votes cast in House elections. But the story gets more complicated beyond the big cities.
Outside heavily urban counties, Democrats got 41 percent of the vote and trailed Republicans by 10 points or more. In the most rural counties of all, the margin was 30 points but in counties that were almost as rural, the difference was 15 points – and that was a closer split than in counties that are part of metropolitan areas but have a population of less than 250,000. Concludes the Yonder, “The question is why Republicans don’t do better in major metropolitan areas — and why Democrats do well ONLY in the biggest cities.”