Election 2004: Urban vs. Rural

[bigmacbear]

It struck me that when I saw a county-by-county nationwide map of Tuesday's Presidential election results on CNN (which, unfortunately, I can't find now), that almost every Democratic-majority county was either home to a major city, a neighbor of a major city, or home to a college town. If it were any more obvious it would jump out and bite you. The national divide really isn't so much between the coasts and everyplace else, it is clearly urban vs. rural. And what makes a blue state blue is very much how much its urban population exceeds its rural population.

Looking at the more detailed maps of Ohio and New York (which can be found by clicking on each state in the map on this page), as these are the states I am most familiar with, I noticed that the larger the city, the bluer the county or counties that surround it.

I also noticed that smaller cities like Rochester or even Cincinnati aren't solidly Democrat enough to turn their respective counties blue on CNN's maps (Monroe County -- Rochester -- is white, while Hamilton County -- Cincinnati -- is so pale pink it's hard to tell from white).

Partially this is due to the fact that the city doesn't fill the county, leaving a chunk of rural area even within an urbanized county. Upon moving to Rochester I was struck by the fact that once you reach the outer portions of even the towns that adjoin the City of Rochester, you are already in farm country and yet you still have a way to travel before reaching the county line.

Another factor is the settlement pattern of the city itself: cities that are populated by homogeneous groups sharing a common heritage tend to be more Republican than cities that are more diverse. Both Rochester and Cincinnati fit the former category, and not coincidentally both are heavily Catholic, Cincinnati more so than Rochester.

Supposedly rural counties that were heavily blue tend to be those with major college populations -- Athens County, OH (Ohio U.) and Tompkins County, NY (Cornell).

Tying in to the urban vs. rural issue specifically for people like us, I've read an analysis of why major cities and college towns tend to be the safest places for GLBT people to live, and most of the reasons centered on the relative anonymity of cities and safety in numbers. (The Homosexual Matrix is the source of this analysis.)

What this says to me is that the Republican Party has seized on the small-town mentality of rural America (and I don't mean this as an insult, it is simply a fact that people in small towns think differently from those in urban centers) to get where it wants to go. The threat to GLBT people is inherent in the demographic to which the GOP panders, rather than a conscious decision on their part.

Comments

[cincycub.livejournal.com]

So do you think this means we need to urbanize the entire country? Cut down the trees and industrialize everywhere? :)

[dakoopst.livejournal.com]

That strategy is INCREDIBLY effective under the current electoral college rules, too, when the smallest states -- which still have a minimum number of required electoral votes, and are thus represented disproportinately -- are almost entirely rural.

Want True Irony?

[redcub.livejournal.com]

Bush copied Hillary Clinton's election strategy. When she was running for New York State Senate, she campaigned heaviest outside of the cities and into the rural areas, where the combined influence made up for the lack of support she was getting in NYC and Albany at the time.

[jockbearwny.livejournal.com]

just to let you know....Vermont's two biggest cities....Burlington and Brattleboro, went to Kerry, as did the surrounding counties. Only the one way up in the Great White North went to Bush. Both cities are smaller than rochester....by a factor of around 10. Lots of cows in that state and almost the entire state went Blue.

As for cutting down the trees and industrialize everywhere, Bush is doiing that for us....

The problem I see with the GOP is that they are pulling the wool over peoples eyes. People in rural Americ don't seem to understand that when their jobs go overseas, our govornment is partially to blame....

Don't EVEN get into NCLB with me. I've got severa teacher friends who's students were THRILLED initially to hear about it, but Tom, one of my teacher friends, asked his class to research it. Figure out how many school districts were in New York alone, and how many children in those schools. Then figure out how much of the NCLB budget was going to New York and how much that meant for each student.

The kids were dumbfounded when they realized they wouldn't even have enough money to buy a pencil...