The New Split
Despite all the talk about this country traditionally being a melting pot, about being a unified America, we are in fact encouraged to choose sides and identify by hyphenated groups.
That’s where a lot of talk focused this election, regarding turning out certain “groups” to vote…as if all had the same mindset, which is pretty short-sighted…and based on evidence…foolish.
The real split that is evident, and we’ve seen it grow for some time, is between so-called urban and rural voters. The national maps that Republicans like to show after elections, coloring all the counties they won red and all the counties Democrats won blue, have been popular. And when plotted that way, you see that landmass-wise, this is a red country. But the major population centers, the cities, are deeply blue. It’s not just places like New York City and Los Angeles; we in Iowa see the split between Cedar Rapids, Waterloo, Des Moines and the rest of the state.
New data from the 2020 presidential election shows that the determinant is not race, but location…and by that, I do mean rural vs. urban. Politico noted the shift, citing as just one example a rural county in North Carolina that is 70 percent minority…and overwhelmingly voted for Trump. In Robeson County, Biden got four more votes than Hillary Clinton did, but Trump got 7,044 more votes than he did four years ago.
Easy to pick one example out of a whole country, but while that’s a pretty stark example, the ‘red wave’ that swept a number of U.S. House candidates into office nationwide, including blue states with major populations, cannot be ignored.
Why is that important, for those in rural areas to use their votes and therefore their voices? Obvious representation reasons, of course. But also from a strategic point for campaigns. Roughly one in five people who lives in this country lives in a rural area…that’s 20 percent. And roughly one in five of those is not Caucasian. And those who count votes by color should note…that form of politics didn’t work this time, consistent with previous data showing that economic situation is a better determinate of voting preference than skin color. So, now, data on the growing rural vs. urban split in our nation.
