The Partisan Divide on Issues

[Eric the Green]

(12-03-2019, 01:16 PM)David Horn Wrote:

(12-01-2019, 01:32 PM)Snowflake1996 Wrote: The overwhelming bulk of support for Donald Trump and the GOP lie in non-rural areas. These include exurbs, suburbs, small and medium sized cities, and even large cities.

Just looking at large cities alone:

• Los Angeles County had more Trump voters than the entire state of Kansas.
  
• Cook County IL had more Trump voters than the entire state of Idaho. 
  
• Brooklyn + The Bronx combined had more Trump voters than Wyoming.
  

This isn’t to say Trump voters don’t have actual legitimate grievances. But in terms of raw numbers, the vast majority of them are not living in rural areas or small towns below the size of 20k people. Most live in metros the size of 50k-100k people or more.

You're comparing pumpkins and grapes.  Sure, there are a lot of Trump voters in highly populated areas, but the percentage is what's important -- not the absolute number.  Likewise, low population areas can only have so many voters, by definition.  I live in the exurbs, and it's Trump, end-to-end.  That's true of low and high education individuals, I might add.  The two closest cities are small-to-medium size, with one being Purple (~80,000) and the other solidly Blue (~110,000).   Their burbs are both very Red.  I think that's typical.

Right, and in our electoral college system, the Trump voters in big blue cities and counties do not matter. The Trump voters, with their overwhelming majority in rural and small-town areas, turn states red that do not have big blue cities in them, and they have far more clout in the electoral college, because it's set up to favor smaller states. So, the source of the power of Trump and Republicans today, in the Senate and in the presidential elections of 2000, 2004 and 2016, is the rural and small town and small city areas that vote Republican by overwhelming margins.