Urban vs. rural divide in America was already obvious in 2012

Much has been written over the past several days about the phenomenon of the emerging political divide between rural and urban America.

But these two Americas already were on full display in the election returns of November 2012 when Barack Obama comfortably defeated challenger Mitt Romney.

At the time, it was noted that, based on county-by-county results nationwide, Republicans had become the nation’s Rural Party, racking up huge victory margins in sparsely populated areas. At the time, it was also assumed that such a plus would never be enough to regain the White House.

Atlantic Cities, affiliated with The Atlantic magazine, most astutely pointed out this growing geographic chasm.

Here’s what I wrote on Nov. 18, 2012:

… Atlantic Cities concluded that geography had a bigger impact on the presidential election than demography. The GOP’s emerging weakness is that most of their support comes from rural areas while the Democrats thrive in densely populated urban areas.
So, the number of supporters for the Republicans creates a mismatch, to the party’s detriment.

Bottom line: In U.S. elections, density equals destiny.

In fact, Atlantic Cities found that the density factor can be identified with surprising precision when election results are studied based on geography.

… (The) conclusion was striking: 98% of the 50 most dense counties voted Obama. 98% of the 50 least dense counties voted for Romney.

The big flaw was that rural domination was dismissed as a cultural downfall, a trend that would limit the GOP to a swath of America consisting of the South, the Plains, and the Mountain West. What no one anticipated four years ago – or four weeks ago – was that Donald Trump could further boost the Republican rural advantage and that he could make it a deciding factor in places like Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania and even Florida and North Carolina.

Trump won by landslide proportions in rural areas while the Dems’ upper hand among blacks, Hispanics, Millenials and women came up short of expectations.

During the post-mortems of Election 2012, the expectations were that the urban/suburban vs. rural divide presented demographics that were the Dems’ not-so-secret weapon. But it didn’t work out that way in 2016 (map above), especially with the unfathomable narrative of a Manhattan billionaire playing the role of Pied Piper for a disgruntled rural America.

 

Map: Wikimedia Commons/Ali Zifan