Rural-Urban Voters False Dichotomy

One key to understanding current political reporting is that many national reporters seem to think that any area that is not within a major U.S. city is rural. Which leads to an aside: Isn’t it interesting how this data is always pitched as rural versus urban. A better description is that the nation’s huge cities are voting very differently from everyone else.  The NPR reporter runs down the differences between major cities and the rest of the country – major cities are more mixed racially, for example, and people there on average have more education. But she makes the case that “living in a rural area by itself shapes a person’s politics, and can particularly drive a voter toward Trump.” Finally, we would remind everyone that if the fight is between rural and urban voters, urban is going to win every time. Only about 15 percent of the population lives in a rural county.