Geography and the 2008 Vote So Far

(Tom Note: Howard Berkes wasn't able to file this piece until late Friday afternoon, and I didn't want it to get lost because of the weekend, so I'm moving it back up today.)

An analysis of the 2008 primary and caucus voting results indicates a geographic split in the Democratic Party, and a geographic challenge for Republican nominee John McCain.

The county-by-county assessment of votes shows that Barack Obama is strongest in cities where Democrats typically do very well anyway. Obama also does well in rural counties with significant African-American populations. (There are some exceptions to this trend. Obama did well in largely white rural Wisconsin).

But Hillary Clinton is strongest in rural counties that also tend to be predominately white and lower income. These are counties that have tended to vote overwhelmingly Republican in the last two presidential elections. Indeed, lopsided support in these rural counties is credited with giving President Bush his margins of victory in both 2000 and 2004.

The same analysis also shows that Republican John McCain is strongest in urban areas, which Republicans lost by wide margins in the last two presidential contests.

"There's a rural and urban split that seems to go beyond the basic demographic categories we normally look at," says Bill Bishop, the writer who conducted the analysis, along with geographer Timothy Murphy. They've posted their findings in a series of stories in the Daily Yonder, an online publication from the Center for Rural Strategies, a rural issues advocacy group.

Bishop and Murphy break down every primary and caucus state by county and then determine whether the county is urban, exurban or rural. Finally, they plug in the actual primary and caucus votes.

In one analysis, Obama garners 72 percent of Democratic "landslide" counties so far, which are counties John Kerry won by more than 20 percentage points in 2004. Clinton has dominated 62 percent of the Republican "landslide" counties, which George Bush won by more than 20 points in the last presidential election.

The Bishop-Murphy work is making the rounds of political analysts and campaign activists.

"The Clinton people say this shows she's the best to pick up votes in red (and rural) counties," Bishop says. "The Obama people say there's no way to project from a primary to a general election."

Republicans are taking notice, as well. "To a large degree, John McCain is being nominated by voters creating delegates in states Republicans have precious little chance to win," suggests William Greener, a Republican political consultant with the firm Greener and Hook, who has focused on the impact of the rural vote in the last two presidential elections.

Greener has teamed with Democratic pollster Anna Greenberg on a series of political polls targeting rural voters during the 2004 presidential and 2006 congressional campaigns. She notes President Bush's success in rural areas in 2004 due to appeals to moral values and social issues.

"McCain is a tougher sell in rural areas," Greenberg says. "He doesn't have the natural evangelical base."

On the Democratic side, Greenberg sees a connection between the places showing support for Obama or Clinton, and the people who tend to live there. "Clinton's doing better with white, working class and older voters. Obama's doing better with younger, college-educated voters. Clinton's voters are more likely to live in rural areas and Obama's voters are more likely to live in urban areas, except for some African-American voters in southern states."

This is especially true in Ohio and Texas, where Clinton won more than 60 percent of the Democratic primary vote. "The fact that the rural populations of Ohio and Texas tend to be more white, less educated, and older than the urban populations undoubtedly explains a good part, although maybe not all, of the rural-urban difference," notes Alan Abramowitz, a professor of Political Science at Emory University.

But writer Bill Bishop sees a stronger geographic explanation for the rural-urban voting pattern so far. Bishop wrote an entire book on this phenomenon, called The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart (Houghton Mifflin, 2008).

"Americans have been separating for the past 30 years according to the way we want to live," Bishop contends. He argues that Americans have been clustering in neighborhoods and communities with people who are just like them. "People with the same demographic characteristics have different politics depending on where they live.The demographic splits everyone talks about all the time now tend to be driven by these geographic patterns."

Specific issues play a role in aligning these like-minded neighbors politically. Political scientist Peter Francia of East Carolina University cites the economy as a factor in the Clinton-Obama geography, and in the prospects for the Democratic nominee in November. He also mentions the Ohio and Texas primaries as examples.

"In Ohio, the loss of manufacturing jobs has taken a toll on the economy, with rural areas especially hard-hit," Francia says. "Two-thirds of Democratic primary voters in Texas said they were very or somewhat worried about their financial situation. Hillary campaigned very aggressively on the issue of the economy in Ohio and Texas, and that may have had a particularly significant impact in rural areas."

Francia sees implications for the final vote in November. "Republican candidates have used social issues to win the rural vote. However, with the economy on the minds of so many rural Americans, that script could change in 2008."

Does that make Hillary Clinton more elect-able than Barack Obama? "The Clinton people say (this geographic trend) is predictive. The Obama people think that's crazy," says writer Bill Bishop. "The question is whether this carries over to the Fall, and on that I don't know."

-- Howard Berkes, Rural Affairs Correspondent

10:00 AM ET | 03-10-2008 | permalink