In regards to the title, in a word, I don’t think so. More on that later. Nationally the exit polls suggest that these are results for Barack Obama broken down by “Size of Place”:
Urban: 63%
Suburban: 50%
Rural: 45%
There’s a rather clear relationship here whereby Obama’s vote totals in urban areas are higher than in suburban areas, which are higher than in rural areas. Various factors such as his liberalism, his blackness and his urban machine origins make this totally unsurprising. “Real Americans” in rural areas naturally are more averse to Obama. But what about states that buck the trend? Nationally suburban areas voted for Obama +5. Below are states where Obama over-performed in rural areas vis-a-vis suburban areas:
South Dakota -17
Mississippi -14
Arkansas -10
Connecticut -9
Arizona -8
Hawaii -7
New York -7
New Hampshire -5
Tennessee -4
West Virginia -3
Louisiana -3
Vermont -3
Minnesota -3
Oklahoma -2
Wisconsin -2
Colorado -1
Maine 0
Indiana 1
Texas 1
Iowa 1
North Carolina 1
Illinois 1
Idaho 2
Alabama 3
Michigan 4
Virginia 4
Some of this I get. Some of it I don’t. I assume that suburban areas in Mississippi are magnets for white flight, while there is still a large rural black population in this state. I have no idea about South Dakota; perhaps it’s a bad exit poll? On the other hand, if you look at the county-by-county results for Minnesota the suburban “Red” ring around Minneapolis-St. Paul in a sea of “Blue” is rather discernible.
Here are the states where Obama’s margin in urban areas vs. suburban areas was lower than the national of 13 points:
New Mexico -17
Nevada -4
Florida -1
New Jersey 1
New Hampshire 3
Idaho 3
Kansas 7
Colorado 7
South Dakota 7
North Dakota 8
Rhode Island 9
Louisiana 9
Washington 10
Utah 11
Iowa 11
California 11
Virginia 11
Alabama 11
Oklahoma 12
Oregon 12
I did double check New Mexico. Either the exit poll is whack, or there’s some demographic peculiarities in this majority-minority state where a large number of Latinos have roots which go back several centuries.
Here are the states where Obama under-performed his urban vs. rural margins:
South Dakota -10
New Hampshire -2
New Mexico 3
Idaho 5
Louisiana 6
Montana 6
Colorado 7
Arizona 7
Oklahom 10a
Connecticut 11
Florida 11
Iowa 12
Arkansas 13
Kansas 14
Alabama 14
North Dakota 15
Virginia 15
Washington 15
Wisconsin 16
Texas 16
Indiana 17
Perhaps there are many Native Americans in the Black Hills? I don’t know. Upper New England states just aren’t very polarized in terms of residency; Vermont isn’t on this list because the sample size for urban respondents was too small, but I assume it would resemble New Hampshire.
The chart below shows % of state’s population rural on the X axis, and % of Obama votes on the Y axis. Click the chart to see a larger image with the states names.
The chart below shows the standard deviation of votes for Obama in urban, suburban and rural locales in each state (those where some locale was N/A are obviously omitted) on the X axis, again with Obama vote on the Y axis. Click for a larger image.
I’m basically looking for polarization within a state here. Again, very little in terms of a trend. Of course, those of you with more local geographic knowledge could almost certainly tell a lot b seeing your particular cluster of states. So go at it.
Note: I’m not even going to post the R-squared…they were all very modest. Not worth reporting.
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