Can Democrats win in rural America?

If they're to succeed, it will be as much about effort as ideology

A voting sign.
(Image credit: Illustrated | AP Photo/Robert F. Bukaty)

One of President Trump's favorite maps, of America color-coded by the counties he won in 2016, is extremely misleading. It does correctly show the overwhelming majority of the country's land mass to be Republican. But it does not account for population distribution. Since Democrats do better in cities, and because the U.S. population is heavily urbanized, one can lose most of the physical area while winning most of the actual people.

Nevertheless, it is true that Democrats have struggled badly outside urban areas of late. Democrats have a roughly 30-point advantage in urban counties, but a 16-point disadvantage in rural ones. And given how Republicans have rigged themselves a roughly five- to six-point handicap in the House of Representatives, mostly by structurally over-weighting non-urban votes, whether Democrats can take back the House will depend in large part on whether they can win back some of those rural and suburban voters.

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Ryan Cooper

Ryan Cooper is a national correspondent at TheWeek.com. His work has appeared in the Washington Monthly, The New Republic, and the Washington Post.