An Urban's Rural View

In our great-great grandparents' time city people and country people differed more than they do today.

Then, as now, city dwellers resembled ants in their social interactions while country folks resembled wild cats. But in our ancestors' pre-electronic era that distinction mattered more. Change -- modern conveniences, ethnic diversity, new ideas and customs -- swept through cities before trickling out to the country.

Radio and television shrunk these differences, exposing Americans to the same influences at the same time wherever they lived. Cultural differences remained, though. And as a March 21 Wall Street Journal article (http://tiny.cc/…) pointed out, the political differences are widening.

Consider the makeup of the House of Representatives. Over the last couple of decades Republicans made gains in both the cities and the country but the rural gains were much beefier.

From 1972 to 1993, according to a chart accompanying the Journal story, rural Congressional districts elected more Democrats than Republicans, by a small margin. Many were conservative Democrats, but Democrats nonetheless. During the same period the Democrats had a sizeable lead in urban representatives.

From 1993 to 1999 the countryside swung sharply Republican and still more Republican through 2013, when a Republican represented 77% of rural Americans in the House. In the same year less than half of urban Americans were represented by a Republican.

The urban-rural divide was even more noticeable in presidential-election voting. In 1992, according to the Journal's analysis of election and census data, Bill Clinton beat George Bush in the 50 most densely populated counties by 25 percentage points. In 2012, Barack Obama's edge in the same counties was 38 percentage points.

By another, more playful measure, Clinton in 1992 won 60% of the counties that had a Whole Foods and 40% of those with a Cracker Barrel. In 2012 Obama won 77% of the Whole Foods counties and 29% of the Cracker Barrel counties.

The Journal doesn't say what happened in counties that had both retailers. And no doubt Whole Foods expanded faster in the cities during those 20 years and Cracker Barrel grew faster in the country. But that flaw in the measuring rod can't have accounted for the entire enlargement of the urban-rural gulf, from 20 points in 1992 to 48 points in 2012.

"The difference in this country is not red versus blue," a political scientist told the Journal. "It's urban versus rural."

Demography explains part of the difference. The country is whiter and whites tilt Republican; the cities and suburbs are younger and more racially diverse, advantage Democrats.

The Journal attributes another part of the difference to culture, which it summarizes in sweeping stereotypes -- urbanites buy more foreign cars and are more tethered to their cellphones, country folk are more religious and own more guns. Really? Whatever the validity of the paper's typecasting, wouldn't it have been equally valid in 1992?

More important, in my view, is the changes in our mass media that are exacerbating the cultural chasm. Back in the days when everyone watched the three major television networks, everyone got the same news.

Talk radio, cable television and the Internet changed that, enabling us to choose our "news" to fit our political predispositions. Americans who watch Fox News and Americans who watch MSNBC, to take an obvious example, view parallel but very different universes. Conservative websites attract conservatives, liberal websites liberals.

These echo chambers don't change viewers' opinions. They reinforce them. We are, to use the jargon term, "segmented" in our media choices, and the more segmented we are the more the Democrats have to struggle to win House elections and the Republicans to take back the presidency.

Over time demographic trends favor the Democrats. The country seems destined to become less and less white and less and less rural. For the time being, though, it's easier to imagine the Republicans taking the presidency than the Democrats taking the House.

The divide may not continue to widen but it isn't likely to narrow.

Urban Lehner
urbanity@hotmail.com

(ES)

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