Any Democratic rural white Southern counties left?

[DINGO Joe]

does watauga nc count

I don't think so.  Forty percent of the county has a bachelor's degree or higher.  That's not the rural South.

[DINGO Joe]

does watauga nc count

I don't think so.  Forty percent of the county has a bachelor's degree or higher.  That's not the rural South.

Does education level make somewhere inherently not "rural"?  I don't think anyone would have a problem calling, say, ski country "rural."

Well, Wautauga is a Micropolitan statistical area according to the Census Bureau and has tripled in size over the last forty years, so there are many reasons to look at it as not rural.  At what point did Johnson Co Iowa stop being rural?

[DINGO Joe]

does watauga nc count

I don't think so.  Forty percent of the county has a bachelor's degree or higher.  That's not the rural South.

Does education level make somewhere inherently not "rural"?  I don't think anyone would have a problem calling, say, ski country "rural."

Shhh, Atlas thinks all educated voters will vote Dem and all rural voters will vote GOP, so an educated rural county is an impossibility to them.

Wautauga used to be a historically Republican mountain county in NC, but it's population has tripled and is substantially more educated than the counties that surround it and it votes D now, because yes, educated voters vote D now. 

[DINGO Joe]

does watauga nc count

I don't think so.  Forty percent of the county has a bachelor's degree or higher.  That's not the rural South.

Does education level make somewhere inherently not "rural"?  I don't think anyone would have a problem calling, say, ski country "rural."

Well, Wautauga is a Micropolitan statistical area according to the Census Bureau and has tripled in size over the last forty years, so there are many reasons to look at it as not rural.  At what point did Johnson Co Iowa stop being rural?

I don't know anything about the county, so I am not disagreeing with you; I am disagreeing that "rural" and "low education" are attached at the hip.  Even if there were a 100% correlation between the two, it's not the lack of education that makes an area rural.  Areas to the west and south of downtown Chicago are not rural just because a huge percent of the people haven't even finished high school, let a lone college.

Obviously, there are less educated parts of urban areas (which have more variety and diversity than rural areas) and there are small college towns, Grinnell or Decorah, in counties that you'd still have to regard as rural (though a more urbane rural than say an Oelwein or Pella) but obviously given the high rate of education in Wautauga it's clearly retaining some people after graduation and whatever they're doing goes beyond a rural economy (though there is a recreational component to Wautauga's economy).   

Probably a more interesting juxtaposition is Randolph and Chatham counties which are adjacent to each other with Chatham being closer to the Triangle and Randolph being south of Greensboro.  Randolph has twice the population of Chatham (140,000 to 70,000), but Chatham is a fast growing area increasingly influenced by the Triangle economy and has a college degree rate of 40% while Randolph really doesn't have many commuters, has minimal growth and has a college degree rate of 15%.  Which one is more urban (or urbane) or rural? 

[DINGO Joe]

Share of the white vote in 2016:


I think Western North Carolina is the only place Democrats still get more than 30% of the white vote.

Jackson Co 39%
Transylvania Co 34%
Madison Co 34%
Haywood Co 33%
Swain Co 31%

Whites in Hamilton (TN), Knox (TN), Cobb (GA) and Gwinnett (GA) are more Republican than whites in rural Western NC. Pretty impressive.

I don't understand what happens in this area. Anyone care to explain? Lol

They've been able to attract relatively educated and affluent people there, including retirees, because it's nice (doesn't have the environmental degradation that you find in coal mining Appalachia) and it has a strong collection of cultural and educational resources, and it's also very environmental.  Put it all together and we all know how educated people vote these days.