Red State, Blue City: How the Urban-Rural Divide is Splitting America

[Franknburger]

It used not be a lot more nuanced and varied, now its become like the situation in most other modern nations, with conservatism dominating in terms of land size (though for social rather than economic reasons, in the UK its the ruralities that have most of the wealthy people in).

Actually, I would say that the situation in the US is quite extreme compared to other countries. As a statistics geek I plotted the democratic lean in each state against the 10-logarithm of its population density. The correlation is very strong, with an R2-value of 43 % (i.e. 43 % of the lean could be explained by the population density).

I did similar checks with the bundesländer and departements of Germany and France and the correlations were in general very week. If you look at just England you might get something similar to the US, but not if you look at the UK as a whole (as Scotland and Wales "destroy" the trend).

Interestingly, the German CDU last November, after losing a number of high-profile mayoral races, published a strategy paper on how to stop the erosion of party support in big cities.

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http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324556304578118931301425500.html#

[Franknburger]

I sat down for a while and did some math regarding whites in Northern Illinois. Here's what I found. For my purposes, Northern Illinois includes the following counties: Boone, Bureau, Carroll, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Henry, Jo Daviess, Kane, Kendall, Lake, LaSalle, Lee, McHenry, Ogle, Rock Island, Stephenson, Whiteside, Will, and Winnebago. Furthermore, I'm calling the following Northern Illinois counties Chicagoland: Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will.
A few points:
1. Whites in Chicagoland are almost exactly split in population between Cook County and the rest of the Chicagoland counties
2. About 67% of whites, who voted in Cook County, voted to reelect the President.
3. About 43% of whites who voted in the remaining Chicagoland counties voted to reelect the President.
4. About 55% of whites, who voted in all of Chicagoland, voted to re-elect the President.
4. About 10% of whites, who voted in both Cook and Lake Counties, self-identify as Jewish, about 2/3 of whom likely voted to reelect the President.
5. About 48% of whites who voted in Northern Illinois, outside of Chicagoland, voted to re-elect the President.
6. Only 43% of whites, who voted in Winnebago County, the largest county in Northern Illinois, outside of Chicagoland, voted to re-elect the President. Without the influence of Winnebago, the whites of Northern Illinois would have split their votes almost equally between the President and Mitt Romney.
7. Chicagoland's 55% vote for the President is roughly equal to Northern Illinois's 48%, once one takes Jews and gays into account. Any additional "urban effect" is limited to just a few points.
8. However, there is a great deal of polarization within Chicagoland with white Dems much more likely to live in Cook County and white Republicans much more likely to live in another Chicagoland County. This is clearly not merely the result of gays and Jews.

Whites voting to relect the President by Chicagoland county
1. Cook 67%
2.DeKalb 47%
3. Lake 46%
4. DuPage 43%
5. Will 43%
6. Grundy 42%
7.McHenry 41%
8. Kendall 40%
9. Kane 39%

MAP (please..)