Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has a new column, The Data, in Esquire. In his innaugural article, he revisits how Obama won the election, looking specifically at rural/suburban/urban voters.
Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com has a new column, The Data, in Esquire. In his innaugural article, he revisits how Obama won the election, looking specifically at rural/suburban/urban voters.
Comments 1
Tim M — January 15, 2009
That certainly shows how antiquated the "country vs. city" sentiment is. I think it might have worked for a while, but people are really not living in rural places as much, and suburbanites seem to be identifying more with urban areas than rural areas. I imagine that's because people in the suburbs know plenty about peace and tranquility, which is the image many of them have of the rural areas. What they really want is exciting experiences, which is what cities offer more than rural areas, and in an environment where individuality is more accepted.
Considering that an adult is now twice as likely to be a prisoner than a farmer, I think the press and politicians need to redefine what a "real American" is. The most common occupation, according to the US department of labor, is "Management, professional, and related occupations," which probably means, like it or not, CNN needs to go into boring offices to get a real, American opinion. For the 50,000,000 or so businesspeople, there are just over 2,000,000 farmers, which include workers at big factory farming occupations rather than the idyllic family farmer. The number falls to just above 850,000 self-employed farmers.
This is not meant to be a knock at those who live in rural areas. I'm not big on the lifestyle and prefer to live in suburbs near metropolitan areas, but I can understand that some people like the quiet and distance. What bothers me is how over the last campaign, the Republican party and press kept on pushing more and more anti-urban rhetoric. It called anyone who tried to enjoy any of the finer things in life an elitist, in an age where Starbucks is a national, well-liked brand even while convenience stores offered 24 oz of drip coffee at $.99. Other areas of our culture reflect this. Top to bottom, everyone is trying to be more sophisticated in some way. My point is that if you try to insult urbanites to win over rural people and suburbanites, don't be surprised when you lose.
There's another thing I'd like to note: It's often been said that the electoral college favors rural areas and states with low populations, but in the past election, the popular vote was 52%, while the victory for Obama on the electoral college was a near 200 point lead in a 538 point competition. Any theories on that? I think the electoral college is antiquated and should be removed.