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this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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How can most of the country be so red? Are people not paying attention?
Land doesn't vote. The area means nothing.
A lot of it is low population and lots of square miles.
Take my state for example... We voted for Biden, but if you check it county by county:
You'd be right to go "Well, wait, how does that work?
See those 3 giant counties in the lower right hand corner? That's Lake, Harney, and Malheur county from left to right.
Here's how they voted in 2020:
Lake
Biden - 792 - 18.15%
Trump - 3,470 - 79.53%
Harney
Biden - 894 - 19.95%
Trump - 3,475 - 77.55%
Malheur
Biden - 3,260 - 27.62%
Trump - 8,187 - 69.36%
There's more cattle than people down there, of course it goes Red.
Now if you look at the top of the map, you'll see a sliver of dark blue, that's Multnomah County, i.e. where most of the people live.
Biden - 367,249 - 79.21%
Trump - 82,995 - 17.90%
It really doesn't matter how many square miles turn red, it's the people who do the voting.
Inside of states for popular elections this is true. However, that giant area of red is over-represented at just about every level of government, from the electoral college to Congress to state legislatures.
The US is mostly empty space, sparsely inhabited by republicans. Democrats are often gathered in major population centers and seem less visible in this form of representation, due to their geographic concentration, but that’s a misrepresentation.
This graphic better illustrates this, representing the 2020 presidential election (from NYT)
I prefer the XKCD map. Really illustrates that whole "empty space" thing pretty well:
Rural populations lean red. Not exactly sure why that is. I guess contributing factors are that rural people tend to be more religious, bigoted, "independent" of public infrastructure and community, and pro-gun. I think Republicans also give more lip service to rural economic conditions, and visit rural parts more often. Democrats seem to largely ignore rural America, and even sometimes express contempt for them.