By Bill Bishop and Tim Murphy

Obama Closes Gap in Rural Vote, Wins Bigger in Cities

editor — Fri, 7 Nov 2008 11:52:59 -0800

Barack Obama decreased his party's losses in rural and exurban America while substantially increasing the Democratic vote in the cities over the totals from 2004.

The 2008 election was the opposite of 2004. Four years ago, George Bush ran up large margins in rural and exurban counties to overcome John Kerry's 3.7 million vote advantage in the cities.

This year, however, Barack Obama managed to tamp down the Republican advantage in rural and exurban areas and then vastly increased the Democratic margins in the cities. Obama won with city votes, but he showed improvement in rural and exurban counties — in some important states, that increase in the rural vote was dramatic.

Obama's improvement in rural areas was especially pronounced in the states that were fought over by both campaigns this year. Nationally, McCain won all rural counties by 13 percentage points.

In battleground states — states John Kerry lost by 15 points in '04 — Obama reduced this deficit to just 7 percentage points.

Nationally, Obama was able to win 43% of the rural vote. (This is the actual vote from counties the U.S. Census designates as "non metro.") In 2004, John Kerry won 39.8% of the vote from these same counties.

Obama Wins By Paring Rural Losses, Building Urban Advantage

editor — Wed, 5 Nov 2008 08:25:58 -0800

Mother and daughter for Obama, Charlotte McKee (left) and Lane Gosnay of La Grange, Texas, enjoyed musical entertainment by the Ginn Sisters and others at Freyburg Hall, October 5. The event was a benefit for the Fayette County Democratic Party.
Photo: Bill Bishop

Sen. Barack Obama won the presidency Tuesday by increasing Democratic margins in urban areas and by slightly decreasing the party's losses in rural and exurban areas, compared to the 2004 presidential race.

(See charts after the jump. The Daily Yonder will continue to update results today. So keep checking back.)

Obama was able to flip Ohio from Republican to Democratic by increasing the party's take in urban areas and reducing its deficits in rural and exurban counties. In '04, John Kerry came out of Ohio's cities with a 183,000 vote margin, but lost rural and exurban parts of the state by more than 201,000 votes.

Obama, however, ran up a 405,000 vote in urban Ohio Tuesday, and then narrowed his losses in rural and exurban parts of the state to under 196,000.

News media exit polls appear to overstate Obama's totals in rural communities. Exit polls ask people whether they live in urban, suburban or rural communities. In Ohio, the exit polls reported that Obama received 44% of the rural vote.

In the count of the actual vote from rural Ohio counties, however, Obama received 42.6 percent of the vote. Similarly, in Missouri the exit polls reported that Obama received 40% of the rural vote. In the full vote count, however, Obama received only 36.9% of the vote from rural Missouri counties.

Obama's boat rose on swelling tides. The basic shape of the electorate didn't change — rural areas still voted Republican; Democrats dominated the cities — but the margins rose for Democrats in urban areas and their losses narrowed in rural counties.

Clinton Climbs to Steep West Virginia Win

editor — Wed, 14 May 2008 07:54:30 -0700

Clinton supporters marched during a political rally/Mothers Day celebration in Grafton, West Virginia, two days before the state's presidential primary

Photo: Barbara Kinney

Riding a large turnout in rural counties, Sen. Hillary Clinton swept the West Virginia primary Tuesday, winning two thirds of the vote in her long campaign against Illinois Sen. Barack Obama.

Clinton continued to show exceptional strength in rural areas, especially in West Virginia's coal counties. She won over 70 percent of the vote in rural West Virginia, a level of support that dropped to 62 percent in the state's urban counties. Sen. Obama's strongest turnout came in Morgantown, home of West Virginia University, and in the exurban counties nearest Washington, D.C.

John Edwards of North Carolina, who withdrew from the presidential primary race in January, was still on the ballot in West Virginia and drew 7% of the vote, a substantial showing for a non-candidate.

West Virginia is one of the poorest states in the nation, ranking 48th in median income: $38,029, as compared with the national median income of $48,023. Among white voters making less than $30,000 a year, Clinton's margin of victory was more than 60 points.

The senator from New York campaigned hard in rural West Virginia. On Mothers Day, she visited Grafton and toured the home of Anna Jarvis, the West Virginia woman who pushed to create the national holiday. Clinton read from letters she had received, including one that said, "It's not over until the lady in pantsuit says it is."

Obama Wins North Carolina and Cities; Clinton Wins Indiana and Rural Vote

editor — Wed, 7 May 2008 10:00:18 -0700

North Carolina and Indiana chose different winners in the Democratic primary elections yesterday, but the patterns of voting for Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. Hillary Clinton were the same.

Rural and exurban communities supported Clinton in both states. Urban voters backed Obama.

Senator Obama won North Carolina's primary with 56% of the vote, over Clinton's 41.5%. Despite an overwhelming victory for the Illinois senator statewide — and contrary to the exit polls — Sen. Clinton narrowly defeated Obama in North Carolina's rural and exurban communities. Obama won the state's urban counties two to one.

The pattern was similar in Indiana. Clinton won nearly 62 percent of the rural and exurban vote there. Obama won 54.4 percent of the vote in Indiana's urban counties.

Landslide Geography Splits Obama and Clinton

editor — Mon, 5 May 2008 07:56:08 -0700

New York Times artist Campbell Robertson is doing cartoons from the primary states. This one looks at the tension between the fast-growing city of Asheville and Burnsville, N.C.

In the Pennsylvania Democratic primary, nearly six out of ten voters lived in communities where the contest between Sen. Hillary Clinton and Sen. Barack Obama wasn't close at all. Most voters in that hotly contested primary lived in counties where either Obama or Clinton won by more than 20 percentage points — an electoral blowout.

Clinton won 49 of Pennsylvania's 67 counties by 20 percentage points or more; most of these counties were smaller and populated by white voters. Thirty-nine of these landslide Clinton counties were in rural or exurban Pennsylvania. Obama won only two counties by a landslide, but one was Philadelphia, the most inner-city county of a massive metro region.

Pennsylvania wasn't a special case in the long-running contest between Clinton and Obama. Supporters of the two candidates not only vote separately, they live separately.

The stark geographic and racial division between Clinton and Obama "is unnerving core constituencies -- African Americans and wealthy liberals -- who are becoming convinced that the party could suffer irreversible harm if Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton maintains her sharp line of attack against Sen. Barack Obama," the Washington Post reported in late April. The "quandry for the party," according to the Post, was that Clinton might be the better candidate to win the white, working-class (and rural?) vote, but her nomination may irreparably divide the party.

This geographic and racial rift didn't happen suddenly, a division caused by Obama's discussion of small town bitterness or the sermons of Rev. Jeremiah Wright. Supporters of Obama and Clinton have come from entirely different communities at least since the Super Tuesday contests on February 5th, according to a Daily Yonder analysis.