Hillary: The Rural Candidate (Updated)

[Crossposted from Sugar Land is Dreaming]

I've been looking over the voting and exit poll results for yesterday's primaries, and a couple maps have kinda shocked me. In Ohio, only 10 percentage points separated the total votes received by Hillary (54%) and Obama (44%), but looking at this map of voting by county that I found on CNN, Ohio looks like a complete blowout:


While Hillary won the state soundly, it wasn't as totally soundly as this map would indicate. But the fact stands that Obama only got the majority of votes in five Ohio counties -- the ones containing the three C's (Cleveland, Columbus, and Cincinnati), Delaware County right next to Columbus, and Montgomery County which included the decently sized city of Dayton.

Now most Ohio cities are working class, but Hillary got the uber-working class smaller cities: Canton, Lima, Toledo, Sandusky, Youngstown, Akron, and some others that I can't remember at this moment. The Ohio cities that Obama got, the three C's, are the largest and the most metropolitan in Ohio, but they also are the cities with the most students. Cincinnati has Xaiver and Uniiversity of Cincinnati; Columbus has Ohio State University; Cleveland doesn't have as many schools as the other two, but it still has Case Western Reserve University; and Dayton is home to the University of Dayton.

So Obama got votes in the cities with the largest population of young people, and that's it. Hillary got the working class, poorer cities, and -- maybe most importantly -- the rural counties. (I've resided in and spent a lot of time driving through Ohio. If a county doesn't have or isn't close to a major city, then it's rural.)

I've never lived in Texas, so I don't know as much about the demographics of the state, but I think they had a similar experience to Ohio yesterday:


This county-by-county results match the statistics I've seen in exit polls from yesterday: Hillary carried the poor vote, and Obama carried the vote for the more affluent.

I have two observations on this. First off: Why is this? Why is Hillary seen as a populist and Obama is the latte liberal?

Secondly: These rural support statistics for Hillary are very, dare I say... Republican? I like examining county-by-county votes in elections, and I've done so for our past recent presidential elections. So I can tell you that in 2000 and 2004, if a country was rural, Bush most likely won it. But in 1992 and 1996, the rural counties were more of a tossup... Bill Clinton didn't win all of them -- he probably didn't even win half of them. But he did win some, and those votes helped fed his meager popular votes totals and helped propel him into two terms.

What's the moral of the story? A presidential candidate can't win without getting at least some rural support.

If Obama can't win over rural counties, then I seriously have to question his electability. In 2000 and 2004, Gore (who actually won by a hair, but that's a whole 'nother story) and Kerry did not receive support from rural counties. Subsequently, both candidates lost. This is not a coincidence.

[Update] Like a good little blogger, I'm searching for information that would prove me wrong in this post. Some questions should arise from it, like if Hillary is really the "rural", non-metropolitan candidate, how come Obama won states like Utah and Nebraska? And how come Hillary got the majority of the vote in Los Angeles and New York City?

My answer -- and I'm sure you'll all love how scientific this is -- is that other states are just whacky. There are individual reasons, obviously... Hillary got NYC because she's their senator; Obama got Vermont despite its ruralness because there's something in the water there that makes Vermont residents lean heavily to the left (so much so that they have an unabashed socialist senator), etc. Every state has its characteristics, and I think for Ohio it's important characteristic to presidential elections is just how neutral the state is, leading it to often be an accurate reflection of America at large. Just like the United States itself, demographically Ohio has a decent mix of people from all political backgrounds mixed into large cities, small cities, suburbs, and rural counties. If one were to shrink America to the size of a European country, you would get Ohio. That's why I place a great amount of value on the way Ohio votes -- it's the quintessential bellwether state. So what happens in Vermont or Utah matters less because those states doesn't matter as much in November; and besides that, we already know how they will vote anyways. We never know which way Ohio will go, though.

For those still doubting the importance of these rural Ohio counties, here's some links for Ohio's general election county-by-county voting results for 1992, 1996, 2000, and 2004 -- check'em out. The differences between the years Clinton won and those that Bush won are stark. And these patterns are repeated in Carter's victory in 1976, and the Republican victories in 1988, 1984, 1980... Hell, the last time this cycle was broken was in 1960, and that was a long time ago.

For nearly five decades, the story has been the same: Win Ohio and you win the White House. Other states don't have this kind of electoral history, which is why I'm not analyzing rural areas of Vermont, Utah, Nebraska, etc. Ohio is a reflection of the country, and if a candidate has trouble winning rural areas there then they will be hard pressed to win the state, and hence the White House. That's my belief and I'm sticking to it... Until somebody smacks me down, that is.