Rural-urban political divide driven recently by big-city Dems, not rural Republicans, Daily Yonder analysis says

The chart shows the percent of the two-party vote Republicans and Democrats received in congressional (red and blue lines) and presidential elections (red and blue bars) from 2006 to 2018. (Daily Yonder charts; click on image for larger version)

Navel-gazing news stories about the rural-urban divide have become common, and some of the writers seem to believe that rural communities caused this rift by becoming more conservative. "When we look at the numbers, however, we see it’s not just a rural phenomenon," Bill Bishop and Tim Marema report for The Daily Yonder. "The gap is growing in the other direction in major urban areas. Since 2006, at least, the nation’s largest central cities have grown more Democratic while rural areas got more Republican."

Bishop and Marema analyzed House and presidential election results by six classes on an urban-rural scale from 2006 through 2018. Votes for Republicans and Democrats were virtually even across the scale except in the heavily Democratic big cities. "Over the next six election cycles, Democrats continued to gain in these central-city counties. Republicans gained majorities in smaller cities or in suburbs of medium-sized cities and in rural counties. The two parties battled in the suburbs of the major metropolitan areas, where over 29 percent of voters lived in 2018," Bishop and Marema report. "The political division wasn’t rural versus urban. It was big-city Democrats versus everybody else."

In the 2018 House races, "The gap between rural and urban areas shrank a tiny bit even as both geographies got considerably more Democratic," Bishop and Marema report. "In other words, 2018 didn’t see an increase in the rural-urban gap. This election saw a Democratic comeback in rural areas and an increasing concentration of Democratic voters in central cities."

President Trump appears to be losing some ground in rural America, and so may his party be. In a Washington Post poll earlier this year, rural voters' approval of Trump's job performance dropped by 38 points to a net of +8. It's unclear whether Democrats can take advantage of this trend, though. Most Democratic voters are suburban and urban, and increasingly so. If it's a numbers game, Bishop and Marema write, "The Democratic Party has less reason to consider voters outside the nation’s largest cities because fewer Democrats live there."