Analysis: Capitol riot arrestees not disproportionately rural

Daily Yonder chart; click on the image to enlarge it.

"Extremists like those who stormed the Capitol on Jan. 6 are no more likely to be from small towns or rural areas than from any other parts of America, say experts who study far-right movements," Anya Slepyan reports for The Daily Yonder. "Since the insurrection, more than 180 people have been arrested for their involvement in the violent incursion on the Capitol. The Daily Yonder’s analysis of those arrests shows that the rioters came from . . . urban, suburban, and rural counties at about the same rate as the overall population. And those arrested were only slightly more likely than the overall population to come from counties that Donald Trump won by a landslide."

The rioters were unified neither by geography nor ideology, according to Madelyn Webb of anti-misinformation organization First Draft. They ranged from libertarian anti-vaxxers to anti-abortion activists to QAnon conspiracy theorists. "The thing that all these people have in common is that they think the election results were manipulated," she told Slepyan.

The Yonder's Tim Marema writes, "About 14% of the U.S. population lives in rural, or nonmetropolitan, counties. Only 10% of the people arrested for the Capitol riot list their homes in one of these rural counties. That means rural people are under-represented on the list of arrestees versus their share of the population." No such data is available for the people who stormed the Capitol and were not arrested, or went through police lines but didn't breach the building.