Rural counties with the most population loss voted the most Democratic for president in 2020, The Daily Yonder reports

Map by The Daily Yonder, adapted by The Rural Blog; for the interactive version, click here.

Joe Biden carried only 10% of rural counties in the 2020 election, but "There was a certain type of rural county where Biden doubled that rate of victory. Unfortunately for Democrats, it was rural counties that are losing the most population," Sarah Melotte reports for The Daily Yonder.

"From 2010 to 2020, 244 rural counties lost 10% or more of their population. Biden won the popular vote in 20% of those counties, as opposed to the rest of rural America, where he won at about half that rate," Melotte writes. "Population loss didn't cause those counties to support Biden. Rather, it's the demographics of those counties that are losing population that explain the difference. The rural communities with the most population loss had higher percentages of ethnic or racial minorities than the rest of rural America. And these are populations that tend to vote more Democratic." The major example of that is Southern counties with large Black populations.