Trump won over 2,500 counties, responsible for only 29 percent.” Fair enough. One study looking at three cultural differences that contribute to the rural-urban political divide found that different rates of “racism denial”-disagreeing that white people benefit from baked-in social advantages-between urban and rural Americans appear “to explain about three-quarters of the urban-rural gap in voting for Trump,” far more so than gun ownership and evangelical Christianity.Īs evidence of the way economic stagnation in certain places has boosted Trump’s appeal, Brooks points out that “in 2020, Biden won only 500 or so counties, but together they are responsible for 71 percent of the American economy. Rural voters may have legitimate economic concerns but, as white people, many were also drawn in by Trump’s drumbeat of racial grievances. Though rural America is becoming more racially diverse, rural areas are still disproportionately white, and urban areas are disproportionately populated by people of color. But rural counties almost always vote Republican for a wide variety of social, economic, and demographic reasons, and the racial element of Trump’s rise is particularly salient in the rural-urban political divide.
Brooks says rural voters went for Trump because they’ve been left behind by the economic engines of the cities.
