I am now out of the younger age groups separated in polling. This means I need to start pointing out things than may not be obvious younger people, or those who may not have put much thought into the nature of how geography influences American politics. My main point here is that Democrats, if we want to have any chance of winning the White House, the Senate, or the House HAVE to learn the MATH. The MATH says we HAVE to appeal to rural Americans. I don’t care if they are white, black, Hispanic, or otherwise. But we have to appeal to rural Americans. The MATH says so. Ignoring this will just leave us in a losing position forever. I will outline how the MATH influences the Senate, House, and Presidency.
The Senate
The country was set up so that small states would have as many Senators as big states (long story). Well guess what? There are many more rural dominated states than urban dominated states. Based on a the image below, there are 18 urban dominated states and 32 rural dominated states (some are debatable). What does that mean? A party that dominates urban areas and gets creamed in the rural areas will have a very hard time holding the United States Senate. This is just MATH.
The House
The natural geographic distribution of cities leads to concentrations of populations in some places while large swaths of the landscape are sparsely populated. This does not in itself lead to an imbalance of representation in the House. However, it does make this balance easy to manipulate. By drawing House districts that concentrate the urban populations together in a small proportion of districts, it is possible to create many more rural districts. By dominating state legislatures after the 2010 midterm elections, Republican dominated state legislatures (many in rural dominated states) were able to upset this balance by Gerrymandering their state’s districts using exactly the tactic outlined above. They also were able to Gerrymander state legislative districts in a similar manor. We are stuck with this until after the 2020 election, but only if Democrats are able to take over state legislatures in 2018 and 2020. The reality of the situation right now is that the way House districts are drawn, the House will be made up of mostly rural dominated districts. Again, its just MATH.
The Presidency
Similar to the problems with the Senate, the President is selected by the Electoral College, which also is tilted towards benefiting rural dominated states. States with very low populations get 3 electoral votes regardless of their population. States with slightly more population get 4 electoral votes. States with slightly more get 5 electoral votes. However, states with huge populations get more, like California which gets 55 electoral votes. This seems pretty fair. However, this does lead to a math problem for states with larger populations. Wyoming has a population of 582,658 people and 3 electoral votes. That works out to about 1 electoral vote for every 195,000 people. California has a population of 38,332,521. That works out to 1 electoral vote for every 700,000 people. This shows that the rural voters of Wyoming have 3.5 times the representation in the electoral college as the more urban voters of California. On top of this, since there are so few urban dominated states, this means that the states with both urban and large rural populations make up the middle ground and can lead to the popular vote being won by one candidate and the electoral college being won by a candidate that over-performs in rural areas. This is just MATH.
We can’t ignore the MATH. Democrats must make great efforts to appeal to rural voters. Urban voters are of great importance, but we must build a coalition that includes rural voters. It’s just MATH.