Document Type
Report
Publication Date
9-2016
Publisher
Brookings Mountain West
First page number:
1
Last page number:
29
Abstract
In the aftermath of the 2012 presidential election, a good deal of commentary held that President Obama’s reelection resulted from the country’s changing demography and his overwhelming support among nonwhite voters residing in the country’s urban spaces. Less discussed was the fact that Republican Mitt Romney also carried many urbanized states with ethnically and racially diverse populations and that President Obama would not have been reelected without securing the Electoral Votes of a number of rural states with large white populations. In this paper, we argue that the combination of educated populations and a socio-cultural construct we call northernness allow us to differentiate which urban and diverse states and which white and rural states are Democratic and Republican voting in contemporary presidential elections.
Keywords
Demography; Elections; United States; Urbanization--Political aspects
Disciplines
American Politics
Language
English
Repository Citation
Damore, D. F.,
Lang, R. E.
(2016).
Beyond Density & Diversity: Understanding the Socio-Cultural Geography of Contemporary Presidential Elections.
1-29.
Available at:
https://digitalscholarship.unlv.edu/brookings_pubs/42
Comments
A Brookings Mountain West Policy Brief