The Rural-Urban Divide in Politics

As I've mentioned before, the political divide is closely correlated with population density.  The Wall Street Journal takes look at two neighboring congressional districts, one containing Kansas City, Missouri, and one is a sprawling district which stretches much of the way across the state:

For decades, rural America was part of the Democratic base, and as recently as 1993, just over half of rural Americans were represented by a House Democrat, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis. Conservative Democrats often represented rural districts, including Ms. Hartzler's predecessor, Ike Skelton, who held the seat for 34 years before she ousted him in 2010.
That parity eventually gave way to GOP dominance. In 2013, 77% of rural Americans were represented by a House Republican. But in urban areas—which by the government's definition includes both cities and suburbs—slightly less than half of residents were represented by congressional Republicans, despite the GOP's 30-seat majority in the House.
The urban-rural divide has also grown in presidential contests. In 1992, Democrat Bill Clinton beat Republican George Bush in the 50 densest counties—the most urban in the country—by 25 percentage points. By 2012, Democrat Barack Obama's advantage in those urban counties had shot up to 38 points, according to a Journal analysis of Census and election data.
Today, almost all big cities, even those in red states such as Missouri, Indiana and Texas, favor Democrats for president.
The shift in rural areas has been even more dramatic. In 1992, Mr. Bush won the 50 least-dense counties—the most rural in the country—by 18 points. In 2012, Mr. Romney's advantage there had roughly tripled, to 53 points.

So what drives the split? Mainly, a hollowing out of the rural economy that has driven many of the young people to search for opportunity in the metropolitan areas, leaving an older, more conservative population:

These divisions emerged in the 1960s with the Civil Rights movement and the rise of such social issues as abortion and school prayer, which distanced culturally conservative rural voters from the Democratic Party.....
Rural economies have faltered as automated farming and corporate ventures subsumed many family farms. Cutbacks in manufacturing have cost jobs, and fewer jobs mean fewer opportunities for young people, driving away those with more skills and education.
Without new arrivals, these aging regions have grown more insulated from cultural change—whether the use of smartphones or the acceptance of same-sex marriage......
The population of about 3,600 has held roughly steady for the past several decades, but the town has shrunk.
El Dorado used to have two grocery stores until one bought the other and closed it. The county hospital stopped delivering babies in 2012 because there weren't enough deliveries to justify keeping an on-call surgeon. A bond issue to upgrade aging school facilities was twice rejected by voters.
The historic Opera House Theater, the only one in town, can't show movies until supporters raise $60,000 for a digital projector. So far, they have $13,000.
With few jobs waiting for young people after college, adults in town assume most won't return to start their own families after graduation. The exodus has left the town older and more conservative.

There is a certain charm to some small towns (sometimes, but not always) that can be hard to find in the cities and suburbs, but looking at the chart below, I can tell you that economically and demographically, things look better for the cities than for the rural areas.  That doesn't even get into the fact that rural areas are recipient areas when it comes to state and federal taxes, and the lack of jobs definitely doesn't help that fact.

What really bothers me about the politics is that the GOP is leading rural America off of a cliff.  Without the transfer of tax dollars from metropolitan areas to rural areas, these communities would be even worse off.  GOP tax cuts and spending cuts make it harder for these communities to survive.  As the excerpt above mentions, local voters have twice rejected a levy to upgrade the schools.  Nowhere is the damage to rural areas from GOP policies more obvious than in primary and secondary education.  States like Ohio and Missouri use the state income tax to transfer money from the rich suburbs to rural and inner-city urban schools.  The GOP has purposely targeted this mechanism by pushing for numerous income tax cuts when budgets are balanced or in surplus, and slashing state support for schools and local government when budgets are in deficit (fueled by those tax cuts as soon as the economy slows down).  The suburbs can raise the needed revenues locally, while the rural and inner-cities can't.  At a certain point, voters in rural areas are going to figure out that the GOP hurts them, and when they do, the Republican Party is dead.  Hopefully, that is before the rural areas die.