Democrats search for a path back into rural America’s good graces

The Washington Post has an article from liberal establishment journalist Dan Balz:

Wisconsin has seen close elections in the past. George W. Bush lost the state by less than a point in 2000 and 2004. Obama won it by almost 14 points in 2008 and by about seven points in 2012. Trump won the state by seven-tenths of a percentage point.

Craig Gilbert of the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel recently provided the first groundbreaking analysis of how Wisconsin voted. What he found was an uneven pattern, with Trump significantly outperforming Mitt Romney in some areas and underperforming in others. Trump did worse in areas of greater affluence and higher levels of education, particularly around Milwaukee. But he did dramatically better in smaller, blue-collar communities.

As Gilbert wrote, Trump “won more than 500 cities, towns and villages that voted for Obama in 2012. He won 190 of them by at least 20 points. These ‘Obama-Trump communities’ were located overwhelmingly in northern, western and central Wisconsin. Their median population was less than 800.”

Gilbert added that Trump’s gains in these smaller communities were so dramatic that he overcame the deficiencies around Milwaukee. “If you add up all the communities in Wisconsin of less than 2,000 people,” he wrote, “Trump won them collectively by 24 points and nearly 150,000 votes. Romney won those same communities by 4 points and fewer than 30,000 votes.”

Ohio turned out not to be close in 2016, in large part because a similar pattern turned a historically competitive battleground into a rout for the Republican nominee. Trump won Ohio by eight points, compared with a three-point victory by Obama in 2012.

An analysis by Mike Dawson, an expert on Ohio election statistics, showed that Trump’s margin was at least 10 points better than Romney’s in 41 of the state’s 88 counties. Overall, he ran about even with Romney in two counties and behind in four counties, including Franklin (Columbus), Hamilton (Cincinnati) and Delaware (suburban Columbus). Trump’s biggest gains came in Ohio’s Appalachian counties, where he ran 12 points ahead of Romney.

An article , well worth your time.