Journalistic Demographic Wisdom

The Truth About Rural Privilege in American Politics

~ 80 percent of all Americans lives in cities, metro areas, or suburbs and those numbers have been increasing – indeed the only rural areas that have shown growth rather than shrinkage over the last decade are almost always butted up to a large Metro area.

Yet when Journalists seek “the real Americans” they always seem to go to small rural towns as if living in a small town gives you privilege, insight, or “roots” that us poor city dwellers can never understand. Why is that? Do those journalists know something that we urban Americans do not?

The simple answer to that question is a resounding Yes! Urban voters in this country are severely disenfranchised by design, rural voters, no matter how few, have all the clout in this country. It has become this way through decades of Republican machinations with voter rolls, voting laws, and most importantly, Gerrymandering extremes.

Let’s start with the fact that every state gets two Senators — so at the time of this writing, the ~588k people of Wyoming get two Senators, and the 39,355, 309 Million people of California get two Senators. Doing the math, that’s 1 senator for every 294k people in Montana, while Californians get 1 senator for 19,677,654.5 people.

Do you see how that might be a bit unfair, a bit unequal, perhaps to the point of laughing at the 14th amendment?

Then there are electors for presidential elections, and seats in congress, where the math gets slightly better when it comes to per person representation, but not by much. Because of the 435 seat cap, Wyoming has a house seat for approximately every 576K persons while Californians only gets a house seat per approximately every 760K people.

When it comes to electors, Wyoming gets one every 192,284 people, while the disenfranchised people of California only get one presidential elector every 732,189 people. Definitely not fair.

So the more land around you — the more empty country nearby, the more your vote counts, the more electoral privilege you have, the more control you have over the future direction of the country. Meanwhile you city and suburb dwellers can suck it. That’s why you shouldn’t kvetch, complain, or get even slightly angry when reporters go to the Toad Hollar Bar and Grill in Mound City, MO to interview the real rulers of America.

Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_and_territories_by_population

https://www.census.gov/newsroom/press-releases/2022/urban-rural-populations.html