Micro-Politics
By Mark Gersh
Editor's Note: The print version of this article contains breakdown maps of the "micropolitan" counties in the three states mentioned. These maps have been converted into pdf files, which you can download by clicking on the state names here: Ohio, Florida, and Pennsylvania. These files may take a moment to download.
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Analysts parsing the 2004 presidential election results quickly concluded that Democratic gains in the cities and inner suburbs that constitute the party's political base were matched by Republican gains in exurbs and rural areas. Worse for Democrats, it appears that their get-out-the-vote efforts in urban and inner-suburban areas are reaching the point of diminishing returns, because some of those places are steadily losing population.
With President Bush's exurban-rural coalition ascendant, Democrats face a challenge: County-level maps of presidential election results already show their strongholds as small islands of blue surrounded by vast seas of red. Since their islands are shrinking, Democrats must now chart a new course to rebuild their strength -- or at least reduce Republican margins.
But as they plot their strategy, Democrats should study the political maps carefully. When they do, one thing they'll notice is that analysts' simplistic descriptions of the GOP's exurban-rural coalition can be misleading. They call to mind a combination of sprawling new fringe cities and bucolic farming communities.
In reality, there are also places in between. The Census Bureau calls these in-between places "micropolitan statistical areas." They are nonmetropolitan counties whose population centers have between 10,000 and 50,000 people. In standard analyses of voting patterns, these counties are sometimes considered exurban, and sometimes rural. But they basically represent small-town, Main Street America. They include places like Flagler County, Fla.; Ashtabula County, Ohio; and Schuylkill County, Pa. Together, their voting age populations add up to a bit more than 10 percent of the national electorate.
Unlike true exurbs, micropolitan areas are typically not growing very fast. But a look at the 2000 and 2004 presidential results shows they produced a surge in voter turnout in the last election that was much greater than their voting age population growth. That surge worked heavily in Bush's favor, especially in battleground states.
For an apples-to-apples comparison of the two elections, this analysis adjusts the vote totals to account for the fact that Ralph Nader had statistically significant support in 2000, but not in 2004. The analysis assumes, based on state exit poll data, that if Nader were not in the race in 2000, 50 percent of his voters would have voted for Al Gore, 25 percent would have voted for Bush, and 25 percent would not have voted at all.
In the key battleground state of Ohio, the micropolitan voting age population increased by only 2.3 percent between 2000 and 2003 (the last year for which reliable census numbers are available). But turnout in micropolitan counties grew from 53.4 percent of the voting age population in 2000 to 60.5 percent in 2004 -- an increase of 108,000 voters. The adjusted Democratic share of the micropolitan vote held steady at just 40 percent in both elections. So the increased turnout in 2004 padded Bush's micropolitan margin by just over 33,000 votes. To put it another way, Bush won micropolitan Ohio in 2004 by 156,000 votes -- well over his statewide victory margin of 118,740 votes.
In Florida, which is a high-growth state in general, the micropolitan voting age population went up by 6.2 percent between 2000 and 2003. Micropolitan turnout, however, went up from 49.3 percent in 2000 to 57.8 percent in 2004, an increase of more than 62,000 raw votes. The adjusted Democratic percentage of this vote dropped from 45.4 percent in 2000 to 41.4 percent in 2004. So Bush's adjusted margin in these counties went up by nearly 32,000 votes -- from 20,000 to 52,000.
And in Pennsylvania, a state where Democrat John Kerry's margin of victory dropped significantly from Al Gore's adjusted margin in 2000, we see the same kind of pattern: The micropolitan voting age population grew 2.7 percent; turnout was up from 47.4 percent to 53 percent; the Democratic share dropped from 41.2 percent to 39.5 percent; and Bush's margin grew from 96,000 to 139,000 -- a boost of more than 42,000 votes.
In the 16 battleground states that were contested in the two elections, Bush won micropolitan counties by a total of 510,000 votes in 2000, and by 750,000 votes in 2004, a net increase of 240,000 votes. These are pretty big numbers from pretty small places. Almost 12 percent of total votes cast in battleground states were micropolitan.
Nationwide, Republicans did well in micropolitan, rural, and exurban communities in 2000, and even better in 2004. But, because exit polls did not break out micropolitan areas, there's no sure way to tell why, exactly, that happened.
The disparity between population growth and turnout growth in micropolitan areas suggests that they provided nice, compact targets for Republican get-out-the-vote efforts. That hypothesis is reinforced by anecdotal information about heavy Bush-Cheney volunteer activity in small-town America. It is further reinforced by the fact that micropolitan turnout grew considerably more in battleground states, where GOTV efforts were concentrated, than it did in the rest of the country. In battleground states, micropolitan turnout went up 6.6 percentage points -- from 53.3 percent in 2000 to 59.9 percent in 2004 -- while the micropolitan voting age population grew by 3 percent. In non-battleground states, micropolitan turnout went up just 3.8 percentage points -- from 48.9 percent in 2000 to 52.7 percent in 2004 -- while the voting age population grew 2.6 percent.
The implications of these findings for Democrats should be clear: To win in the future, they will need to do more than turn out the vote in the urban and inner-suburban strongholds where their efforts are reaching the point of diminishing returns. They'll also need to start cutting into the Republicans' base of support out there in those vast seas of red.
In fact, if Democrats don't move quickly, they risk being left behind in a demographic wave. Fast-growing exurbs already tilt heavily Republican. But even in slower-growing, small-town America, Republicans may be able to further boost their support. After all, compared to Democratic GOTV efforts in big cities and inner-suburbs, Republicans have a relatively short history of intensively organizing the micropolitans.
Gore won just 43.5 percent of the adjusted micropolitan vote in battleground states in 2000. Kerry dropped another percentage point, winning only 42.5 percent in 2004. Democrats need to close that margin instead of letting it grow.
Mark Gersh is Washington director of the National Committee for an Effective Congress.