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Beyond Density & Diversity: Understanding The Socio-Cultural Geography Of Contemporary Presidential Elections, David F. Damore, Robert E. Lang

Brookings Mountain West Publications

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 …