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Contents
The Public Mind

    Type to search. Planned chapters match by title only.

    Volume 3: The political map

    Part XII

    Demographic axes of the vote

    Education, income, ethnicity and rurality each relate to the county vote differently from what the raw correlation suggests.

    4 written, 3 planned

    This part asks how education, income, race and ethnicity, age and rurality each relate to the county vote, and where a raw correlation misleads. Education, ethnicity and the county shift, 2016 to 2024 asks which county characteristics tracked the presidential swing before and after 2016. Chapter 12.4, Wages, capital and the ZIP code vote asks whether ZIP codes with more capital income or more wage-credit filers vote differently once education is held fixed. The planned chapters rank the axes as correlates of the county vote and ask how much of it census characteristics explain together, when the county education gap opened, whether richer counties vote more Democratic once education is held constant, how white-majority rural counties differ from Black Belt and Hispanic rural counties, and whether the density gradient is as steep inside counties as between them. All of them describe places, so none says how a person in a county voted.

    Chapters

    1. 12.1

      Five axes of the county vote

      In 2024 college share, rural share and the white share had vote-weighted correlations with the county two-party margin of +0.66, −0.65 and −0.57, and five county characteristics together reproduce 69% of the variance of the margin, up from 41% in 2000.

      DraftPlacescounty-returnscounty-demographics

    2. 12.2

      The diploma map

      Vote-weighted, a county's Democratic share of the two-party presidential vote was 9.2 points higher per 10 points of college share in 2024, against 3.9 in 2000, and the rise came from 2000 to 2008 and from 2012 to 2016, with a change after 2016 of 0.0 for the unadjusted slope and +0.4 to +1.1 for adjusted versions.

      DraftPlacescounty-returnscounty-demographics

    3. 12.3

      Income and the county vote

      Do richer counties vote more Democratic once education is held constant?

      PlannedPlacescounty-returnscounty-demographicsces

    4. 12.4

      Wages, capital and the ZIP code vote

      ZIP codes with more capital-gains returns swung more toward the Democrats between 2016 and 2020 and ZIP codes with more EITC returns swung less, but the capital-gains sign depends on the controls and the EITC link is near zero with poverty, college and race held fixed, and the definition of the ZIP-code college variable is unresolved.

      DraftPlacesrlcrirs-soi

    5. 12.5

      Rural counties

      How different are white-majority rural counties from Black Belt and Hispanic rural counties?

      PlannedPlacescounty-returnscounty-demographics

    6. 12.6

      Suburbs and density

      Is the density gradient in the vote as steep within counties as between them?

      PlannedPlacesrlcrcounty-demographics

    7. 12.7

      Education, ethnicity and the county shift, 2016 to 2024

      In 2020 to 2024, counties with more Hispanic residents moved further toward the Republicans than other counties did (vote-weighted correlation −0.66, against +0.45 in 2012 to 2016), while the correlation with college share fell from +0.69 to +0.02.

      DraftPlacescounty-returnscounty-demographicsces