Obama Wins By Paring Rural Losses, Building Urban Advantage
(See charts after the jump. The Daily Yonder will continue to update results today. So keep checking back.)
Obama was able to flip Ohio from Republican to Democratic by increasing the party's take in urban areas and reducing its deficits in rural and exurban counties. In '04, John Kerry came out of Ohio's cities with a 183,000 vote margin, but lost rural and exurban parts of the state by more than 201,000 votes.
Obama, however, ran up a 405,000 vote in urban Ohio Tuesday, and then narrowed his losses in rural and exurban parts of the state to under 196,000.
News media exit polls appear to overstate Obama's totals in rural communities. Exit polls ask people whether they live in urban, suburban or rural communities. In Ohio, the exit polls reported that Obama received 44% of the rural vote.
In the count of the actual vote from rural Ohio counties, however, Obama received 42.6 percent of the vote. Similarly, in Missouri the exit polls reported that Obama received 40% of the rural vote. In the full vote count, however, Obama received only 36.9% of the vote from rural Missouri counties.
The same pattern appeared in Pennsylvania. Obama “made substantial inroads in Lancaster City's traditionally Republican suburbs, one of the most important factors in his large victory statewide.
