Quote:
Originally Posted by Crawford
I think many pundits would agree, but I'm skeptical. This assumes that exurban and rural voters base their vote on concern for urban areas, when all other indications are that they absolutely loathe urban areas. They love when Trump calls Chicago worse than Mogadishu or when he claims NYC and Seattle are "outlaw jurisdictions" or whatever the hell he calls them. They worship the "troll the urbanites and elitists" candidate.
So if a random rural voter in Wisconsin was worried about unrest in Kenosha, I'm not clear why that would make them more apt to vote for the "cities suck and get what they deserve" candidate. Kenosha is a working class small Rust Belt city and those turned more Trump in 2020, IMO not because they were worried about urban America but because they're Trumpist to the core.
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I think it plays into a narrative overall that fires up these voters, even if they're not convinced a roving gang of ANTIFA is going to make their way down Rural Route 9 to attack Bob's Bait Shop. But as I mentioned in another post (last on the last page), Trump is very good at scapegoating certain groups to fire up these more conservative white voters and I think it's a big reason why he has done better in rustbelt states than past Republicans.
Beyond that, at this point, we're not just talking rural voters anymore. I mentioned how Biden did either marginally, or significantly better than Hillary in suburban counties in these states - specifically focusing on Wisconsin and Pennsylvania. Trump absolutely attempted to align Biden with the Defund Police crowd and this threat that electing Democrats would continue to lead to chaos in the cities and maybe it would then spill over to the suburbs.
I don't think it was as effective with Biden as it would have been with Bernie because Biden had little association with the Black Lives Matter movement or a connection with the more progressive members of the House who were often used as lightning rods for Trump's attacks (The Squad, who were strong Bernie supporters). In fact, what's interesting is that in Ilhan Omar's district, Biden actually out-performed her by sixteen points - winning her district with 80% of the vote. Those margins matter. Everything at that point matters because we're talking extremely close races. Now, I get Biden won Minnesota relatively easy and it's not an exact comparison. But I think it does give insight into how Biden likely performed better among moderate voters than a Bernie would and unless Bernie can halt Trump's appeal to rural voters, while also equaling Biden's appeal to urban Black voters, those margins in suburban Philadelphia or suburban Detroit or suburban Milwaukee do start to matter.
If Bernie only does marginally worse than Biden did in suburban Philadelphia, maybe because Trump's rhetoric breaks through just enough due to Bernie's perceived left-wing politics, that's likely enough to lose him Pennsylvania.
What's interesting is that Biden won moderate voters 58-41 in Pennsylvania. That is a 17-point margin. In 2016, Hillary won this group but only 53-43.
So, not only did Trump do two-points worse among Moderate voters in 2020 in Pennsylvania, Biden did five-points better than Hillary did. In 2016, Moderates made up 40% of the electorate. In 2020, it was 42%.
That's the state right there. If Biden had done only ten-points better than Trump among this group, he almost certainly loses Pennsylvania.
Biden also did better among liberal voters than Hillary (91% to Hillary's 85%) and Trump did two-points better among conservative voters than he did in 2016 (but Biden did the exact same as Hillary).
I could be wrong but I don't know if Bernie equals those numbers - at least outside the liberal voters and considering Biden won Pennsylvania by 82,000 votes, I don't think it's absurd to say Bernie maybe loses the state similar to Hillary in 2016.
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