The results of the 2024 elections continue to generate lots of important news stories, but one that has not gotten any headlines thus far really ought to be glaring at us from above the fold: the ridiculous disparities in political power between urban and rural counties (parishes for those in Louisiana).
The attention of most people has understandably been focused primarily on the federal presidential race, so we will begin our analysis of the power disparities there.
Donald Trump won both Texas and Wisconsin – the first by a fairly wide margin of the popular vote and the second by a very narrow margin. But if we look more closely, Trump’s victory was a great deal larger than it appears in both States (all data below comes from NBC News’s 2024 election pages).
In Texas, he won with 56.2% to Kamala Harris’s 42.4% of the popular vote. Yet, Harris won only 12 counties to Trump’s 242 – an astounding difference that is not reflected at all in the popular vote. Trump’s victory in the county totals comes to 95.3% to Harris’s 4.7%. Such differences should be taken into account in State-wide elections (we will enlarge upon that below).
In Wisconsin, Trump squeaked by Harris in the popular vote, 49.6% vs 48.8%. But he trounced her in the county vote, winning 59 to Harris’s 13, making Trump’s county victory in this State 81.9% with Harris taking only 18.1%.
Similarly wide gaps show up in the presidential contest in other States, too – Michigan, Minnesota, Georgia, Oregon, etc.
And this chasm between popular vote totals and county vote totals becomes even more absurd in other State-level elections.
There were a number of ballot initiatives in the States to be decided on November 5th. Those dealing with abortion received the most attention. Because of that, we will limit our analysis of them to the abortion ballot measures.
In Montana, the pro-abortion initiative won with 57.3% of the popular vote to 42.7%, a solid majority. But the initiative actually failed to win approval in a majority of counties: only 24 voted in favor, with 32 voting against, making a roughly equal percentage of counties against: 57.1%.
In Missouri, things begin to look even more ludicrous. A ‘right to abortion’ amendment passed with 51.7% of the votes in favor to 48.3% against. But get this, folks – only 10 counties out of 114 voted in favor of this amendment to enshrine a right to rip apart babies in the womb. Thus, an abysmally small 8.8% of counties decided the outcome on this terribly important issue.
But Nebraska, if one can believe it, is worse than Missouri. The outcome is positive – a pro-life stance prevailed in both ballot measures (glory to God!) – but the influence of just a few counties was almost enough to change that. The right to abortion initiative failed, 51.2% of the popular vote against and 48.8% for. But only 4 counties voted in favor of this initiative vs 89 against, and this nearly brought a win; that is, only 4.3% of counties nearly made abortion an uncontestable right in Nebraska. Likewise with the amendment to limit abortions to within the first trimester: it won, 55.3% to 44.7% (popular vote). In this contest, only 2 counties voted against vs 91 for, which means that an outlandishly tiny 2.1% of the counties put this measure within reach of defeat.
South Dakota, Nevada, New York, and Florida also had striking urban-rural splits on abortion measures.
The old federal provision that counted each slave as 3/5 of a free voter evoked shrieks of outrage in the past. Yet some of the rural counties that we looked at above haven’t even got that much voting power when contrasted with their urban counterparts. In the last ballot measure of Nebraska that was discussed, each of the 91 rural counties had only 0.14/5 of the voting power as each of the two urban counties, a ratio that is much worse than that of the slaves. That is quite a heavy punishment to bear for simply living in the peaceful fields and hollers of the countryside.
With all this mind, it is imperative that two things be done to protect rural counties, the bulwarks of conservative habits and beliefs, from being made totally subservient to their urban counterparts. First, all State-wide elections should be required to gain a majority of both the popular vote and the county vote in order to be considered properly decided (Southerners will recognize this as a variation of John C. Calhoun’s idea of the concurrent majority). Second, cities/urban counties must be rescued from the dangerous, harmful, anti-human, and anti-Christian ideologies that have gripped them and made them useful idiots of leftists, globalists, etc. This will take a firm hand from State-level officials – governors, State legislators, judges, AGs, etc. – but the alternative is to watch conservative Red States be destroyed from within by the evils gestating in Blue counties and cities within them.
Who will lead the way to correct these injustices? The State Freedom Caucuses certainly could. They should immediately make it a goal to implement a double majority rule for all State-wide constitutional amendments, initiatives, and the like, so that a geographically-isolated popular majority can no longer impose their ideological values unilaterally upon the wide breadth of Red counties/parishes in their particular States.
The Freedom Caucuses in Montana and Missouri in particular, States that had abortion measures that would have failed if a concurrent county majority were needed, should be at the forefront of this battle.
After elections over amendments are secured, the double majority rule could then be extended to State-wide elected officials – governor, judges, etc. And lastly, apportionment of electoral college votes for the federal president could be adapted to this principle, so that half of a State’s electors would be given to the winner of the popular vote and the other half to the winner of the most counties.
Whoever takes up the mantle of leadership in this cause, whether Freedom Caucus members or others, we eagerly await their appearance. Normative Christian policies will be too easily thwarted until the double majority is implemented.
Walt Garlington is an engineer turned writer living in Dixieland. His writings have appeared in a variety of places, and he maintains a site of his own, Confiteri: A Southern Perspective. The photo depicts the ancient St Martin’s Cross on the holy island of Iona, one of the cradles of Christianity in the West (courtesy of this site).
Thank for this interesting article. I hadn’t known til now how just a few counties in a state can dominate all ballot initiatives.
Yes, the problem of scale. States don’t have the electoral college type leveling mechanisms to prevent population concentrations from sweeping mandates.
But the other issue is the economic concentration. Urbanization and de-industrialization and population shifts (young people leaving, old people stuck) have rendered rural areas without economic engines that aren’t net negatives via globalism entryism, immigration magnets, and asset/cost inflation.
There is a lot of wealth in land and resources and agriculture but those are all subject to the urban power nodes and capital supply spigots in order to put that wealth into production, bring to market/trade, transport, etc.
As a rural man I cannot exact enough income in my resident county to pay what it costs to live here. To own my own dirt. Buy the capital equipment to put it into production etc. without drawing income from a city either remotely or by commute.
Economic decentralization and disaggregation are essential. Capital is power and we need to de-couple from the system that is designed to continually aggregate, centralize, and control the economic lifeblood otherwise we will just be voting defensively and not actually building anything toward a better future for our children.