Yglesias on some election commentary:

all kinds of Ripley's-believe-it-or-not stuff here: i.e. Gave Trump approval rating on the economy but planned to vote for Biden! Like Trump on economy but thought covid more important and liked Fauci much more! Liked Trump on some stuff but not on SCOTUS! Trump okay but can't trust him!...

How The Frost Belt And Sun Belt Illustrate The Complexity Of America’s Urban-Rural Divide

By Geoffrey Skelley & Anna Wiederkehr @ FiveThirtyEight.com, 

There’s little question that the 2020 presidential election further cemented America’s urban-rural political divide.

However, as in any election, there were exceptions, like the rural areas where President Biden actually improved Democrats’ vote share or the urban spots where Donald Trump garnered more support than in 2016. And if we hone in on six key states, a more nuanced picture of electoral trends emerges.

This piece looks at county-level results from the last three presidential elections in Arizona, Florida and Georgia, or the competitive battlegrounds in the “Sun Belt,” and Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, or the swing states in the “Frost Belt.” These are two very different parts of the country: The Sun Belt states are fast growing and increasingly diverse, while the Frost Belt states are growing more slowly and are far whiter than the country as a whole. Yet despite their differences, these two regions underscore larger electoral trends rippling across the country and are helpful in understanding how rural, suburban and urban America voted.

Generally speaking, the denser a place is, the more Democratic it tends to vote.1 But as we’ll see, that doesn’t mean that all urban counties have moved consistently left, or that all rural counties have swung right.[....]