The US Vote is heavily split between the densely populated urban areas across the country and the vast rural areas, but what does this mean for the vote?
In the urban cores of the United States, such as the Atlantic Northeast, California, and cities like Chicago, Seattle, and Denver, the votes are very different from those in rural states such as Wyoming, Nevada, Idaho, and large areas of Texas.
In most of the recent electoral maps, the majority of the landmass is red, but land does not vote. The majority of the Midwest has a very sparse population who are more traditionally centered, which the Republican Party tends to lean towards. For example, the state of Wyoming has been traditionally red for a large part of history, but the state only has a population of 576,000 as of the 2020 census.
This pales in comparison to the much smaller state of New York, which has been a core blue state for years. New York has a population of close to 20 million and gives the Democratic Party a huge core of voters. People who live in these large urban expanses tend to have more ‘progressive’ views that tend to align with the ideology of the Democrats.
A key story coming from this election is the potential change of Iowa from Republican to Democrat. Iowa being a state in the Midwest is traditionally a Republican safe state.
In US presidential elections, campaigns tend to ignore their safe states. This means that polling is rarely done in these states as it is presumed which side of the vote they will land.
This last-minute poll has thrown debate into the election for states like Florida and Texas which have been traditionally Republican, can make the shift to Democrat.