Odds and ends

The pollster Stanley Greenberg had a piece in the New York Times today making pretty much the same point I made in my last post:  that in the 2018 the Democrats didn't just gain among special groups (like college-educated suburban women), they gained  among almost all kinds of people.  At one point, he said that their biggest gains were in rural areas.  That reminded me, that I had wanted to include something on that, but the CNN exit polls I used didn't seem to include it.  I checked again, and discovered I just hadn't looked far enough.  Here is the Democratic share of the vote in 2016 and 2018:
                     2016       2018
Cities            61%        65%       +4%
Suburbs        45%        49%       +4%
Rural            35%        42%       +7%

Greenberg referred to another exit poll that showed an even bigger swing to the Democrats in rural areas.  So it seems that Democratic gains were at least as large in rural areas as in cities and suburbs, and maybe larger. 


That wasn't much of a post, so here is a bonus.  I had a post a few months ago about the decline of educational differences on a question about whether the government should reduce income differences between the rich and poor.  The GSS has a similar question, "Some people think that the

government in Washington is trying to do too many things that should be left to individuals and private business; they are at point 5 on this card. Others disagree and think that the government should do even more to solve our country's problems; they are at point 1. Where would you place yourself on this scale?"  Here is the gap between people with a college degree and those without. 



Positive numbers mean college graduates are more towards the "doing too many things" end.  The gap has pretty steadily become smaller, and in 2016 was near zero.