More on the obsolescence of the rural vote

Here's an excerpt from Paul Krugman's latest post on his "Conscience of a Liberal" Blog, "Whistling Past the Gun Lobby."  

Almost five years ago Thomas Schaller published an important book titled Whistling Past Dixie, which basically argued that it was time for Democrats to stop running scared of the views of Southern whites — they weren’t going to get those votes anyway, and demographic change had proceeded to the point where they could win national elections without the South. Indeed, so it has come to pass: while Obama did win Virginia, he did it by appealing to the new Virginia of the DC suburbs, not the rural whites, and otherwise he had a totally non-Dixie victory. 

So Nate Cohn argues that this same logic applies to gun control: the voters who care passionately about their semi-automatic weapons are rural whites who ain’t gonna vote Democratic in any case — and the new Democratic coalition doesn’t need them.

An earlier post about the diminishing importance of the rural vote, with evidence from the 2012 presidential election, is here.