The difference between two "rural" counties in Georgia and the 2020 Election

My big takeaway from this story of two Georgia counties is that one remains more truly rural (culturally and economically) while a contiguous county is more exurban/suburban, with much of that shift having come in the past four years.  Halsten Willis and Griff Witte report for the Washington Post under the headline "In neighboring Georgia counties, election revealed a growing divide that mirrors the nation."  The subhead gets into details on the specific counties and contrasting vote counts:  "President-elect Joe Biden won Newton County, Ga., by 11 points. President Trump won neighboring Jasper by 53."  The dateline is Covington, Georgia, population 13,118, and an excerpt follows:  

Not long ago, Elizabeth Allen and Wanda Cummings were on the same side of America’s political divide.

Both were reliable Republican voters in a reliably conservative part of a reliably red state. But Cummings and Allen have changed, and so has their state, Georgia. They just haven’t changed in the same way.

Allen, a nurse, grew up idolizing Ronald Reagan but couldn’t stomach President Trump’s disregard for facts or civility. When she cast a vote for Joe Biden this year — helping him to swell his margins in the fast-growing suburbs of Newton County and claim Georgia’s 16 electoral votes — it was the first time she had ever marked a ballot for a Democrat.

Cummings, a retired antique store owner, moved from Newton and found ideological kinship just across the county line, in rural and ever-redder Jasper. She reluctantly backed Trump in 2016. But after his four years in office, she — and her new county — turned out for the president with gusto.

Allen and Cummings crossed lines that in America today increasingly resemble a chasm. Unlike some previous elections marked by either a blue or a red wave, the 2020 vote featured both. And in many parts of the country, they crested side-by-side, with the turnout and margin for Trump surging next door to areas that boomed for Biden.

And that reminded me of two podcasts I've heard recently, both of which explore the shifting role of exurban voters in the U.S. electorate. The first is the late November episode of the Trillbilly Workers Party and the second is the episode of Densely Speaking, also from late November.  Both are well worth a listen.