America's Growing Urban-Rural Divide Has Led to Underrepresentation of City Dwellers
Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden, a 2016-17 IRiSS Faculty Fellow, has released Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-Rural Political Divide, a book which explores the the structural and historical factors that have led to the significant political polarization between urban and rural Americans. Rodden finds that as the geographic concentration of Democrats in cities has increased since the 1980s, Democrats win a higher vote share of their seats without reaching majorities in state legislatures or congressional delegations.