Donald Trump and his Republican Party are the faded face of America. They won over an older, more rural and overwhelmingly Caucasian bloc of voters who reflected more the country's past than its future.
To kick off the congressional redistricting process on Thursday, the government released the latest data from 2020 Census. It shows that white population declined for the first decade in history, and that Americans continue to cluster in cities and suburbs that are growing in Texas, Georgia and Virginia.
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Most strikingly, even though metro areas grew, large swathes of the country continued their decline in population. Between 2010 and 2020, 53 percent of U.S. counties experienced a decline in population. These changes can be seen in the graph below. They are visible in the sea of orange, which is a representation of rural areas and small towns with few residents. They were home to approximately 50.5 million people, in a country of more than 331 millions.
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This isn't a new phenomenon. For decades, small towns and rural America have lost their residents. The trend appears to be accelerating. For example, between 2000 and 2010, only a third of all counties lost residents.
Based on what we knew about Trump's base of support it was likely that many of these counties would have voted Republican in last year's election. But how many? Mark Muro from Brookings' Metropolitan Policy Project ran the numbers. He discovered that the former president won the majority of votes in 90% of the 1,636 affected counties by the 2010s. Because of a technical problem, the Moros team had to remove Alaska from its figures. It is almost certain that Trump country is part of a region of America where there is a decline in population.
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However, this does not mean that Trump country is on the decline. According to Muro's and his teams' analysis, only 19% of Trump's 74 million votes came from counties with declining populations. The total population of the winning counties increased by 7.8 million in the past decade. Biden counties, however, nearly doubled this number by adding 14.9 million people. Blue America is driving America's population growth.
At this stage, it is unclear if the population trends from the past decade will continue. Muro pointed out to me that the metro-area growth has slowed in the third quarter of 2010, pre-pandemic. Although the country's movement patterns have not been fundamentally altered by the pandemic, it is possible that remote work acceptance after COVID could be a countervailing force.
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The fact that areas with declining populations overwhelmingly supported our president's last election is just one data point in a larger story about how the country has become polarized between thriving metros dominated Democrats and conservative communities that either grow more slowly than major cities, or are in decline. Both economically and demographically, this is true. For instance, the Metropolitan Policy Project previously discovered that Biden County accounted for 70% of the country's GDP. Muro explained to me that Republican counties are a declining, traditional economic base. They are located in rural and small towns that are struggling. The Census story reinforces the idea that growth is not possible in the literalst sense. Prosperity is not possible.
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Pundits debated for years about whether Trump voters were motivated by economic anxiety. This idea seems to be getting weaker as conservatism focuses more on its antivax and anti-CRT politics. It is also obvious that many Republicans today live in areas of the country that are far from institutions that can generate wealth and growth. America's shrinking communities are a political tragedy. They have adopted a reactionary populism that is focused on waging culture warfare and using our outdated electoral system to ensure a small minority of the population can govern. This is in contrast to taking steps that could actually revitalize small towns or farming communities. While a strong immigration system and public investment might bring back a place's life, owning the libs over the next decade will not. Trump voters have made it clear, regrettably.
