Our most recent book is titled Divided We Stand: The 2020 Elections and American Politics. Among other things, it discusses state and congressional elections.
David Wasserman, senior editor of the Cook Political Report with Amy Walter, highlights the Kentucky district [ of Hal Rogers] in a new deep dive into all 435 House districts to explain the geographical roots of political polarization and how hollowed-out the political middle has become.
Although legislative gerrymandering plays a key role in letting representatives choose their constituents, the nation’s “urban/rural polarization” has been a much bigger factor over the past 25 years, Wasserman wrote.
“The electorate has simply become much more homogenous than it used to be,” he wrote in the newly released analysis.
It’s part of a nationwide realignment highlighted by the new rankings of the “Cook Partisan Voting Index,” which operatives in both parties have examined for years to help determine which districts are truly up for grabs every two years.
Districts like Rogers’s in Appalachia now have more in common with a rural district nearly 900 miles away in eastern Oklahoma — in terms of income and education levels, home property values and the number of people living in poverty — than Kentucky’s 6th District directly to the north and west.
