UNH Today

An analysis by Dante Scala, Political Science professor at UNH, and Carsey School demographer Kenneth Johnson described the urban/rural divide as a continuum based on population. “At one pole are large, densely settled urban cores, where Democrats have consistently been the most successful,” the two wrote. “At the other end are remote rural counties far from a metropolitan area, without large towns, where Republican candidates command their greatest support.” These splits mean that state legislatures “are going to be faced with bad and worse sorts of decisions in terms of budgeting and things like education funding. That’s only going to exacerbate the urban/rural split,” according to Scala.