Why have American politics become so polarized? One reason is that in recent years, while Democratic politicians have increased their dominance in urban areas ever further, the traditional rural support base for Democratic candidates in Appalachia and the South has collapsed. Conservative “blue dog” Democrats are nearly extinct.
At the same time, the urban-centered coalition of the left is winning fewer elections than you would expect, given its share of the overall electorate. In the 2000 and 2016 elections, the Democratic Party's presidential candidate lost the Electoral College despite winning the popular vote. Beyond this, at every level—the House and Senate and especially state legislatures—Democratic candidates win fewer elections than their raw vote tallies suggest should be the case. As Stanford political scientist Jonathan Rodden writes in his new book, “Democratic voters have been inefficiently distributed across districts for decades.” This isn't because of partisan gerrymandering; instead, Mr. Rodden says, “the Democratic Party has a political geography problem.”
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