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DIVIDED AMERICA: Town and Country Offer Differing Realities

This story is part of Divided America, AP's ongoing exploration of the economic, social and political divisions in American society.

From where Peggy Sheahan stands, deep in rural Colorado, the last eight years were abysmal.  Otero County, where Sheahan lives, is steadily losing population. Middle-class jobs vanished years ago as pickling and packing plants closed. She's had to cut back on her business repairing broken windshields to help nurse her husband after a series of farm accidents, culminating in his breaking his neck falling from a bale of hay. She collects newspaper clippings on stabbings and killings in the area — one woman's body was found in a field near Sheahan's farm — as heroin use rises. "We are so worse off, it's unbelievable," said Sheahan, 65. In Denver, 175 miles to the northwest, things are going better for Andrea Pacheco. Thanks to the Supreme Court, the 36-year-old could finally marry her partner, Jen Winters, in June. After months navigating Denver's superheated housing market, they snapped up a bungalow at the edge of town. "There's a lot of positive things that happened — obviously the upswing in the economy," said Pacheco, a 36-year-old fundraiser for nonprofits. "We were in a pretty rough place when he started out and I don't know anyone who isn't better off eight years later."  But then, she doesn't know Peggy Sheahan, and that makes sense: There are few divides in the United States greater than that between rural and urban places. Town and country represent not just the poles of the nation's two political parties, but different economic realities that are transforming the 2016 presidential election. Cities are trending Democratic and are on an upward economic shift, with growing populations and rising property values. Rural areas are increasingly Republican, steadily shedding population for decades, and as commodity and energy prices drop, increasingly suffering economically. The political divide goes even deeper than simply between the two parties. "The urban-rural split this year is larger than anything we've ever seen," said Scott Reed, a political strategist for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce who has advised previous GOP campaigns.

 

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