A lot of attention has been spent talking about the Memphis suburbs vs. the rest of the district without really laying things out using Census Bureau definitions and vote counts. Well here’s how it comes out and the results are revealing.
The Census Bureau definition of the Memphis TN-MS-AR Metropolitan Statistical Area includes one county in Arkansas (Crittendon), four counties in Mississippi (DeSoto, Marshall, Tate, and Tunica) and three counties in Tennessee (Fayette, Shelby, and Tipton). The vast majority of the area’s population is in Tennessee. Only three of the Memphis area counties are in this district, Tunica is not.
“Memphis Area” counties voted much differently in the special election than the non-metropolitan counties in the district. As a group, Davis won Metro counties by a little over 8,100 votes, 12,442 to 4,334. DeSoto performed differently from the other Metro counties. Davis won DeSoto by 10,173 to 2,069 bt won the other two counties combined by a whopping four votes, 2,269 to 2,265 (Marshal went Democratic, Tate went Republican). Non-metro counties went to Travis Childers by 10,235 votes: 28,970 to 18,735. Childers received 87% of his votes from the non-metro counties and 13% from the Metro Counties. Davis, otoh, took just 60% of his votes from the non-Metro counties but 40% of his vote from the Memphis suburbs. The labels of “Memphis” vs. “Country” are surprisingly accurate in this election.