More reason to de-populate the rural areas

Look, I live in Queensland, with its large regional centres and persistently Right wing bias (in Federal elections, at least), and home of nutty, dumb Right wing populists like Pauline Hanson and Clive Palmer (amongst others).    So I can sympathise with the problem of the rural/urban cultural and voting divide in the US.  Was it last year that I (with wistful facetiousness) suggested that the best hope for the world is a "reverse Pol Pot" policy of de-populating the rural regions and forcing them into the larger towns and cities?   [I've checked now - it was at the end of 2020.]  Let robots and remote control equipment farm the land and do the mining.   Why do people want to live on such crappy, dry, flat landscapes as exist in much of the outback, anyway?

These thoughts were revived by this recent article from the Washington Post, confirming that the problem there is that the rural areas went further Republican and outbalanced the urban areas that went further Democrat:

“Republicans’ plight as the rural party of a increasingly nonrural nation has so far been balanced out by the fact that rural America has moved toward the GOP at a faster pace since the 1990s than urban America has shifted away,” political scientist David Hopkins wrote last year. “When combined with the structural biases of the electoral college and Senate in favor of rural voters, the current Republican popular coalition can easily remain fully competitive in national elections.”

The data reinforces that point. From 2000 to 2020 — and particularly in the last two, Trump-inflected elections — rural counties shifted to the right more than urban counties moved to the left. That’s helped rural areas add votes on net even as they trail urban counties in terms of population. On the graph at right below, you can see the net vote totals from each type of county. That the Democrat earned far more votes in 2016 than the Republican was offset by the Republican’s votes coming in rural areas that cumulatively hold disproportionate power in the electoral college.

Update:   How to force the de-population of the rural, I wonder?   Actually, maybe I don't want it de-populated, just as long as their susceptibility to dumb populism doesn't interfere with things like, you know, the fate of the entire planet for millennia.   Perhaps instead of marching them at gunpoint into the cities, the deal could just be "if you want to be able to vote, you got to live in an urban area.  Sure, keep your farm life if you want, but you just don't get a vote.  Us city folk need your food, so don't worry, it's not like we're going to make things intolerable for you."  Sounds fair, no?