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Is there like another section to this writeup? Because the priorities seemed quite strange and incomplete to me.

And were there any "Blue Dots" in the sea of red around where she lives?

I can't figure out what her aim is with this. Is the proposition that she'll have an easier time making friends in a city that's 60% Democrat as opposed to 40%? Same thing with the dry county issue. Is an extra five minutes in the car to the next county over even noticeable?

So many more significant things are ignored. Does she like the weather in these places? Do she or her husband have significant allergies to the sources of pollen native to the properties?

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It depends on the state, but a pocket of blue in rural/exurban areas often indicates lower crime, better public services, etc.—more educated people and the accompanying externalities. Driving to the next county over doesn’t solve the problem of bad neighbors.

And it often means the opposite, so it's useless data in summary.

Democrat counties have lower crime rates? Doesn't follow from Democrat cities like NYC and Chicago.

Seems like you missed the qualifier of rural/exurban which immediately excludes NYC and Chicago.

NYC in 2021 is very different from NYC in the 1980s.

the article highlights Clarke Country, home of Athens, home of UGA (a massive college town)

> Do she or her husband have significant allergies to the sources of pollen native to the properties?

Seems she has allergies to the Republican neighbors native to the properties.

I mean, who doesn’t want to live in wealthy, low-crime areas?

Me. Those areas are boring and soulless.

you might not have a super accurate view of rural georgia surrounding the UGA Athens area

> Same thing with the dry county issue. Is an extra five minutes in the car to the next county over even noticeable?

It might be if the next county over has noticeably better roads because of the extra taxes due to alcohol sales.

> Is the proposition that she'll have an easier time making friends in a city that's 60% Democrat as opposed to 40%?

In rural areas that distinction actually matters.

> Same thing with the dry county issue. Is an extra five minutes in the car to the next county over even noticeable?

When your county is wet, you don't need a car to get to the nearest pub or can hail an Uber for cheap to get home.

That wet/dry distinction might not be as big of a deal as you make it still depending on county size. North Carolina has 100(!!) counties, with only one dry still, at that size and with the typical spread between places you easily pass through a couple of counties daily just doing normal day-to-day stuff. For example, I live in Wake County but my grocery store is in Harnett County and my Best Buy is in Johnston County, all still within a 20 minute drive.

I mean, I would imagine that many people might like to be able to walk to a pub (_driving_ to one doesn't seem like a great idea...) If alcohol sales are verboten in the county, this seems problematic.

Where in the US do you live that a bar would be walking distance and also next to a dry county? All urban areas like that threw out those sorts of laws decades ago. Rural areas are typically where dry counties are found, but not always, but walking to a bar in the US is typically reserved for more built up areas (but once again not always)

I don't live in the US. Where I live, though, even in many rural areas walking into the local village would be feasible. There'd be _very_ rural places where you couldn't walk to anything, but they'd be the exception.

As an urbanite I was looked upon like a madman when I walked 30 minutes to the store from my academic campus which was hugged by a nature reserve on one side and a major highway on the other. Not having a car is a real hassle in the majority of the non-urban areas of this country. The only other people who thought to ever do something similar were international students from Bulgaria and Nepal that didn't blink twice at it.

In most of European cities a 30 minute walk gets you over to the next town, not the nearest pub :)

In NYC 30 minutes later you're maybe one or two neighborhoods down ;)

Uber doesn’t operate in the vast majority of the country, even in small cities (although there’s usually some variety of taxi service, but usually not as easy to use or as comfortable). You may also be overestimating the availability of “pubs” even in “wet” counties in places like Kentucky.

People just drive drunk in Uberness areas. Low population density means low enforcement.

Matters how? I've lived in both Left and Right-leaning towns over the past five years and didn't notice a difference. I don't have children, is it something that would only matter to a parent?

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