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Comment by Jtsummers | Hacker News Reader

Depending on the state, not enough to matter. Farmers are not a major voting block in most of the US anymore. Farmers are a bit over 1% of the US population. I'm trying to find better sources than listicle type things, but the best I can find is that in the states with the highest percentage of farmers, it's still only 5-6% of their state population.

That can be enough to swing things, but it's not enough to be the deciding block that many think they are. A century ago things were much different.

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This is very wrong: farmers still have incredibly outsized influence in American politics, mostly to our detriment. We have a number of horrible policies (ethanol subsidies, HFCS in everything, tons of inexplicable restrictions on food stamps, water policy in the west emptying all the aquifers) that are entirely because of lobbying by farmers, and the Farm Bill distributes between 70 and 100 billion per year, much of it well-spent but also with a great deal of graft and patronage because of farming lobbying.

here in California, the word "farmers" can mean very different things

And even that is probably an optimistic number for what most people would consider a "farmer." It always irks me when people are blaming farmers for the polices of farm counties when the vast majority of voters in those communities have nothing at all to do with farming.

Someone can be more specific and accurate with this, but in the US, population percentages don't vote. Or in other words, some votes are worth more than others. So relying entirely on % of population isn't a great measure.

That's a fair point. By the numbers, about 60% of voters turned out in the last election. Historically, though, we've had lower turnouts. Let's say that nationally only 50% turned out but all farmers voted. That would make their 1+% block closer to 2-3% of the votes for an election which is more significant.

That still elides over the electoral college. A vote in Pennsylvania is worth a lot more than a vote in California or Georgia.

Except the Iowa farmer has a disproportionate amount of voting power compared to say someone in NY or CA.

They don't, they have some early power but even in iowa there are a lot of non farmers.

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/11/change-the-se...

I’m not sure what exactly you mean by that link.

Iowa was listed as 63% urban in the 2020 census. But that doesn’t tell the whole story. An area needs 2000 housing units and/or 5000 people to be counted as urban. If you’ve been through the state, you’ll see lots of tiny little 2000-3000 person towns that have an urban street grid around a couple-block downtown core. These things don’t get counted as urban.

The farmland is too valuable for you to see much of any sprawl except in Des Moines and Iowa City. Even Council Bluffs (the Iowa side of the Omaha metro) has very little for the metro size.

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