Mark Blumenthal links to this article by Nate Silver, who writes, “If Bill Clinton was the first black president, then Barack Obama might be the first urban one.”

This reminds me of some of our recent discussions here:

– Who was the last urban president before Obama? (I said Nixon, who lived in New York before his 1968 presidential run; a commenter said Kennedy, who was from Boston.)

– County-level vote swings by population. Democrats have been gaining in urban areas. The gain has been pretty steady over the past three elections, so I don’t know how much should be attributed to Obama’s urban-ness in particular. Graphs here along with much discussion:

What do we see?
1. The large-county/small-county differential in Obama’s gains was particularly strong in the south and did not occur at all in the northeast. For example, Obama won 84% of the two-party vote in Philadelphia–but Kerry got 80% there four years ago. This 4% swing was about the same as Obama’s swing nationally. Part of the issue here is that Obama had almost no room for improvement in these places.

2. The pattern of Democrats improving more in large-population counties is not unique to 2008. Gore did (relatively) well in big counties in all regions in 2000.