They address this and find the same gap in the normalized subset of rural vs metropolitan areas. The gap goes from 5 point to 66, which is slightly less.
democrat
143 counties, n=91 809 974
to
156 counties, n=133 796 619
And republican
292 counties, n=61 407 202
to
280 counties, n=46 244 883
So overall health is improving, but it is improving more when increasing sample size. It is normalized, but still different things are compared.
Thanks I didn't know all that about democrats and counties, seems more involved then I thought.
