26 United States The EconomistMarch 21st 2020
2 out. Chicago election officials said at least
10% of 8,500 election judges—volunteers
who oversee polling booths—had dropped
out, fearful of viral contagion. Polling sta-
tions in Chicago had more bottles of hand
sanitiser than walk-in voters. An official at
one north-side site likened the dour public
mood to the “start of world war two”.
Ohio, which Mr Sanders probably
would have lost badly, was due to vote on
March 17th, but the night before postponed
its primary until June. Mike DeWine, the
state’s Republican governor, said that peo-
ple “mustn’t be forced to choose between
their health and exercising their constitu-
tional rights.” The state’s Supreme Court
backed him in a pre-dawn ruling on polling
day, leaving some voters rattling locked
doors at polling stations as the sun rose.
Georgia and Louisiana, also Biden-
friendly states due to vote in the coming
weeks, pushed back their primaries too.
Puerto Rico, due to vote on March 29th,
looks likely to do the same (Maryland and
Kentucky also delayed theirs). That would
leave Alaska, Hawaii and Wyoming—all of
which Mr Sanders could plausibly win—as
the next states to vote, allowing the senator
to spin a tale of comeback against the odds.
Given how strong Mr Biden’s position is,
though, few would believe it.
For some, the decisions to postpone
voting, whatever their public-health mer-
its, raised the spectre of Donald Trump do-
ing something similar in November. He
cannot cancel an election—that takes an
act of Congress—or change the inaugura-
tion date, which is in the constitution. But
a president could, conceivably, order poll-
ing places closed for public-health reasons,
or take similar measures to depress turn-
out or discourage voting.
Tom Perez, who heads the Democratic
National Committee, has urged states
against peremptorily rescheduling prima-
ries, and has instead asked them to adopt
measures such as expanded absentee and
postal voting, as well as longer voting
hours, which would lessen the need to
gather in crowds. Congress has also begun
mulling how to conduct elections during a
pandemic: Ron Wyden and Amy Klobu-
char, two Democratic senators, introduced
legislation on March 16th to make early in-
person voting and voting by mail available
everywhere (currently just 34 states let all
voters have absentee or mail-in ballots).
However people ultimately vote, the
campaign will be a much quieter affair for
the next few months: no big rallies, debates
before live audiences or working rope
lines. That will no doubt annoy Mr Sanders,
who is at his best exhorting large crowds.
So is Mr Trump. If America remains locked
down into autumn, he faces the prospect of
either running for president without his
trademark rallies, or asking his supporters
to ignore the risks and gather anyway. 7F
or morethan a decade, America’s most
prominent gay family have lived on
abc. Gay and lesbian television characters
were once such a rare sight that glaad, an
advocacy group, began an annual count, as
if it were tracking an endangered species.
Now millions tune in to “Modern Family”
to see how Cam and Mitch are getting on
raising their adopted daughter. Their por-
trayal of gay domesticity has been credited
with helping to change attitudes and with
boosting support for same-sex marriage.
One poll found it was the third most popu-
lar show among Republican voters.
Yet such families are not only the pre-
serve of Los Angeles, where the show is set.
Indeed, though data are imperfect, aca-
demic studies suggest that a greater pro-
portion of same-sex couples have children
in southern states and in the Mountain
West than on the coasts. Overall, more such
families live in cities like Los Angeles and
New York, since these have far higher gay
populations. But same-sex couples who
live inland seem most likely to plump for
family life. Academics expect the results
from the latest census, forms for which are
due to land in mailboxes by March 20th, to
fit the same pattern.
Take Wyoming. It has the fourth-lowest
share of homosexual couples of all Ameri-
can states. Yet a quarter of them are raisingchildren, compared with 9% in Washing-
ton, dcand 16% in California, according to
an analysis of Census Bureau and polling
data by the Williams Institute at the Uni-
versity of California at Los Angeles. In Lara-
mie County, the most populous corner of
the state, that rate rises to 43%.
In Cheyenne, the county seat and state
capital, Dan Zwonitzer, a Republican legis-
lator, is raising two adopted children with
his husband, Justin. Another gay father
boasts that he can name every character in
“Paw Patrol”, an animated children’s show.
One gay couple, enthusiastic supporters of
Donald Trump, pose on social media in
matching stars-and-stripes Speedos.
Mr Zwonitzer, whose family has lived in
Cheyenne for five generations, did not
come out of the closet until his mid-20s.
When he did so, he gave up on his long-
cherished ambition to raise a family. “I
didn’t think it was going to happen in Wyo-
ming,” he says. Yet, in common with other
local couples, he claims to have encoun-
tered no hostility when he became a par-
ent. A lesbian couple was inundated with
home-cooked food when their daughter
was born; a gay couple turned down several
offers to babysit on Valentine’s Day, a few
weeks after their daughter’s birth.
Two factors help explain the trend. The
first is a legacy of conservative attitudes to
gay and lesbian people that only began to
shift relatively recently. An analysis of pop-
ulation survey data by Gary Gates, a demog-
rapher, suggests that most children living
in same-sex households were born in het-
erosexual relationships, before one
partner moved out to live with someone of
the same sex. At least in the past, gays and
lesbians were likely to feel less comfortable
coming out early in life in socially conser-
vative states, like Wyoming. Some began
heterosexual relationships instead, pro-
ducing children. “It is largely giving you in-
formation about social acceptance,” says
Mr Gates.
Brian Hardy is a good example. The doc-
tor, who was raised in Cheyenne, had four
children during his 14-year marriage to a
woman. “I grew up in a very religious
home,” he says. “I was definitely trying to
fit into a mould of what I’d always been
taught was the right thing to do.” His chil-
dren now spend every other week with him
and his fiancé, Jason Caswell, whom he
met at work two years ago.
The second factor is cultural. In general,
fertility rates are higher in the interior than
on the coasts. Factors that explain this gulf,
such as differential rates of social conser-
vatism and the varying cost of raising a
family, might apply equally to same-sex
couples. “If you’re gay in the big city, you’re
always bar-hopping,” says Mr Zwonitzer.
“In rural areas, you get married and settle
down and have kids early.” He and his hus-
band became foster carers for two teen-CHEYENNE
Why same-sex couples are more likely
to be parents in Middle AmericaFamiliesLittle gay house on
the prairie
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