Urban-Rural Divide in American Politics

https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/21/upshot/america-political-divide-urban-rural.html

by jgwil2 • 7 years ago

47 75 7 years ago

drinane• 7 years ago

This is the red v. blue dichotomy... this is why I think they need to admin gubment at another split level... urban rule set V rural rule set

MegaButts• 7 years ago

I am not a lawyer or a policy expert, but I do not understand how this would work. Can you elaborate?

thrower123• 7 years ago

To some extent, I think we could use some redrawing of the borders and reallocation of the states to better map to actual metro regions and group areas that have common interests together. It'd be a bit ticklish to get right, and leave everything functional, but there are some wicked schisms between areas of our historical states, and other places that are spliced up into multiple states that probably should be joined together.. It'll never happen, but it's a fun thought experiment.

I don't think things are going to get better on this front by themselves, as the economy seems to be centralizing more and more, such that even the second and third rate regional cities are hollowed out and population and money clusters ever tighter. It's already evident that the urban areas can throw their weight around and vote in pretty much whatever they want in a lot of places, and the rest of the state has to mobilize completely to defeat them. I'm from Maine originally, and it's been a constant battle lately to keep the Portland metro area from passing ballot initiatives that make sense in their little neck of the woods, but are insane when you get off the I-95 corridor.

crooked-v• 7 years ago

I've seen some studies that indicate this is less about regions and more about exposure to high population densities and everything that goes with it, though I can't find the links now.

eropple2• 7 years ago

I've heard the same, and Ezra Klein recently had on an interesting guest, Will Wilkinson from the Niskanen Center, who discussed political sorting and population density in some detail.

https://cms.megaphone.fm/channel/theezrakleinshow?selected=V...

cybersnowflake7• 7 years ago

I think its a mix between exposure and affinity. People migrate to what they like or want to take advantage of then their mindset is reinforced by like minded people and conditions.

war10252• 7 years ago

I think you could generalize that to "population density", since there are reasons people in low-density areas think the way they do, just the same as there are reasons for people in high-density ares to think like they do.

bhupy3• 7 years ago

In most European democracies, geography doesn’t matter in the same way. Legislators are elected from larger districts, each with multiple representatives, granting parties proportional power. If a party wins 50 percent of the votes, it doesn’t matter much if those votes are evenly spread around or tightly clustered.

Comparisons with European democracies strike me as counterproductive; the US is a federal republic, whereas most European democracies are unitary states.

I'd be interested in an analysis that compares the urban-rural divide in the US with that of the EU, which are both similarly large, similarly heterogenous, similarly Federal in nature, and (perhaps most importantly) have similar structures of government.

The US's Senate looks less like the upper houses of most European democracies, and a lot more like the EU's Council of the European Union[1], which is the upper house of their (essentially) bicameral legislature. Like the Senate, it grants equal representation to its states.

I'd also be interested in an analysis that compares the US with Switzerland, whose structure similarly favors decentralization. The Swiss Council of States[2] distributes its seats by state (canton), rather than by population.

[1] https://europa.eu/european-union/about-eu/institutions-bodie...

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_States_(Switzerland...

cybersnowflake7• 7 years ago

Not to mention theres still a huge rural conservative/urban liberal divide in Europe. Its practically every where you look in the world and reaches back to at least the French Revolution.

petschge3• 7 years ago

While the majority of countries in the European Union are not federation of states, there is several that have exactly that structure: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, Finland, France and the Netherlands. Austria, Germany, Finland and France being republics, the other ones with a (ceremonial) monarch as head of state.

bhupy3• 7 years ago

Sure, and the majority of States in the US are themselves federations of yet smaller administrative subdivisions. 49 out of 50 US States have bicameral legislatures.

The point still stands, the US looks less like Austria or Germany or Denmark, and more like the EU, as a whole.

rayiner6• 7 years ago

It’s still quite different. In the Bundesrat for example, more populous states have more votes. And unlike in the US, all legislation does not require involvement of the Bundesrat.

SolaceQuantum• 7 years ago

I belive FiveThirtyEight covered disparate living areas between democrats and republicans within city lines, also [0]...

There were several projected theories for this, although I don't believe any were provided with significant evidence/links.

0. https://projects.fivethirtyeight.com/republicans-democrats-c...

Animats• 7 years ago

"Rural sprawl" from a century or two ago is biting back. Much of the growth of the US was driven by agriculture. The early version of the American dream was finding cheap land and farming it. That filled much of a continent. Small rural towns were built to support farmers nearby. Larger towns and cities supported small towns.

Today US employment in agriculture, forestry, fishing, and hunting is only 1.5% of the US workforce.[1] That's all. A century ago it was around 50%. A profitable farm today is a lot of land, a lot of machinery, and very few people. The small towns and small cities built to support farming still exist on the ground. But there are not enough farmers to support them. Which is why they are dying.

Plus, of course, the remaining farmers use Wal-Mart, Amazon, UPS, and the Internet to get many of the things they need. Much less need to drive into town. Which is probably half boarded up anyway.

[1] https://www.bls.gov/emp/tables/employment-by-major-industry-...

bduerst• 7 years ago

Much of the regression from agricultural professions happened in the early 20th century, due to automation from the combustion engine. The phenomenon talked about in this article is much more recent, and more likely due to rural areas being susceptible to polarization after not recovering after the recession.

sneakernets• 7 years ago

This is very simple:

One side wanted a more agrarian nation with hard manual labor (The Protestant work ethic)to prove self worth, while the other side wanted a more industrial nation with all the automation and efficiency that went with it, which in turn fueled the arts and sciences.

There may be some overlap, but these divisions are nearly as old as the nation itself.

ergothus• 7 years ago

I was talking with a coworker from India at lunch about 7 years ago. He talked about the extreme urban/rural divide in his country - to the point that movies were made for different audiences - and asked about it here in the US. I said how rural communities tended to be more conservative and urban ones more liberal, but in terms of mass-media and entertainment none of those differences appeared to be very significant.

Either I was naive or I broke the universe, because ever since then it seems like everything wants to prove me wrong on this point. I browse headlines from many publications, and I can often see a divide between what is being covered. Just today I read that PBS had a "Arthur" episode with a gay marriage and Alabama isn't airing it.

learc833• 7 years ago

I live on the edge of the divide, and there are differences, but everyone farther out from the city than me still sees the Avengers just like everyone in the city does. The rednecks driving jacked up trucks are just as likely to listen to rap as they are to country. If you stop at a red light in the city on a nice day, you're still likely to hear someone singing about pickup trucks and beer from the car next to you. And 95+% of Americans bought something from Walmart last year.

I remember visiting relatives on the other side of the country in Burbank as a kid, and if anything the culture is far more homogeneous than it was then.

dwiel• 7 years ago

While I do agree there are differences between urban and rural voters, this analysis is still ignorant of quite a bit of subtlety due to the simplistic red vs blue framing. The article does try to address this slightly, but they fail to explain the fact that rural Democrats voted for Bernie Sanders in the primary and urban voters for Hillary. This two axis red vs blue kind of thinking puts a large amount of rural America in this theoretical "center". This misunderstanding is what results in centrist Democrats in these places not getting votes. The answer isn't shifting the "center" further right or distancing from AOC.

cybersnowflake7• 7 years ago

"The answer isn't shifting the "center" further right or distancing from AOC."

Then I guess its a good thing for them that they're doing the exact opposite.

equalunique• 7 years ago

I can understand why someone who watches Fox News, and/or listens to a lot of Ben Shapiro / Lauren Southern / Charlie Kirk / Candace Owens, and/or is subbed to r/The_Donald might believe this. (Sorry if I'm being presumptuous) These sources push the narratives that "The Left" is trapped inside of their own radicalizing echo chamber, but don't go far enough to acknowledge that "The Right" is not immune to that problem either. What's dominating US political discoure is the bases of both sides focusing their outrage on a small percentage of the other. Both sides say that the other is becoming more radical every day. When it comes to the Democrats, however, the vast majority of candidates vying for the nomination are really the "centrist" (translation: "swampy") types.

noobermin2• 7 years ago

The study cited is by a fellow at the Hoover Institute. His bias is in favor of blue-dogs (like HRC who lost in 2016) so that they keep losing.

FiatLuxDave2• 7 years ago

People vote their wallets, and we have two very different economies in America currently.

We are in a period of history with a lot of similarities to the gilded age, and one of the big issues of that time was "Free Silver": https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_silver. Back then, there was desire by the mostly-rural side to allow a silver-based monetary standard. This would effectively increase inflation.

Today, we see significant inflation disparities between the big coastal cities like NY and SF and the rest of the country. Essentially, the fed rate is too low to have low inflation in the cities and too high for economic growth in the rest of the country. This becomes a self-reinforcing effect, as the relative cost of borrowing is lower in the cities. So, the city and the country are just not going to agree about what to do economically.

war10252• 7 years ago

Your last paragraph is very similar to what I've read is going on in the European Union with the Euro. (I don't remember what book I read it in)

Basically their argument was that it works in America because the federal government is strong enough to redistribute wealth to places that can't keep up. In Europe the federal government is weak, so the southern countries have an economy they can't keep up with.

I don't remember the specifics, but that was the gist of it.

jgwil2• 7 years ago

I've read that another problem is that unlike in the US with its relative cultural homogeneity, people in Europe are less willing to move where jobs are. The result is less efficient population distribution. EDIT: fixed typo.

mises3• 7 years ago

This may have been where lacking a central bank could have helped us. One of the advantages of America is that the feds are only supposed to do a few things, so states can pick what works best for them. We've been joking about the "California Dollar" for years; maybe it should be separate? Just throwing out ideas. I know there would be consequences, but the proposition is not entirely without merit.

FiatLuxDave2• 7 years ago

I figure that there has to be a way to arbitrage the inflation difference. If there actually were "California Dollars" and "Arkansas Dollars", then you could easily arbitrage the difference between the inflation differential and the change in their rate of exchange (which is currently set to zero by fiat). I've thought about using inflation swaps, but that ends up looking more like a carry trade than an arbitrage, and would require lots of invested capital to get good returns. An arbitrage trade between the two inflationary regions should be more scaleable.

If anyone has any ideas, I'd be happy to discuss them via email (see profile).

40acres• 7 years ago

Call me a big city liberal but in my view small states have way too much power and Congressional reform is needed to balance it out. If demographics stay on trend eventually we'll have something like 70% of Senate seats going to 30% of the population. The arbitrary limit of 435 House of Representative seats is not enough to accurately model the population growth of this country and ensure that the ratio of representative : constituent is feasible. We cannot keep operating on a constitution built for a completely different country and expect to grow with the challenges of the 21st century.

rayiner6• 7 years ago

Or we need to split up the US into blocks that have less divergent values. The urban rural divide within Maryland is present but manageable. The divide between urban Maryland and rural Alabama is unmanageable.

petschge3• 7 years ago

What will stop rural Alabama from devolving into a third word country? Or do you still expect the successful urban blocks to pay for the backwaters blocks, but now without any input into their political structure?

jimmaswell2• 7 years ago

Those blocks are supposed to be states. The states and population (senate and house) are supposed to both have to agree on something for it to pass congress, which is a high barrier by design, since it affects everyone. You have state governments for things people in a state want.

refurb3• 7 years ago

If demographics stay on trend eventually we'll have something like 70% of Senate seats going to 30% of the population.

That was the exact point of the senate. Why would we change it?

mises3• 7 years ago

Exactly. This was originally not perceived as quite so "unfair" because the senators were chosen by state legislatures.

But yes, one of the important goals of our Constitution was to prevent "Rule by Virginia" - that is to say, the tyranny of the majority. Today, it would be California and New York vs. Texas and Florida.

It was also less important when the feds did less. Whether you approve or disapprove of the changes, the original system was good, and the tinkering is what broke it. Maybe un-tinkering things should be considered as an option just as much as tinkering them further.

drak0n1c• 7 years ago

Australia is experiencing the same trend. Quillette has an interesting analysis of the trend - both sides have their own empathy deficits, but when the deficit pits the party against electorally significant populations, losses inevitably follow. This phenomenon exists regardless of whether "electoral significance" stems from direct democracy (popular votes) or republic (electoral college, region-based voting).

https://quillette.com/2019/05/20/at-australian-ballot-boxes-...

jweir• 7 years ago

Here in Oregon the Democrats are further working to create a divide.

Oregon allows electronic signatures for ballot measures and petitions - which benefits rural areas and marginalized neighborhoods. But the Democrats are going to outlaw this for the next four years.

The reason is to avoid a ballot measure on a new tax increase which the public might not approve.

Democrats have a super majority in Oregon.

https://www.wweek.com/news/2019/05/20/as-critics-of-the-new-...

AcerbicZero2• 7 years ago

Having recently left Portland for Seattle, its pretty easy to see how precarious the situation is out here. Oregon seemed to do a better job of keeping "Portland" laws in Portland, whereas Seattle is doing its legal work at the state level and forcing it on down to everyone.

If Oregon isn't careful they'll end up with Portland running the entire state, and the consequences of that are pretty obvious.

AcerbicZero2• 7 years ago

The last thing we need is another 2D way of looking at politics. Left/Right Red/Blue Urban/Rural may all be useful* ways of visualizing generalities about data, but without a holistic approach obvious things get missed, and every other person is a corner case. A 2 axis chart is a good start, but even that lacks the nuance to really nail down something as complicated as a multi-tiered federal republics' politics.

Right now there are more layers of bureaucracy between an individual and true political power than ever before. At the same time, the emotional state of those individuals has never been more important to the political class. Using legislation as a weapon against your political enemies based not on principal, but emotional will of your base (or the emotional reaction of your opponents, etc) is likely to end badly for everyone.

Urban-Rural Divide in American Politics

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