Red State, Blue City: How the Urban-Rural Divide is Splitting America

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Ignoring the reversed Atlas colors,

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snip:

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http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2012/11/red-state-blue-city-how-the-urban-rural-divide-is-splitting-america/265686/

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Suburban - Swing

NOT IN THE SOUTH.

Or even in much of the Midwest or Southwest.  Waukesha County, WI and the suburbs of Phoenix, AZ are not "swing"  counties.

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The countryside wants/needs the gov't just as much as everybody else. All those long highways connecting them to the outside world didn't fall out of the sky. Nor did farm subsidies, Social Security, or any other government force they depend on. The difference is a matter of ethnic background. White people in most metros don't vote much differently than those in the surrounding countryside.

In Chicagoland the white vote in Chicago proper is heavily D. The nonHisp white population of IL-6 and 9 were similar in the last Congress before the remap. Yet since IL-9 went into the inner suburbs and the city it voted far more D than IL-6. Again, it's not about the government used, it's the perception of the amount of service needed.

There will be a small Dem push in some white urban neighborhoods from Jews and gays, both of whom avoid the countryside like the plague. Still, it's not like Northern Illinois is some Republican bastion outside of Chicagoland. The counties along the MS River have a small Dem lean while those in the interior have a small GOP lean. Cook County is 44% non-Hispanic white and voted 74% Dem. Lee County, to pick a random N Illinois rural county, is 88% non-Hispanic white and voted 45% Dem. The racial math is not all that different.

Jews and gays do not alone account for the difference between IL-6 and IL-9. Your example of Lee is a very rural county and is not to my point about the shift as density decreases through the suburbs.

Chicago proper voted over 80% for Obama in 2012, no? It's about 30% non-Hispanic white. What percentage of Chicago's electorate was non-Hispanic white?

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Thinking about Muon2's density hypothesis, which is teased out after correcting for race and class, why do the Tories do so well in high income dense neighborhoods in England? Why does inner city Paris vote conservative? I might note that Newport Beach, CA is quite densely populated. The lots next to the bay are very small.

The ideological component of inner city dense living seems most common in the US and Canada. Why?

Because the right-wing parties are crazier here.

Or, to be less blunt, they are more in thrall to social conservativism, which is a mindset that thrives in rural agrarian environments, and is deeply distrustful of anything cosmopolitan as a "corrupting" influence.  Because, y'know, you go to the city, have to deal with people and viewpoints that are new and unfamiliar, and social liberalism inevitably follows because you have to jettison the old prejudices to get by.

The Tories may be to the right economically (at least compared to Labour), but they aren't going around trying to adopt personhood amendments or claiming that the overwhelming preponderance of evidence that we're warming the planet is some sort of crypto-Marxist conspiracy of evil scientists.  So educated richers can vote for them in peace.

Educated richers in the US still lean Republican overall, of course.

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I think it's more that the educated rich in Central London and Paris and Scandinavia are still secure in the instinctive knowledge that they own the country and the government, and that when government becomes smaller, the parts of it that they use will never be affected.

The "educated rich" in the US and Canada have no such sense of security?

Such foolishness like the Tea Party (though there are a lot of rich people who bankroll it) is generally frowned upon in educated urban rich circles in America.

Also, keep in mind that the Democratic Party is hardly a "radical" party and I would think most educated richers know that.

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The North Side of Chicago is very gay and Jewish. Maybe not quite as much as Manhattan, but it's up there. It's also not that white. I don't have the numbers for the new districts, but Shakowsky's old district was just 69% white. If you take out the gays and the Jews, it's questionable if the white would've voted for Obama at all Same for inner suburbs up there. Census has Skokie at 56% non-Hispanic white. Evanston's at 61%. Lincolnwood is 63%. Niles is 72%. Des Plaines is 68%. It's the white people in the Western burbs who are the weird ones. It's a lot like Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties, where white people in the urban areas vote roughly the same as white people in the rural areas, maybe a little more D because of the Jews and the gays.
Meanwhile the white people in DuPage and Waukesha counties are far more GOP than white people in either the city or the rural areas. This is only less noticable in DuPage because there are so many more minorites there than in Waukesha. Again look at NW Illinois for comparison. Knox and Whiteside Counties are both about 85% white and voted in the high 50s% for the President, even without the benefit of being a gay and Jew magnet. Even away from the river, the 85% white counties of Bureau, LaSalle, and Stephenson were essentially ties, with Romney winning by tiny, tiny margins. Heck, Carroll County is 95% white and voted for the President's re-election. There's a lot more going on than just county density. I don't see Chicagoland whites as being more white than whites in NW Illinois.

The western suburbs of Chicago have more "conventional' (read: Christian, family-oriented, straight, married with children) white people than the Jews, gays, singles, secular types of the North Side of Chicago.

[All Along The Watchtower]

The North Side of Chicago is very gay and Jewish. Maybe not quite as much as Manhattan, but it's up there. It's also not that white. I don't have the numbers for the new districts, but Shakowsky's old district was just 69% white. If you take out the gays and the Jews, it's questionable if the white would've voted for Obama at all Same for inner suburbs up there. Census has Skokie at 56% non-Hispanic white. Evanston's at 61%. Lincolnwood is 63%. Niles is 72%. Des Plaines is 68%. It's the white people in the Western burbs who are the weird ones. It's a lot like Milwaukee and Waukesha Counties, where white people in the urban areas vote roughly the same as white people in the rural areas, maybe a little more D because of the Jews and the gays.
Meanwhile the white people in DuPage and Waukesha counties are far more GOP than white people in either the city or the rural areas. This is only less noticable in DuPage because there are so many more minorites there than in Waukesha. Again look at NW Illinois for comparison. Knox and Whiteside Counties are both about 85% white and voted in the high 50s% for the President, even without the benefit of being a gay and Jew magnet. Even away from the river, the 85% white counties of Bureau, LaSalle, and Stephenson were essentially ties, with Romney winning by tiny, tiny margins. Heck, Carroll County is 95% white and voted for the President's re-election. There's a lot more going on than just county density. I don't see Chicagoland whites as being more white than whites in NW Illinois.

The western suburbs of Chicago have more "conventional' (read: Christian, family-oriented, straight, married with children) white people than the Jews, gays, singles, secular types of the North Side of Chicago.

Do you think the white people in the DuPage are more "Christian, family-oriented, straight, married with kids" than whites in rural N Illinois? Cause they vote a lot more Republican than the rurals do.

That's where economics comes in.

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from great atlas forum i learn that there are no gays in the countryside

lol, touche.

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from great atlas forum i learn that there are no gays in the countryside

Must everything be in black and white? It's not binary, of course. But there is an undeniable migration of gays frrom the countryside into major cities. As true in northern Illinois as anywhere.

Well I think that's obvious. Why would a gay person live in countryside America? Where almost everyone goes to church and has very little education.

Neither of those statements are actually true.

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Many (not 'almost all') rurals vote and pray to the right in large part precisely because they feel, correctly, that they and their homes are stereotyped, denigrated, and despised by urban liberals.

No, not correctly.  There has always been a persistent and pernicious anti-urban bias in our politics (see what's going on in VA, and the supposed justifications given, for a particularly galling example).  Urban areas and urban values are constantly under attack for things that are either not true or are deeply beneficial to the country as a whole, but apparently if we try to do anything to defend ourselves and ask for equitable treatment, on either economic or social grounds, then oh NO it's a war on rurals.   It's disappointing to see an otherwise thoughtful poster as yourself fall into this lazy falsehood (I'd call it a false equivalence, but it tends to go further than that).

Basically you all need to read The Country and the The City.

I'd recommend Jane Jacobs, especially The Economy of Cities.

And yet, wealth and resources are more concentrated in urban areas than ever.

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I agree with Sbane. The dominant stereotype is of urban residents as takers, not the other way around, whether "urban" means minority ghettos or Wall Street. There is overwhelming resentment towards government spending on pro-urban policies, and widespread and mainstream hatred of cities among rural and suburban politicians. The reverse just is not true. It is not acceptable for any urban politician to express resentment of rural areas, which are still lionized as the "heartland" of America.

The reality of it is that urban areas (which include suburban areas, despite suburbanites' protests to the contrary) are where opportunities for accumulating capital-physical, intellectual, social, and economic-are, and that's also where the fruits of physical resources (agriculture, energy, logging, mining) that come from rural areas end up.

The question of who subsidizes who is rather irrelevant, because rural areas subsidize urban areas through agriculture, energy, etc. while urban areas subsidize rural areas through having a larger tax base and government spending disproportionately going to rural areas.

In other words, both areas subsidize each other, but in different ways. The real question, then, is why so many small towns and rural areas have become depressed of physical, economic, social, and intellectual resources, and which areas of the country do benefit from that redistribution of resources.