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

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Something I think people tend to forget when looking at the incomes in places like the Bay Area is while they are pretty high, they're not in the range that the Republicans are fighting for. Obama and basically all the Democrats in Congress were against any tax increases on anyone making less than $250k a year. That's the vast majority of the Bay Area. The Republicans push the issues over the actual rich, the 1%. The upper middle class really have nothing to fear from Democratic economic policies, and in fact might actually prefer them, I have a tough time believing some say $150k median income neighborhood in the Bay Area is full of people who would prefer the Tea Party's economic rhetoric to some highly educated Keynesian professor. Also these people don't think like krazen, if you have a Master's Degree it's safe to say that you aren't going to think that public school teachers and their unions are the main reason your taxes are as high as they are, poll these people on if they'd blame teachers' unions more or things like rich tax cheats and corporations exploiting loopholes and I think it's obvious who'd they blame.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

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.

But take a look at Marin County. memphis made a thread about this place earlier. In truth while it's not as unique in the US as he thought, a place with these demographics would simply not vote anything like it does in any European country.

Although if the US used a different voting system and some sort of PR and had multiple parties, these areas would probably vote for some party more along the lines of the Liberal Democrats than the party commonly thought of as the main center-left party, actually Andrew Cuomo kind of epitomizes the politics of the party that would dominate here pretty well (Kind of brings up a good question, is there any significant difference in politics between Cuomo and David Cameron? But that's for another thread.) These areas probably still wouldn't be willing to vote for the main center-right party because even if it basically was the Republican Party today with all the biggest crazies purged and in minor parties, it still wouldn't be capable of governing without the support of the crazies.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I sat down for a while and did some math regarding whites in Northern Illinois. Here's what I found. For my purposes, Northern Illinois includes the following counties: Boone, Bureau, Carroll, Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Henry, Jo Daviess, Kane, Kendall, Lake, LaSalle, Lee, McHenry, Ogle, Rock Island, Stephenson, Whiteside, Will, and Winnebago. Furthermore, I'm calling the following Northern Illinois counties Chicagoland: Cook, DeKalb, DuPage, Grundy, Kane, Kendall, Lake, McHenry, and Will.
A few points:
1. Whites in Chicagoland are almost exactly split in population between Cook County and the rest of the Chicagoland counties
2. About 67% of whites, who voted in Cook County, voted to reelect the President.
3. About 43% of whites who voted in the remaining Chicagoland counties voted to reelect the President.
4. About 55% of whites, who voted in all of Chicagoland, voted to re-elect the President.
4. About 10% of whites, who voted in both Cook and Lake Counties, self-identify as Jewish, about 2/3 of whom likely voted to reelect the President.
5. About 48% of whites who voted in Northern Illinois, outside of Chicagoland, voted to re-elect the President.
6. Only 43% of whites, who voted in Winnebago County, the largest county in Northern Illinois, outside of Chicagoland, voted to re-elect the President. Without the influence of Winnebago, the whites of Northern Illinois would have split their votes almost equally between the President and Mitt Romney.
7. Chicagoland's 55% vote for the President is roughly equal to Northern Illinois's 48%, once one takes Jews and gays into account. Any additional "urban effect" is limited to just a few points.
8. However, there is a great deal of polarization within Chicagoland with white Dems much more likely to live in Cook County and white Republicans much more likely to live in another Chicagoland County. This is clearly not merely the result of gays and Jews.

Whites voting to relect the President by Chicagoland county
1. Cook 67%
2.DeKalb 47%
3. Lake 46%
4. DuPage 43%
5. Will 43%
6. Grundy 42%
7.McHenry 41%
8. Kendall 40%
9. Kane 39%

You have to realize that in Cook County at least (less so in the other counties, but not entirely untrue), this is a bit of an apples/oranges comparison. It's like calculating the white vote in Brooklyn, you could do it and the number WOULD be interesting, but it doesn't really represent the "average white" in Brooklyn or any type of demographic there. Or to use another commonly used example in college textbooks, it's like calculating the average income of ten people on food stamps and one millionaire. The number doesn't represent anyone in the group.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Yeah that's really no more ridiculous than claiming that most urban whites are either gay or Jewish.