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

[Torie]

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?

[Torie]

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.

So, in order to explain the differential in voting patterns of Europe and North America, the density proxy is more about the influence or tolerance of diversity, and less about Muon2's hypothesis that density qua density generates a perception of a need for a more robust level of public sector activity?  

[Torie]

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?