What is it about cities that make people vote Democrat?

[Redban]

All the major cities, even those in deep red states, tend to vote Democrat (with few exceptions, such as Phoenix and Salt Lake City).

But why?

Is it because cities have more minorities?

Is it because cities have more younger people?

Is it because cities have more unions?

Is it because cities brainwash people?

What is it about cities?

[tpfkaw]

Even Phoenix and Salt Lake are Democratic-leaning, and very Democratic, respectively.  And the reason is all four, combined with the fact that they have more government employees.

[ElectionsGuy]

All three of the first are all legitimate reasons. But, I would love for someone to do a study on how living in the city or living rurally affects your politics. I know people have I just can't seem to find them. I don't think cities necessarily brainwash people, I think is does affect how you think politically though in a way I have yet to figure out.

[Space7]

Interesting question.

I think all your listed reasons have some effect, but I would also like to add that people who live in cities, as a general rule, have a tendency to be better educated. (Source picture below)

http://www.dailyyonder.com/files/imagecache/story_default/imagefield/2009528.jpg

Teachers in general seem to lean left, and this spills over onto the students.

Educated people seem to become a little bit more lenient towards the redistribution of wealth because they have recent knowledge on important global issues like poverty and the environment, and they end up becoming a little more willing to part with excess wealth to help with healthcare and better education for others.

[Smid]

I think the first three reasons you giVe are all valid reasons why urban areas tend to vOte somewhere to the lefT of their rural countErparts.

Generally speaking, Cities certainly dO teNd to have a greater number, and greater proportion, of ethnic minoritieS, comparEd to Rural areas. As you'd know, white males were the ethnic and gender group most likely to haVe voted for the Republicans lAst election. CiTies also tend to have a hIgher number of young people, and often uniVersities, and the DEmocrats tend to poll better among youth and students.

Urban Voters are alsO more likely To be unionisEd or employed in manufacturing.

ManufaCturing wOrkers are also coNsiderably leSs likEly to vote foR the Republicans, or their global counterparts - I haVe some industry and occupAtion maps of AusTralia saved In the Gallery, if you are interested. You will Very likEly note the correlation to Labor electorates.

I doubt there is any form of cities "brainwashing" voters, but if you believe in the presence of subliminal messages, I will not attempt to persuade you otherwise.

[Del Tachi]

Are cities overseas (Western Europe/Canada) as liberal as the ones in the United States?

It seems to me that the European centre-right parties have had much more success in appealing to an urban electorate; why is that? 

[Del Tachi]

I doubt there is any form of cities "brainwashing" voters, but if you believe in the presence of subliminal messages, I will not attempt to persuade you otherwise.

I actually think that this is a legitimate point.  Cities have long attracted people whose lifestyles would be bizarre or unusual in more rural settings:  immigrants, bohemians, homosexuals, etc.  The presence of these type of people could in a way "brainwash" the people living in cities into being more open-minded towards lifestyles that fall outside of the mainstream, and that could make them more liberal.

Of course, in cases like that illustrated above, "brainwash" is a bad term that implies something negative.  I think that the term "urban socialization" captures the essence of this phenomenon while keeping a neutral tone. 

[Del Tachi]

However, the most obvious answer to this question is that cities are much, much poorer than your average suburb. 

Rapid surbanization has removed any amount of considerable wealth from our inner-cities and relocated it to the fringe.  However, in Europe many more cities retain a "wealthy core" of city bourgeoisie that in many cases are relatively conservative-voting (Wimbledon, Kensington, 16th Arrondissement, Charlottenburg, etc). 

[Space7]

Are cities overseas (Western Europe/Canada) as liberal as the ones in the United States?

Because Canada is overseas from the United States .

Yes, center-left vote is concentrated into urban areas in Canada as well. Urban centers like Toronto and Montreal have always been the strongholds for that side of the spectrum.

[Person Man]

Of course, employers are smaller, prices are lower and there is generally less competition for economic resources away from big cities. This tends to lessen the inequality that center left politics is designed to advocate against.

If you are a manager making $45,000 a year and your boss makes $80,000 a year in a company of a few dozen, you are probably more conservative than a programmer making $90,000 a year when their boss's income is in the several hundreds of thousands in a company that employs thousands. Think King of the Hill against Family Guy or even the Simpsons.

[Del Tachi]

This urban-Democratic thing has big implications. If Republicans did just decent in Chicago, they take Illinois, for example.

However, the most obvious answer to this question is that cities are much, much poorer than your average suburb. 

Rapid surbanization has removed any amount of considerable wealth from our inner-cities and relocated it to the fringe.  However, in Europe many more cities retain a "wealthy core" of city bourgeoisie that in many cases are relatively conservative-voting (Wimbledon, Kensington, 16th Arrondissement, Charlottenburg, etc). 

The highest income-areas per capita are all in NYC, San Francisco, Chicago, Boston, Miami, etc. Basically, cities.

Cities are not poorer than suburbs.

Actually...only five of the twenty most populated cities in the United States had median household incomes above the national average of $51,413 in 2011:  San Jose, San Francisco, Washington, Seattle and San Diego.

http://www.statista.com/statistics/205609/median-household-income-in-the-top-20-most-populated-cities-in-the-us/
http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/money/economy/story/2012-02-09/income-rising/53033322/1

Now, what I suspect you meant to say is that cities tend to have higher GDP per capita than suburbs or rural areas, and in that category you would be correct.  However, stats on median household incomes show that most of that "wealth" talked about in the GDP/capita figure tends to leave the city every weekday at around 5 o'clock.  It works a little something like this...professionals and other "white color" types come to the city and produce goods and services that jack-up that city's Gross Domestic Product, but when the paychecks come in these same professionals are not keeping this wealth within the city proper; rather, it goes home with them to the suburbs! 

Proof:  The top 100 cities for median household income with a population of over 50,000 are all considered "suburban".  Find one city on this list that is not a suburb:  http://www.city-data.com/top70.html

[TJ in Oregon]

Part of it is all of the things mentioned, but additionally I think it has something to do with the use to various government services. People in cities rely on the government for things like public transportation, municipal water, sewer, garbage collection, recycling, museums, libraries, and other institutions. To people who live in urban areas, the idea of opposing government services sounds alien. Why would they vote against more funding for more services? They often use them. When they have crime problems, they call the police. The police might even show up. Guns are viewed as something that criminals have, not something "normal" people have. These voters' lifestyle isn't built for a small government ideology, so they are unlikely to vote for Republicans.

[tpfkaw]

Cities are not more left-wing everywhere; they're more conservative while rural areas are more leftist in Sweden, for example, as well as IIRC Spain, and, in the United States, South Carolina (because blacks are concentrated in rural areas).  Nevertheless, it is a pattern that holds true in most countries, if not as dramatically as in the US (for that matter, pre-1992, it wasn't nearly as strong a pattern in the US either).

To elaborate, the big deals are:

1. Urban areas have more minorities, and minorities vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

2. White people in urban areas vote overwhelmingly Democratic for the most part too.  This is because they tend to skew younger, poorer, more likely to be a government employee or in left-biased professions such as university professors, more likely to be non-Christian, etc.  This also is because crime has essentially disappeared as a wedge issue in national politics over the last 20 years.  Whether it's because people are ignoring it as crime rates have gone down, Republicans are afraid of being tarred with the "racist" brush, or because of the DLC most national Democrats now at least publicly profess to be "tough-on-crime" death penalty supporters (or a combination thereof), the wedge issue that drove urban votes to the Republicans between Nixon and H.W. is now hardly ever discussed.  It remains a wedge issue between whites and minorities within urban Democratic parties, however.

3. Which brings us to my next point; everyone who's anyone in a major city is a Democrat.  There's no point in being a Republican, because the only race that matters is the Democratic primary.  And you've got all that peer pressure; if you vote Republican then you're some backwoods redneck hick racist homophobic cow-[inks]ing gun nut woman-hater creationist anti-Semite evil corporate tool who probably shops at Wal-Mart and listens to bands people have heard of.  Nobody will like you!  But if you're a Democrat, you can say "I support Golda Schniffelstein for Mayor because she's a Jewish lesbian who likes food co-ops and bike trails and climate initiatives and gun buy-backs, and totally not because she's going to keep the police frisking people using similar 'holistic' criteria to the UC admissions system, so I can ride the subway without getting stabbed to death."  And all your friends will still like you!

[Franknburger]

Are cities overseas (Western Europe/Canada) as liberal as the ones in the United States?

It seems to me that the European centre-right parties have had much more success in appealing to an urban electorate; why is that? 

Here the latest local election results from major German cities:

Berlin (2011 state election)
CDU  23.4  FDP 1.8,
Total conservative-libertarian:   25.2
SPD  28.3 Greens 17.6 Linke 11.7 Pirates 8.9
Total "liberal" in the US sense:  66.5
Others: 8.3 (including 2.1 for the right-wing NPD)

Mayor Wowereit, re-elected for the fourth time, and now leading a SPD/CDU coaltion, is openly gay.

Hamburg (2011 state election)
CDU 21.9   FDP 6.7
Total conservative-libertarian:   28.6
SPD  48.4 Greens 11.2  Linke 6.4  Pirates 2.1
Total "liberal" in the US sense:  68.1
Others: 3.4

Former mayor Ole van Beust (CDU), who headed three city governments, including a CDU-green government after 2008, is openly gay. Under his leadership, the CDU managed to gain 42.6 % in 2008. After his retreat for personal reasons, the CDU-Green coalition broke up, and the CDU fell back to their usual level of support.

Bremen  (2011 state election)
CDU 20.4   FDP 2.4
Total conservative-libertarian:   22.8
SPD  38.6 Greens 22.5  Linke 5.6 (Pirates not on the ballot)
Total "liberal" in the US sense:  66.7
Others: 10.6

Since 2007, the city state is ruled by a SPD-Green coalition. Between 1995 and 2007, it was governed by a SPD-CDU coalition under SPD leadership.

Munich  (2008 city election)
CSU 27.7   FDP 6.8  Free Voters (centrist CSU split-up) 1.6
Total conservative-libertarian:   36.1
SPD  39.8 Greens 13.0  Linke 3.7  "Rosa Liste" ("pink list", gay group) 1.9
Total "liberal" in the US sense:  58.4
Others: 5.5

SPD mayor Ude is now in his fourth consecutive term. Since 1996, he leads a SPD - Green - "pink list" coalition.

Cologne  (2009 city election)
CSU 27.9   FDP 9.4  Pro Cologne (anti-immigrant populist) 5.4
Total conservative-libertarian:   42.7
SPD  28.0 Greens 21.7  Linke 4.8  Cologne Citizen Coalition (centrist SPD spilt-up) 1.5
Total "liberal" in the US sense:  56.0
Others: 1.3

This traditional CDU bastion (home of Konrad Adenauer) has since 1960 been ruled by CDU mayors for 9 years, and SPD mayors for 46 years. The current mayor, Jürgen Rotes (SPD), has been directly elected in 2009 with 54.7% of the votes.

---
I think the figures speak for themselves.

3. Which brings us to my next point; everyone who's anyone in a major city is a Democrat.  There's no point in being a Republican, because the only race that matters is the Democratic primary.  And you've got all that peer pressure; if you vote Republican then you're some backwoods redneck hick racist homophobic cow-[inks]ing gun nut woman-hater creationist anti-Semite evil corporate tool who probably shops at Wal-Mart and listens to bands people have heard of.  Nobody will like you! 

This may be a valid point for the US, but not for Germany (no primaries, several 'liberal' parties, realistic chances to obtain a public position as CDU member, etc.). If at all, you may say that in larger German cities, coming out as gay currently tends to promote your political career. But that is more a reflection than a cause of the cities' liberal attitude.
 

[HansOslo]

Are cities overseas (Western Europe/Canada) as liberal as the ones in the United States?

It seems to me that the European centre-right parties have had much more success in appealing to an urban electorate; why is that? 

The center-right definitely does better in the large cities in Scandinavia. Most of the larger cities here in Norway are ruled by some sort of bourgeois-coalition.  There are a lot of state and municipal employees in the city, as well as minorities and poor people. But there are also a lot of doctors, lawyers and other professionals, and they skew heavily to the center-right, and they are more likely to vote than the base voters of the socialist parties.

These voters might be “liberal” on issues like abortion and homosexuality, but so are the mainstream parties of the right. But they also want lower taxes, the freedom to choose which schools they send their children to and generally more personal freedom. That is why they vote for the center-right.

[DS0816]

A question like this can be answered just the same as other ones about voting differences.

It has to do with the separate brands of the two major parties.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

While Sweden/Norway/Finland is often cited most often when it comes to centre-right cities and centre-left country side there are other examples as well.

In Spain Madrid is centre-right while the rural Andalucia is left-wing.

Oh and as far Sweden goes, it's also worth noting that it's only Stockholm that's solid right of the big three cities. Gothenburg is won by the side that wins the election, and Malmö leans left and only go for the right when they win big.

[HansOslo]

While Sweden/Norway/Finland is often cited most often when it comes to centre-right cities and centre-left country side there are other examples as well.

In Spain Madrid is centre-right while the rural Andalucia is left-wing.

Oh and as far Sweden goes, it's also worth noting that it's only Stockholm that's solid right of the big three cities. Gothenburg is won by the side that wins the election, and Malmö leans left and only go for the right when they win big.

I have always wondered why that is. I can see why Göteborg is solid for Socialdemokratarna, since there used to be a lot of industry in and around Göteborg. And with the industry come blue collar workers and trade unions, who vote for the parties of the left.
But why doesn’t this apply to Stockholm as well? Were there less of an industrial presence in Stockholm?

[ElectionLover]

I think it is because the Republicans are for more individualism, while the Democrats are for doing everything as a community, which could appeal to a lot of city people. Also the people in the cities rely on government services a lot! 

[barfbag]

Republicans tend to be more individualistic and people who live in cities tend to have a group mentality. Secondly, the more people living in an area, the more political things get and the more political things get, the more special interest groups and controversies go on. With all the friction caused by living in a city, the big brother party comes in and takes care of it for the group. Sociology dictates that cities be more liberal than rural America. There's also a lot of jobs in cities which lead to unions and different classes of people so class envy runs rampant leading to government redistribution of the wealth ideas. Politicians pick up on this and use it in their campaigns for mayor which puts them in the Democratic party by default.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

I think the first three reasons you giVe are all valid reasons why urban areas tend to vOte somewhere to the lefT of their rural countErparts.

Generally speaking, cities certainly Do tend to havE a greater nuMber, and greater propOrtion, of ethnic minorities, Compared to Rural areas. As you'd know, white males were the ethnic and gender group most likely to have voted for the Republicans lAst election. CiTies also tend to have a hIgher number of young people, and often universities, and the DemoCrats tend to poll better among youth and students.

Urban Voters are alsO more likely To be unionisEd or employed in manufacturing.

Manufacturing workers are also consiDerably less likEly to vote for the Republicans, or their global counterparts - I have soMe industry and OCcupation maps of AustRalia saved in the GAllery, if you are interesTed. You will very lIkely note the correlation to Labor eleCtorates.

I doubt there is any form of cities "brainwashing" voters, but if you believe in the presence of subliminal messages, I will not attempt to persuade you otherwise.

While it is not per se brainwashing, it is true that people will tend to be influenced by the views of their neighbors and co-workers.

[Indy Texas]

Of course, employers are smaller, prices are lower and there is generally less competition for economic resources away from big cities. This tends to lessen the inequality that center left politics is designed to advocate against.

If you are a manager making $45,000 a year and your boss makes $80,000 a year in a company of a few dozen, you are probably more conservative than a programmer making $90,000 a year when their boss's income is in the several hundreds of thousands in a company that employs thousands. Think King of the Hill against Family Guy or even the Simpsons.

The differences in perceived and actual inequality play a big role.

If you're working class and in New York city, you live in a world completely removed from the wealthy. They live in Manhattan, send their kids to private schools that cost twice what you earn in a year, and donate multimillion dollar paintings to museums. You're living in a cramped walk-up, taking public transportation and have no hope of ever owning your own home.

If you're working class in a small or mid-size city in Alabama, the wealthy people are the local business owners and maybe a few doctors and lawyers. They live in larger houses and drive nicer cars, but they go to the same church you do, your kids all go to public school together and they sponsor little league games and the county fair.

It shouldn't be surprising that a New Jersey Turnpike toll booth operator has no problem with raising taxes on the millionaires and billionaires whose chauffeured cars whiz through every day, while the guy in Shreveport is wondering why Barack Obama wants to penalize the guy in his men's Bible study group whose son plays JV football with his son.

[Swedish Rainbow Capitalist Cheese]

While Sweden/Norway/Finland is often cited most often when it comes to centre-right cities and centre-left country side there are other examples as well.

In Spain Madrid is centre-right while the rural Andalucia is left-wing.

Oh and as far Sweden goes, it's also worth noting that it's only Stockholm that's solid right of the big three cities. Gothenburg is won by the side that wins the election, and Malmö leans left and only go for the right when they win big.

I have always wondered why that is. I can see why Göteborg is solid for Socialdemokratarna, since there used to be a lot of industry in and around Göteborg. And with the industry come blue collar workers and trade unions, who vote for the parties of the left.
But why doesn’t this apply to Stockholm as well? Were there less of an industrial presence in Stockholm?

There's never been any major industry in Stockholm, it always been dominated by white-collar middle-class, while Gothenburg and especially Malmö on the other hand were historicly working-class cities with big industries.

[Franknburger]

You also have rural-urban differences within professions: The rural logistics sector, e.g., will have a considerable share of self-employed / small business owners (truckers, taxi drivers). Within the city, you rather find port workers, warehouse staff, delivery to retail etc. - medium-to-large scale, and in many cases traditionally strongly unionised. The self-employed rural trucker will put petrol prices high on his list off issues to vote on. The employed retail chain delivery van driver, OTOH, will be rather locking at issues like public transport & parking space management .

Same with construction. Urban constructions tends to be larger-scale, and as such also dominated by large construction firms, while in rural areas, it is a lot of self-employed and small firms, focusing mostly on repair and installation works. Or look at the health sector - major hospitals tend to be found in the large cities, in the countryside it is primarily self-employed doctors, midwifes etc.

Finally, media and academia/research, both traditionally 'liberal' sectors, are hardly present in rural areas.

[politicsguru13]

3. Which brings us to my next point; everyone who's anyone in a major city is a Democrat.  There's no point in being a Republican, because the only race that matters is the Democratic primary.  And you've got all that peer pressure; if you vote Republican then you're some backwoods redneck hick racist homophobic cow-[inks]ing gun nut woman-hater creationist anti-Semite evil corporate tool who probably shops at Wal-Mart and listens to bands people have heard of.  Nobody will like you!  But if you're a Democrat, you can say "I support Golda Schniffelstein for Mayor because she's a Jewish lesbian who likes food co-ops and bike trails and climate initiatives and gun buy-backs, and totally not because she's going to keep the police frisking people using similar 'holistic' criteria to the UC admissions system, so I can ride the subway without getting stabbed to death."  And all your friends will still like you!

I'm a registered Republican in an urban area. In California, our municipal elections are nonpartisan. I voted for Kevin James and voted for Eric Garcetti in the run-off. But in 2009, I was able to vote for Villaraigosa in the first round.

I don't know about the peer pressure, certainly I haven't experienced it. I don't wear my politics on my sleeve but the conversation occasionally arises and I'm usually met with curiosity. I've yet to be treated poorly due to my partisan affiliation. Possibly, I'm helped by my political views not aligning fully with my party's platform but I don't see what someone has to gain from alienating people due to their beliefs.

Wendy Greuel's campaign tried incessantly to play the gender card. It didn't work. Villaraigosa likewise did not win because of his Hispanic heritage.