When you read up on U.S. political basics, you can’t help but come across the detail that many of the people in cities in the U.S. seem to lean left, yet what isn’t as clear is why and what influences their concentration in cities/urban areas.
Cities don’t exactly appear to be affordable, and left-leaning folks in the U.S. don’t seem to necessarily be much wealthier than right-leaning folks, so what’s contributed to this situation?
Left leaning people tend to be better educated. The majority of the jobs for better educated people are in cities. Cities are more expensive because jobs for better educated people tend to pay more.
This is my take too. Reality has a liberal bias, and people doing skilled/educated work tend to have a firmer grasp on reality
So you think someone who designs cars has a better grasp on reality than a person who fixes cars?
What?
What do you mean what?
So if we set aside those that simply lived there already & so that affected their leaning, then the other part may be the employment opportunities?
Which then may shift the question to matters concerning the employers’ location decisions, so that’s another route to research, I suppose.
Employers go where they can find a well-educated workforce that will sustain them. And round and round we go.
Economic location geography is a lot more complicated than that (not every business is labour-intensive, cluster economics, IO logistics et cetera). Political geography of population also isn’t equal or similar to economical geography, given that social factors like class or race and discourses around sometimes heavily distort those maps we imagine.
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Very good point
You’re confusing cause and effect, mostly.
If you’ve:
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Met a bunch of people that don’t look like you or live like you
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Have a high paying job that requires a good education
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Encountered a ton of new concepts and ideas frequently
You’re more likely to be a liberal. These things also tend to occur at much greater frequencies in cities.
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It’s where all the stuff is. We like stuff, varieties of stuff of all kinds. including types of people. Conservatives hate stuff, and are generally anti-variety, so they stay where the stuff isn’t. they want to feel safe from the stuff, and they never feel safe unless there is a substantial buffer zone between them and stuff and a stockpile of guns to protect themselves from stuff, or books about stuff.
This is some good stuff.
Agreed with others that city living causes liberalism.
There’s a flip side too - rural areas experience many kinds of change more slowly and that can lead to conservatism. While we all enjoy new things, I feel like it’s easier to notice what is being lost - when things change - in a small rural community.
Maybe it’s just that we become used to putting up with older things and older social norms, so we feel the downsides less and so become less eager to replace them with what is next.
A less generous way of saying this is that in a small town it’s easier to not feel how much harm is being done by “the way we’ve always done it”.
Good jobs are in cities. Usually good jobs require a college education. Educated people are more left-leaning.
Hol’ up, Anticorp saying there are good jobs? What universe is this?? 😛
There really are! LOL. But you have to be willing to move across the country to get one, and they’re only good because there are fewer qualified people than companies need, so they have to create attractive work environments and compensation packages to attract talent. When that situation changes those good jobs go away.
But you have to be willing to move across the country to get one
But first: rob a bank or two, so the will is well-financed! 😂
Except tech. We are stuck in the burbs.
I grew up in the city. My parents were punks. I lived in the city my whole life. I’m out in the hills now in my isolation. I get to interact with the people the left kind of ignores. I’m a tradesman. I work with and interact with a lot of well meaning smart but under educated people that get written off as nazis pretty much by alot of my peers. Now I’m not saying they are right, I’m just saying they’re working class and have the same immediate goals, they just happened to be indoctrinated af by the entire system around them and haven’t experienced different. Most mean well ime and good conversation is not out of the question. Hopefully we can avoid a potential masacre. I’d like to think my small interactions are making some tiny wave for the future. Progress is slow. I personally can’t live in the city anymore.
Grew up in a small town and its just made me realize the koolaid everyone is chugging on a daily basis.
“city folk” aren’t trying to turn you gay and cut off your dick or gun, and most “country folk” really just want to live a simple life with some light work and independence, not kill all races/sexualities (the hardest workers I know couldn’t give more of a shit what other people do)
But hey divide and conquer works I guess, cause were all poor as fuck in the end
Both are
You think you’re so fucking important
I’ve lived in several rural areas and I’ve never been to a rural area where there wasn’t at least one whole street dedicated to each political party. If the stereotype was true, Bernie Sanders wouldn’t be so glorified in his native Vermont (he grew up on what was a river island of farmers), the nation’s whitest and (after Alaska) most rural state.
Americas a statistical anomoly, y’all are the Guinea pigs of the latest mass manipulations.
Most people, without external influence really don’t actually care
I don’t think so much that cities attract left-leaning individuals as much as the people who live there tend to be (or become) left leaning.
In rural communities you tend to get a lot of families who have lived in the area for a long time, and not much movement. So they tend to be more homogenous. Cities tend to attract lots of different people (and more tends to happen), so you’re gonna be exposed to a lot more and it will be harder to stay isolated.
Another factor is the white flight that occured after ww2. Lots of cheap housing was put up outside cities, and lots of white families moved out to live in them (in some cases they didn’t even let black people buy houses in these developments). So you get a lot of conservative, white people moving out in the suburbs, leaving a lot of minorities who tend to be more liberal.
Cities add efficiency. By pulling together and sharing resources, you can suddenly have nice soccer fields, insider pools for winter, or a national sports team. Also, companies are more efficient doe to a larger pool of labor. It is easier to have rewarding careers when there are many companies to choose from.
People in cities tend to output far more per person than rural areas. That is why states like CA have much higher gdp per person than states with mostly rural people, or even TX that is about average with a big mix of both.
And this leads to higher potential wages for more people. That person living paycheck to paycheck in a high cost of living area is usually building wealth much faster than the same person in a low cost of living area. Just don’t try to live there if you cannot make enough to afford it.
Just adding that this is not a US-only phenomenon. It’s all over the Western world. It just seems so much prevalent in the US because of the polarized political situation and because of the two-party, winner-take-all electoral system.
I’d say it’s really simple. Cities have more laws than rural areas. Government is more complex in a city, and conservatives are defined by their desire for simple government.
In the countryside, the conservative ideal is actually possible. In the city, you can’t just hunt for food and be self reliant; you have to be part of a complex mesh of society.
I’m gay.
Hi Gay, I’m Dad!
My guess would be trust levels you have in other people. You are more trusting you have more people around you that you don’t know well, you tend to vote for policies that benefit people. Less trusts you want your own space to protect, want to associate with less people, don’t trust policies that you can’t see helping you out.
All the other answers here cite things like education and wealth, but spend time in politically-tidally-locked places like Rochester and Syracuse and you’ll realize all it boils down to is it being cultural. There are what many would call right-leaning cities, and they aren’t any different race-wise, ethnicity-wise, education-wise, or (most of the time) wealth-wise except that they’re right-leaning. Education/exposure does not magically change your whole philosophy, that’s like saying going to a Catholic school will guarantee your kid will be Catholic.
Large right leaning cities are very much an exception and not a rule. Of the top 30 US cities only two have Republican mayors. Fort Worth and Oklahoma City.
Education/exposure does not magically change your whole philosophy
True. But it does make certain outcomes significantly more likely. Like adopting and voting more progressive.
I guess it depends then on how liberal you must be to truly be considered liberal. I remember a debate long ago where someone was celebrated as a liberal because they supported the LGBT but called out as a conservative immediately after because they then went on to say they also supported polygamy. Such is common for some harder issues like reparations (using an example there I can definitely relate to, I come from an ethnically mixed family and mingle well with liberals and even I think we’re “progressing” into a wall on that one).
Rochester is hardly right leaning. Republicans don’t even bother running a candidate for mayor. The congressional District that encompasses it and includes many surrounding more conservative areas went 59-39 to democrats in the last election. Certainly some of the surrounding areas tilt conservative but not the city itself. The suburbs are kind of a case by case mix. There’s 200,00 registered democrats in Monroe County vs 130,000 registered Republicans. I know party isn’t the same as liberal or conservative, but calling Rochester right leaning is a huge stretch. Syracuse too.
