There’s also the effect of unions in the US - the South is more rural and doesn’t have them, while the industrialized North does.
If you’re talking about the rural conservatives, it’s supposedly because they vote on emotional issues instead of economic ones. I don’t have any proof that this is true, but it’s the common explanation. They care more about being against abortion, gay marriage and other things like that than they do about economic policies…supposedly.
Don’t forget religion. My entire extended family is Southern Baptist and they always vote Repub because Republicans are more likely to cling to a Bible while promoting their views.
They don’t call it The Religious Right for nothin’.
To be fair, the opposite is also true. I’m pretty well off yet I vote Democratic largely because I hate Bible thumpers. If I voted strictly in my economic best interest I might vote Republican sometimes.
You’re making a false equivalence between the Reaganite Yank Right & “Right” anywhere else. The question isn’t why the cities vote for Democrats, it’s why the countryside vote for the GOP–especially after the GOP has gone round the bend on fiscal issues.
The Christian Democrats & Christian Socialists in Germany would not be welcome in the present GOP. The Canadian Tories would probably be closer, but would be left of Blue Dog Democrats economically. The UK Tories would be seen as much too light in the loafers (ironically). The Australian Liberals would be acceptable, except for the name, & the GOP would try to get them to abandon subsidized health care. And however right-wing any Frenchman is, he’s still French, & foreign, & “f” stands for “faggot.”
This.
Bloomberg is the mayor of the biggest city in the US. He’s a lifelong Democrat who switched to the Republican party to avoid the Dem machine, but he’d be a conservative in any other city in the industrialized world. Not just a conservative, but a somewhat right leaning one.
A lot of the bigger cities in the US are coastal cities, which historically means they are more cosmopolitan with a greater diversity of cultures and ethnicities living together. They also have more universities, which means the people are better educated. They are less prone to the xenophobia, provincialism and religionism of rural areas.
They have different sets of social issues too, and some more pressing ones. For instance, if you have to worry about drive by shootings, you might have a different view of gun issues than someone in rural Alabama.
My rural conservative mother-in-law has told me straight up that the only voting issue she really cares about is the pro-life position.
Then why is it that the most conservative states are the ones which get the most tax money per person. Alaska and Wyoming both get more from the Federal government than they give while liberal states such as California and New York pay more in Federal taxes than they get in government services?
I’m from Iowa and know those nice Republican farmers want the government to stay off of their back and let them run their farm as they see fit, and by the way, give them a few million dollars of tax money in the form of various farm subsidies. After all, they’re the salt of the earth, red blooded Americans – not like those hippies in New York who mooch off of everyone else.
We talk about liberal and conservative, but in reality, both want the government to pass out oodles of money as long as they don’t pay for it. It’s why after an election where Republicans were swept into office on a budget balancing plank, we now have a 750,000,000 dollar tax cut which represents a 50% increase in the deficit.
Hey, it ain’t welfare and handouts if it’s called “farm subsidy”.
The question of why America’s major metro areas (“ideopolises”) are more liberal is explored in depth in The Emerging Democratic Majority, by John P. Judis & Ruy Teixeira; but they do not attempt to compare American with foreign metro areas in terms of political alignment.
At any rate, it’s a definite pattern. See this map of the red-blue divide in America broken down by county. You will see that, regardless of region, the countryside trends red and the cities and towns trend blue.
No I did not. In fact I consider blue to be the true conservative colour.
Well, in the International Democrat Union the Republicans are in league with the Canadian and British Tories, the Australian Liberals, the German Christian Democrats, the French Union For A Popular Movement, and other parties of that time.
And red is the true rolleyes color.
This means little. You’re really working hard to make the world fit into neat little boxes.
I’ve spent years living in large cities, and many years living in a very rural area.
Government services are abundant in large cities, and they tend to foster an attitude of dependence amongst the populace. In rural areas, OTOH, you must be more self-sufficient to get by. Liberals cater to people who are dependent on the government, whereas conservative and libertarians espouse self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
I tried to say that earlier and got shot to hell.
I live in a rural area now with no services: no water, no transportation, no full-time fire department, sparse policing. No anything really, apart from garbage pick-up and snow plowing.
I’m still trying to figure out how per-capita government spending could possibly be higher in rural areas, as pointed out by some previous posters. I’m not seeing it.
Farm subsidies.
Cite for any of this?
No roads? No school bus service?
What’s the average amount of road per capita in the country compared with in the city?
Of course. My property taxes are a bit lower to reflect some decreased services. School buses would be paid out of that lump.
That’s a valid point of course.