Figure 4a. Partisanship (Percent Republican minus percent Democrat) by municipality type, 1996-2004. Posted on 12/02/2013 10:53:20 AM PST by neverdem
American politics turn on a now familiar set of categories: red states vs. blue states, rich states vs. poor states, Frostbelt vs. Sunbelt. But these generalizations mask deeper, less visible fissures in our political geography.
We have written a great deal about the role of density in metropolitan voting patterns, highlighting the remarkably consistent and robust political red-to-blue tipping point that occurs when a metro reaches a density of roughly 800 residents per square mile. I took a deeper look at our emerging political geography in a recent feature for Politico magazine, where I argued that the suburbs have become the key turf in American politics today.
The older, denser suburbs outside our central cities have emerged as the major points of political cleavage in America, the places where Presidential elections are won or lost. "The key political fissure in American politics no longer runs across the country's swing states," I explained, "but zigzags through the rapidly growing ranks of what I call its 'distress 'burbs.'"
The suburbs have become the key turf in American politics today.
I drew on the detailed research of USC political scientist Jefferey M. Sellers, including important new data that he and his colleagues put together in The Political Ecology of the Metropolis, released this summer. Sellers has compiled a massive time-series data set on the metropolitanization of American politics, using information on local voting patterns across America and comparing that to a slew of economic and demographic indicators. His fascinating findings are worth a closer look.
He argues that the massing of both population and economic activity in metropolitan areas is injecting strongly local influences into national politics. "Metropolitanisation," he concludes, "is contributing to a re-territorialisation of politics."
But it's not so much the urban centers that have come to shape our politics. The suburbs – where the majority of the electorate lives – are the central battleground of American politics.
Sellers and his colleagues analyze the political characteristics of cities and suburbs across many advanced nations. Sellers's own chapter covers the U.S., and it includes some eye-opening insights. While most previous research has looked mainly at states and counties, Sellers has developed a detailed data set on the municipalities that make up America's metro regions. He tracks the political geography of the 1996, 2000 and 2004 elections across twelve U.S. metros with populations of at least 450,000: New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Detroit, Atlanta, Seattle, Cincinnati, Fresno, Birmingham, Syracuse, Wichita, and Kalamazoo.
Democrats have a "decisive" advantage in dense, urban localities and poorer, majority-minority suburbs. In the affluent suburbs, Sellers explains, "Republicans enjoy an analogous, if less dramatic" advantage. He notes that "a pervasive divide separates the Republican low density areas of metropolitan peripheries from the Democratic urban centres and minority suburbs." At the broad metropolitan level, votes follow the same red/blue, rich/poor pattern identified by Larry Bartels and Andrew Gelman at the state level. Sellers found that municipalities with educated and affluent voters tended to vote with their state's winners – they voted more Republican in red states and more Democratic in blue states.
With these bases locked down, the key political footballs – the new "swing states," so to speak – are the swelling ranks of economically distressed suburbs, where poverty has been growing and where the economic crisis hit especially hard. There are now more poor people living in America's suburbs than its center cities, and as a recent Brookings Institution report found, both Republican and Democratic districts have been affected by this reality.
To get a better idea of how this works, take a look at the figure below, which tracks the gap between votes for Republicans and Democrats by type of town between 1996 and 2004. At the far right, affluent and low-density suburbs both went largely for Republican candidates. There was an analogous Democratic advantage in urban concentrations and poor minority suburbs, at left.
It's the distress 'burbs – poor non-minority and the middle-class suburbs – in the middle of the graph, with a near even split in votes for Republican and Democrat candidates.
Figure 4a. Partisanship (Percent Republican minus percent Democrat) by municipality type, 1996-2004.
The distress 'burbs are the places most likely to shift between parties. And here, Sellers identifies another clear pattern. Struggling communities in red states tend to lean left, while disadvantaged suburbs in blue states increasingly vote for the right. As he concludes:
In red states as well as some of the blue state metropolitan areas, the more affluent suburbs endorse the majority preferences of the wider region. A similar parallel between the regions marks metropolitan communities with more socioeconomic hardship. The most disadvantaged metropolitan communities of the red states have diverged most from the Republican preferences of the wider region. The most disadvantaged communities of the blue states have responded more than other communities there to Republican appeals.
America's new metropolitan geography is overlaid by one additional factor: voter participation. Turnout levels have ranged between 52 and 62 percent over the past several national elections. Even though Democrats have the clear advantage in raw numbers, Republicans dominate the kinds of communities where people are more likely to actually vote. Turnout, Sellers finds, tends to be higher in GOP strongholds – the more affluent, highly educated suburbs and low-density rural and exurban areas, all places with higher levels of home-ownership.
Democrats face an uphill battle in urban neighborhoods and minority-majority suburbs closer to the urban center. "Turnout in the Democratic urban and minority strongholds, and shifts among middle class and distressed suburbs are the decisive swing factors in U.S. national elections," Sellers wrote in an email.
In more recent political contests, this dramatic battle for the suburbs has led to some seemingly surprising electoral shifts. From 1996 to 2004, the middle-class suburbs leaned Republican. Since then, it's been a tug of war, with the Democrats coming out on top in 2006-8, the Republicans pulling ahead in 2010, and the Democrats making a comeback in the 2012 election.
But while voting patterns in the distress 'burbs shift back and forth, ongoing urbanization and increased density appear to favor the Democrats. Regardless, the battle for the suburbs remains fierce, and they have come to define America’s new electoral map.
Same thing happened here. Dems moved in and took over.
______ is/are the new ______.
I hate this phrase with a passion.
Half of the US population live is 146 out of 3000 counties.
This article is just one element of the key to understanding “fundamentally transforming America.” The goal is to transform America into a perpetual one-party Soviet style dictatorship. In order to do this, they have to destroy the affluent, independent and generally Republican suburbs. What makes this suburban living possible is a high number of good-paying jobs and cheap energy for the large homes and transportation.
If you look at 0bama’s policies, all of them are designed to destroy the high-paying private sector jobs, and cut off the cheap energy. Then, those formerly independent minded Republican voters will be herded into the collectives of the large cities, and transformed into dependent, reliable democrats.
I think I lost patience with virtually all political analysis of this type years ago. What interests of inner-city blacks mean that it’s okay to slaughter black babies? Since when should “Blue States”—that vote to slaughter babies—be allowed to remain in the Union?
After January 22, 1973, there is only one place for the U.S. Government—on the ash heap of history. And God is going to put it there.
I hope to die before the electricity goes off and the beheadings of Christians begin.
Mr. Jefferson was well aware of the problem over 200 years ago.
An astute student of history and human nature, Thomas Jefferson, predicted what we see happening here in America. While a strong case can be made that the French aristocracy brought it upon themselves, as ambassador in France, he witnessed the run up to the FIRST socialist/communist revolution there. He penned the following observations concerning what would happen HERE should that socialism come to the United States. He CORRECTLY predicted that we would become an increasingly contentious and litigious people as we shouldered one another out of the way to get OURS from the public trough and the trough would soon be empty.
He also knew where the bulk of the problem would originate.
That whirring noise you may hear coming from that mountain in Charlottesville, Virginia is Mr. Jefferson getting up to around 3600 RPM.
(A 6 minute video with this information may be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypLu49pq3bI)
As I understand it, at the time of the drafting of the Declaration, Mr. Jefferson originally wrote “…Life, Liberty and PROPERTY…” (meaning that one’s right to freely acquire, use and dispose of his property – to the extent doing so did not violate the same to others – was a Creator endowed right. Because slavery viewed humans as property, the phrase “Pursuit of Happiness” was adopted instead to avoid – at least for the time being — the inevitable debate on that subject.
“The mobs of the great cities add just so much to the support of pure government as sores do to the strength of the human body. It is the manners and spirit of a people which preserve a republic in vigor. A degeneracy in these is a canker which soon eats to the heart of its laws and constitution.” —Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIX, 1782. ME 2:230
“I think our governments will remain virtuous for many centuries as long as they are chiefly agricultural; and this will be as long as there shall be vacant lands in any part of America. When they get piled upon one another in large cities as in Europe, they will become corrupt as in Europe.” —Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787. Papers 12:442
“I view great cities as pestilential to the morals, the health and the liberties of man. True, they nourish some of the elegant arts; but the useful ones can thrive elsewhere; and less perfection in the others, with more health, virtue and freedom, would be my choice.” —Thomas Jefferson to Benjamin Rush, 1800. ME 10:173
“Our cities... exhibit specimens of London only; our country is a different nation.” —Thomas Jefferson to Andre de Daschkoff, 1809. ME 12:304
“Everyone, by his property or by his satisfactory situation, is interested in the support of law and order. And such men may safely and advantageously reserve to themselves a wholesome control over their public affairs and a degree of freedom which, in the hands of the canaille of the cities of Europe, would be instantly perverted to the demolition and destruction of everything public and private.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:401
“An insurrection... of science, talents, and courage, against rank and birth... has failed in its first effort, because the mobs of the cities, the instrument used for its accomplishment, debased by ignorance, poverty, and vice, could not be restrained to rational action. But the world will recover from the panic of this first catastrophe.” —Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:402
“I fear nothing for our liberty from the assaults of force; but I have seen and felt much, and fear more from English books, English prejudices, English manners, and the apes, the dupes, and designs among our professional crafts. When I look around me for security against these seductions, I find it in the wide spread of our agricultural citizens, in their unsophisticated minds, their independence and their power, if called on, to crush the Humists of our cities, and to maintain the principles which severed us from England.” —Thomas Jefferson to Horatio G. Spafford, 1814. ME 14:120
In the early 1930’s Stalin managed to kill off 3-8 million citizens with the vast majority being rural...hard to take their land if they are healthy and still kicking.
Walter Duranty viewed it as progress (breaking eggs for an omlette), and why not he had just got a Pulitzer in 32 for being a mouthpiece of Stalinist Propaganda.
Anyhow, I see a correlation between then and Obama’s fundamental transformation you so eloquently described.
Got food?
I was a Political Science major at Indiana University in 1980 when I took my seminar course in Comparative Political Systems, which should really have been called “Soviet Communism Here and Now.” Everything I heard Professor Hansen advocate then I see being done now.
Only a couple other members of the class saw it as well. Other members of the class drank the kool ade, and signed up as foot soldiers in the Long March through the institutions. I tried to warn my SOB (School of Business) friends, but they didn’t want to listen. They wanted to go make money.
Boy is that an on-target observation. I was in college around the same time as you. I went back to my campus a few years ago, strolled around the stacks on the upper floors of the library, when suddenly it dawned on me...My God, they really DID expect the Soviets to win the Cold War!
Row upon row of treatises on how to plan and run a Centrally Managed Economy.
Perhaps that is why Sandy Hook happened.....
All in all it’s the urban areas that choose the president, so the rest of America in red counties across this nation will continue to be disenfranchised ad infinitum.
What's changed, I guess, is that some of the old swing areas have gone solid for one party or the other. Rural areas aren't swinging Democrat and urban areas aren't swinging Republican any more. So the suburbs are the thing that's left that either party can still win.
Something similar has also been true of suburbia, though. Predominantly suburban states like NJ, CT, and DE have been Democrat strongholds (at least in presidential elections) for some time now, as are big states like CA and IL. Even if either side can win in the suburbs, the margins Republicans can win by aren't enough to put those states in the Republican column.
Obama will be doing it, starting with his gun grabbing.
In Illinois municipalities regularly hire public administration graduates aka central planners. These central planners then discover that the municipality needs... central planning!
Presidents have always had to be middle-roaders. Take a look at Reagan’s first campaign against Carter. He had to curve back, too. We’re much more aware of the game and much more partisan today. Ideally, we work to get the most conservative House and Senate and then control them for the next two decades just like the Democrats did. Inch by inch we can move the country to the right, just like the Democrats did to the left.
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