It’s Not the Cities, Stupid

Hmmm... Interesting point. My county voted for Kerry, and two years ago for Hillary. We're the largest county in NY, are extremely rural (if you set out from the back of my house, you'll walk at least a mile before you hit another road), and have the highest unemployment and very little growth. In fact, we have more abandoned roads than we do new roads.
-russ

The Left dominates the cities because of fashion -- they desire, and live for, fashion superiority. They like to think it is intellectual or moral superiority, but it's actually mob fashions. And the top jet setters want to set the fashions.


Libertarians were the huge losers in the Bush/Kerry election. The choice was big spending Bush, or even BIGGER spending Kerry, plus tax increases (on the rich! how would that get more jobs?).

If you look at three Bush policies: pro-War, pro-Tax Cuts, pro-God, you find out that Kerry had huge support on economic issues -- anti-Cuts.
See http://tomgrey.motime.com/1100218857#372506

In such a tri-issue group, one would expect that agreement on two issues would lead to support for that candidate. But there were two groups for which this seemed to not be the case:
pro-War, anti-Cuts, anti-God (Liberal Hawks; almost like Sullivan, whose support for the War wasn't enough; more like Roger Simon & Michael Totten). War/ terrorism is the big issue.

The other group are the "moral value" pro-lifers, especially Catholics. Who are:
anti-War (pope was against), anti-Cuts, pro-God.

In the coming Dem meltdown, faction fighting, etc., it would be good for anti-God small gov't types to think about adjusting the Dem position to measure results of gov't programs. Like reading scores, house ownership rates, etc -- so as to say Bush isn't doing enough, but to get used to judging policy more on reality measures rather than rhetoric.

"perhaps there are climatic factors at work rather than economic ones."

There is an undeniable net migration of population South and Southwestern. And likely better economic growth in the first Bush term, some of which is due to politico-economic factors, like low taxes, right-to-work laws, and cheap land (and low services). And certainly local economic conditions are related to the political environment. The high tech boom of the 90's focused around high-education, high service areas as a contrast.

Certainly a libertarian should be looking at the way federal policies might be affecting where recent growth is occurring before drawing conclusions as to the importance of local political conditions. These factors would include
increased military spending, water subsidies for the SW, the change in tax law to make the sales tax deductible, immigration policies, a continuing health care subsidy that probably favors retirement areas, etc. And the particularized pork that a Republican Congress generated.

I would imagine that population growth would be a lagging indicator of economic growth, because areas with a booming economy tend to attract people (witness Silicon Valley in the '90s, or at least housing prices there) and those that lose jobs tend to lose people (witness Ohio and Michigan).

But then again, the fact that booming populations occur mainly in southern and western areas, perhaps there are climatic factors at work rather than economic ones.

I think Wooldridge was talking about rates of economic growth, not population growth.

I would expect the two to be very closely correlated.

For example:

"Recently, the U.S. has sacrificed exports (and jobs in export sectors of the economy) for cheap financing from East Asia (and jobs in interest sensitive sectors of the economy)"

US as Net Debtor

Suburban and exurban housing construction, interest sensitive, and favorable to Republicans. In general cheap land and its development is a red state industry. Increase Fed Funds to a rate that strengthens the dollar and then watch what happens to growth in Phoenix and Dallas.

I think Wooldridge was talking about rates of economic growth, not population growth.

Looking at states as a whole, there are only two states that grew by less than 3.4%, both of which grew by under 1%, and those are WV and ND, both of which voted for Bush. But I suppose it's true that out of the top 20 in population growth, only numbers 10, 11, 13, and 18 voted for Kerry. However, 1, 2, 3, 7, 9, 12, 16, and 19 were all considered swing states, and may potentially start voting Democratic as soon as 2008. It's hard to tell if having small population causes both the high population growth and Republican voting, or if the high population growth causes Republican voting. It seems plausible that after a few more years of high population growth, they're likely to vote Democrat, so I'm not entirely sure what this means for the urban archipelago hypothesis.

Checking CNN.com and the census bureao, I note that the largest counties in California, Washington, Nevada, Missouri, Minnesota, Louisiana, Wisconsin, Illinois, Michigan, Tennessee, Florida, Ohio, Virginia, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut all voted for Kerry, while the largest counties in Texas, Utah, and Arizona voted for Bush. (These are just the first 21 largest counties I found at census.gov.) But it's true that all ten of the fastest-growing counties voted for Bush. However, those ten are all relatively small compared to nearby counties, so they don't exactly screw up the idea of the Urban Archipelago. I would say that they're stagnating because they're large (once you reach a certain density, it's tough to grow), and they're also liberal because they're large (when you're living very close to lots of people, you develop lots of tolerance for different culture, and exposure to poor people close by increases one's respect for the social safety net). At least, that's a naive view that would certainly explain the correlation between size, stagnation, and liberalness.

Actually, looking on the maps at CNN.com, there are four large counties of over 200,000 near Atlanta, and the two largest voted for Kerry, while the third and fourth voted for Bush. I imagine Atlanta is in one of the largest. Similarly, around Charlotte, the only county of over 200,000 voted for Kerry (though only by about 10%), while the four surrounding counties of about 60,000 voted for Bush. The county containing Phoenix voted for Bush, but only by about 10%, and it includes much of the surrounding area. Dallas county voted for Bush 50-49, while Tarrant county (Ft. Worth) voted for Bush 62-37, and was actually Bush's second largest vote margin, after Orange County, CA (which is one of the five largest counties in the nation). So it seems like Kerry did win even these cities, though by only a very tiny margin, and he lost the suburbs ("boomburbs") where all the growth is occurring.

I would say they voted for him because as big of a spender as he is, Kerry would've most likely been worse...

Good Lord. Or maybe even Bush used fiscal and monetary policies to reward and consolidate his geographic base?

One could look at the late 90's and say liberal cities like San Francisco and Boston had high growth because they were liberal. One might even be able to factor in a tech bubble and collapse.

Or one could simply hesitate to make such generalizations.