RealClearPolitics’ political analyst Sean Trende looks at Midwest political trends for mega cities, large cities, small cities, large towns, small towns, and rural areas. It turns out that where you live tends to predict how you’ll vote. The more urban, the more Democrat; the more rural, the more Republican.
What if one’s political beliefs are, to some nontrivial degree, a response to one’s living conditions? Trende doesn’t ask this question, but somebody needs to, so I will.
I don’t deny there is a tendency to choose to live where people see the world as you do, who value the opposing pluses of urban or rural life as you do. But what if the causality also works in the opposite direction?
What if high-density urban living causes one to value more an interventionist, regulatory governmental presence? What if low-density rural living causes one to see government regulation as unnecessary meddling in one’s personal choices?
I can imagine moving urban people to the country and rural people to the city to see if their politics would change. Maybe they would.
But what if they didn’t?
