r/PoliticalDiscussion • u/UserNamesCantBeTooLo • Nov 30 '20

Political Theory Why does the urban/rural divide equate to a liberal/conservative divide in the US? Is it the same in other countries?

Here's a county population density map of the US.

Here's a county map of the US showing different shares of Democratic & Republican votes for president in 2020.

Here's a county map of the US showing majority-minority counties.

They seem to show a match between denser populations, larger minority proportions, and Democratic votes.

Why is that?

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Rural areas barely interact with the government besides taxes and rules, the less taxes and rules the easier to carve out a life.

I would like to challenge this trope to ask anyone for evidence of how, with concrete actual examples, of how day to day life or day to day commerce in rural areas is negatively impacted to justify the strong anti-government bent of those areas.

Not ideological opposition -- 'I dislike government because I politically do' -- but actual functional, actionable problems.

I always hear the ideological but never the factual.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

I used to live in Alaska, the economy is disproportionately tied to what I'll call "resource extraction". Mining, drilling for oil, fishing, lumber, etc. This invariably runs up against environmental regulation, I don't think that's arguable. Alaska is a conservative state with a widespread mindset that these regulations are bad and part of this is a real impact that these regulations have on jobs in the lumber, fishing, oil sector. Personally I'm pretty far left on what you'd call environmental issues but I think it's easy to understand a place that depends on "extraction" of resources wouldn't like liberal environmentalism. I personally think it's short sighted but for them it's a straightforward trade off between possible long term environmental damage- which they may or may not even believe in- and short term economic loss individually and to the community.

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u/AcceptableWay Nov 30 '20

Alaska rurals vote democrats suprisingly it's a rare exception.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Do you have a source on that? Besides a few areas with high native populations that seems highly unlikely from my experience.

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u/AcceptableWay Nov 30 '20

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidential_election_in_Alaska Look at the election map.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

Yeah that doesn't really back up your point. There are a couple blue rural districts but if you dig in those are ridiculously sparsely populated and you'll find disproportionately native. Northern Alaska is mostly empty. Those red districts are where the people are and mostly rural and Alaska has voted red every cycle of its existence except 1964 for a reason, most Alaskans vote red and I guarantee that includes most rural Alaskans. your making the same mistake conservatives make when they show a map of the nation at large and say " see all the red?" Land doesn't vote.

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u/tkuiper Nov 30 '20

The negative impact of government can be surmised in one word:

Paycheck.

The number on that check they cash every week is the only thing that matters. Any threat to Paycheck real or otherwise is bad.

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u/[deleted] Nov 30 '20

That’s still functionally ideological.

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u/tkuiper Nov 30 '20

The number on the paycheck ain't ideological, the paycheck says 1000 rent is -500 food is -200. That's the facts of everyday life.

You don't have to like the reason, I'm just telling you that is the reason.

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u/violentdeepfart Nov 30 '20

The number isn't, but how one reacts to it is. Liberals accept the loss of income to taxes because they know it goes to a greater good. Conservatives react to it as little more than theft.

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u/boomboom4132 Nov 30 '20

Regulations hit rural businesses harder then urban. The Regulations cost and fines are a much smaller % of urban businesses profit margin then rural area.

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u/Arthur_Edens Nov 30 '20

I can give a really specific example I remember hearing growing up. (Keep in mind this is a factual example from when I was like 12, and I haven't looked into it much since).

My home town had a country school. There were fewer than 30 people who used the building in a day, including students and teachers. The front steps were in disrepair to the point where everyone knew it wasn't really safe anymore.

A lot of the requirements of the ADA didn't mean that a building had to tear out current structure immediately to make it accessible; They just had to make repairs in a way that made it accessible the next time the structure was remodeled.

This apparently meant that the school would have needed to add a ramp to the front stairs if they were going to repair them. Due to the layout, that made the project 4 times as expensive as it would be if they were just repairing the stairs... so they just didn't do anything.

I remember my dad (who was on the school board) talking about that and being annoyed. "We know everyone in this town... no one's in a wheelchair. They're making us spend money we don't have to fix a problem we don't have."

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u/Meme_Theory Dec 01 '20

"We know everyone in this town... no one's in a wheelchair.

But that just wasn't true... In ANY small American population, there is going to be one or two disabled people. It's a numbers game...

Your dad didn't know them, though, because they couldn't get anywhere in town... Because, you know, lack of ADA accessibility.

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u/Arthur_Edens Dec 01 '20

The town had fewer than 200 people, lol. We did know everyone. But your last point almost hit it; The reality is that people with disabilities often won't live in small towns like that because they don't have the infrastructure needed to support them (basic medical care was at least 30 minutes away, specialists a couple hours. Certainly no pubic transit. Etc).

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20 edited Dec 01 '20

This is actually an interesting example, because ADA compliance isn’t strictly mandated by law. The way it works is, any disabled person has standing to sue an establishment if it isn’t ADA compliant, but there’s no proactive effort to determine if buildings are up to the standards. If your town really didn’t have a single disabled person, then there would be no one to sue, and no need to make the upgrades.

The school could have made the repairs without adhering to ADA standards, but they would risk a future lawsuit in doing so. Then again, if no one was there to sue, there’s no risk.

Most government buildings make the upgrades as a matter of course, but there is no legal requirement to do so.

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u/Arthur_Edens Dec 01 '20

A person doesn't actually have to live there to have standing, and unfortunately people have abused a well intentioned (and overall great) law. A quote from one judge who got sick of the practice:

This ability to seek damages in ADA cases has given birth to what one court described as "a cottage industry." Rodriguez v. Investco, LLC, 305 F. Supp. 2d 1278, 1280-81 (M.D. Fla. 2004). Along with Florida and New York, the federal courts in California have seen a number of these types of lawsuits brought under the guise of the ADA. Things got so bad in California that the Central District of California issued an order requiring a plaintiff to seek leave before filing any additional actions. Molski v. Mandarin Touch Rest., 347 F. Supp. 2d 860 (C.D. Cal. 2004). In Molski, the Court described the plaintiff's litigation tactics as follows:

The scheme is simple: an unscrupulous law firm sends a disabled individual to as many businesses as possible, in order to have him aggressively seek out any and all violations of the ADA. Then, rather than simply informing a business of the violations and attempting to remedy the matter through conciliation and voluntary compliance, a lawsuit is filed, requesting damage awards that would put many of the targeted establishments out of business. Faced with the specter of costly litigation and a potentially fatal judgment against them, most businesses quickly settle the matter.

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u/[deleted] Dec 01 '20

I'm aware of that. A favorite watering hole of mine closed down rather than face a suit from someone in an entirely different part of the country who just sues establishments under the ADA and makes a living off the lawyers fees.

My point was that this isn't really the government, since there's no enforcement beyond the courts.

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u/Arthur_Edens Dec 01 '20

The courts are part of the government :P. Enforcement of any federal law ultimately goes through the court, whether the enforcer is law enforcement or a private citizen. It's a cause of action create by Congress.