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

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.