1. A Republican politician power-hungry enough to adopt the leftist policies that urbanites favor would probably be power-hungry enough to just become a Democrat.
2. Leftist voters want leftist policies delivered by Democrats for roughly the same reason don't want their filet mignon served on a paper plate.
3. The Republican party donors and leaders have probably never made any serious effort to take over the cities because they perceive that as a lost cause that would waste resources that could be used on winnable races. Correctly or incorrectly.
4. The formation of even one Republican mega city faces a major collective action problem. See the Free State Project.
Living in the city selects against several republican characteristics, such as having children.
City living also emphasizes collectivism (NYC fines if you fail to compost!), and extreme specialization (renters that need a handyman to fix anything, can’t cook, etc).
Much of the democratic dominance of big cities is tied to organized labor. The conclusion comes from several studies looking at the funding of D and R candidates. Ds get early and substantial money from organized labor.
Only 6%, 7.2 million, private sector workers are unionized, probably mostly in big cities. But there are 3 million federal workers and 20 million state and local workers I'd wager that most government workers are in big cities too.
Federal unions were allowed by JFK in 1962, I think. But I doubt that changed big city politics much. Those state and local workers probably made a bigger difference.
It would be interesting to see statistical comparisons of R/D mayorships and unionization of state and local workers.
It would also be interesting to see how this changed in closed shop and right to work states.
Searching ScribD for studies was where I read about the statistics tied to elections and funding. I was researching the origins of money used to fund candidates. Couples vote 92% of the time for the same candidate. So, for 1 union family member, you get 2 votes. The major unions include Teamsters, Teachers, Police, Firefighters, and Municipal Workers. Remember, you don't need to win by much; winning by 1 vote is all it takes. Once a party has a majority for 10 years, gerrymandering makes challenges to the Status Quo even harder. Additionally, the longer a party is in power, the more arrogant and corrupt it tends to become. This has been true for thousands of years.
And I think on the other side, rural areas have(or at least used to have) many farmers who liked independence and the government just not getting too involved in anything they do
The more self-reliant a person is, the less likely they are to join a group that requires subjugation of the individual to the whole. P.S. I do too much reading and research.
Throwing an easy answer out there—it's because of two slopes:
1a) there is a regular and smooth path in democracy-as-she-is-known (city policy, originating from the executive, council, etc.) for increasing amounts of essentially authoritarian and compulsory *stuff* (legislation, policies, codes, covenants, bureaucracies, rules, programs, departments, etc.) in municipalities;
1b) the path for removing those positive requirements is extremely difficult even with an overwhelming democratic mandate.
2) it's very easy to leave a municipality.
Let's say you own a house in an HOA. The HOA board passes a rule against building garages. You always wanted a garage and you are incensed. You now have two choices. You can wage an unpopular, uphill battle against the existing powers that be, rallying apathetic neighbors in defense of a freedom they may not even care about, for an uncertain result, which even if you win may take years to realistically pay off for you personally, and even if you win, at any time the board could pass another rule making your window treatments illegal or telling you that your grass is 0.25" too tall or saying your bird feeder is an eyesore…
Or you could just sell your house and move to a place where the HOA doesn't exist.
Now there's selective evaporation. If you're the sort of person who likes rules, a place where it's easy to make rules and hard to get rid of rules is fine. You stay in the HOA, even if many of the rules start to chafe, because fundamentally you think a place where there are lots of rules is better than the wild west.
But if you're the sort of person who values personal freedom, then unless you're incredibly attached to that neighborhood, the burden placed on you to defend it is going to seem unbearable and unnecessary.
As more of the latter leave, the more likely it is that others like them will leave, because the possibility of changing the neighborhood to be more free becomes increasingly improbable and quixotic.
Note that this explains why world-historically cities were not any more left-liberal. Beyond the fact that left-liberalism is a novelty, it's the democratic legislative process, where elected representatives and executives delegate legal authority away to unaccountable permanent staff, and bureaucracy takes on an inertia that is too ponderous to arrest, which causes partisan evaporation. In cities dominated by aristocratic elites (the historic norm), the dynamic is not present.
I think you are overlooking how strong the party line heuristic is for mayoral elections, when very very few republican candidates (all of whom would be viewed as longshots in a democratic city) are well funded enough that they can increase awareness among a generally very very uninformed electorate.
I have a theory that the more government meddles in daily life, the more people look to government first for all answers. It literally becomes more profitable, both emotionally and financially, to sic government on other people before they sic government on you.
If most people's involvement is with city government, cities seem a natural place for the first demands for more government.
Big cities also provide more scope for more lucrative corruption, so the more corrupt politicians would gravitate towards the bigger cities, and bigger cities would also breed more corrupt politicians. More meddling, more promises to voters.
I believe your first two paragraphs are key, and also suggest why urban areas are epicenters for social diseases such as high crime and generational dole driven poverty. Cities not only select for people who want more government oversight (or at least are willing to tolerate it) but also condition people to both expect other people ("authorities") to handle their problems and expect that they cannot do it themselves. Combine that with the network density of cities allowing for easier grey/black markets to develop into large subcultures, and you have the breeding ground for all kinds of bad things at all levels of society.
The most prominent counter example of Bryan's observations is Rudy Guiliani in NYC, and he specifically ran on cleaning up lawlessness. Once the excesses of the lower levels of society were cleaned up, voters went right back to the party of bigger government. That suggests to me that their preferences are for more government oversight until things get so bad that their secondary preference of "orderly society" needs meeting, and that secondary bar is pretty low.
People who want less government oversight and more order/less crime move to the suburbs or rural areas. People who want more government activity and are less interested in order move to cities.
one factor: the electoral college incentivizes the national republican party to ignore the needs of city-dwelling republicans in blue states, and therefore ignore the needs of city dwellers overall
A moderate republican mayoral candidate would never win a primary even if they would have a shot in the general election. The ideological extremity of the republican base, even in cities, nominates candidates who are too far right to put up any serious competition.
(1) Democrats are all about controlling others. Except for abortion and gay rights, Democrats love control. The Democrats could rename themselves the anti-freedom party. When in close quarters in a big city, people feel an increased need to control the behavior of others.
(2) In big cities the rich and poor are in closer proximity. The rich see the poor and want to help. The poor see the rich and want a piece of the action. Both groups look to Democrats to solve perceived inequities.
(3) Big cities have some richer, better educated citizens who may believe they are better than the regular folks in "fly over" country. The reputations perpetuated by the media are that Republicans are selfish bastards and Democrats are kind, generous people. If you already feel better than others, it makes sense to join the party of the "better" people.
I think it gives too much credit to urban voters to ask why they vote against their own best interest. I focus here on middle and upper class urbanites versus working poor or unemployed. For the working poor and unemployed, it certainly seems rational and in their own real material best interest to vote for more socialist policies as these will be redistributive in nature. That is, vote yourself a larger piece of the pie.
The more difficult question is middle and upper class urbanites who vote Democrat/socialist. There is more at work than simple material self-interest. The motivation to vote against one's own self interest can be explained in terms of psychic or emotional benefits, bordering on religiosity. There is a parallel between traditional religious self-denial (e.g., thou shalt not commit adultery) and the self-denial of the "new religion" of environmentalism for example (people must deny ourselves and others creature comforts and even forego procreation to save the planet). So ultimately I think we don't really have to answer the question why urbanites vote against their own real material self interest. It is at base a question of their "moral" or "religious" commitment to policies that they perceive to be in their own self interest, even if the policies are ultimately destructive to themselves individually as well as the cities they inhabit.
Cities are full of childless people and browns. It’s demographically impossible for the party of white families to win in that environment. Once that’s the case the median voter becomes the median voter in the democratic primary.
It was whiter and more family oriented back then. And you still had some Archie bunker holdouts.
1990s liberalism required 1990s demographics. At a certain point it just becomes impossible for a republican to win, and then the new “median voter” becomes the median voter of the democratic primary.
I wonder about that. It seems an alternate answer is that if a city gets low enough on law and order a candidate that can credibly promise to restore law and order can get elected. His party will lose again once the job is done, but it can get elected to do the job.
The trouble with that theory is that one has to assume then that cities where that never seems to happen just have a very high tolerance for criminality. However, given the state of many cities, that might be true, so long as the upper classes have a way to avoid the problems.
Let us imagine a city has 100 units of crime. They go through something like the crack wars and it becomes 300 units of crime. At this point, even the blacks and the childless liberals in gentrified neighborhoods think it's too much. They can only stomach 150 units of crime.
So they elect someone that gets crime back around its original 100 units. Once this is achieved they go back to voting for whoever promises more welfare or rent control or pride parades or excessive pensions.
But the white middle class family with kids will only tolerate 20 units of crime. That's their upper limit. 100, 150, 300....who cares. Just move to the suburbs.
Yes, I think that is a pretty good model of the situation. Cities select for people who tolerate more crime. The "whiter and more family oriented" part is probably not necessary to explain Rudy Giuliani, just that there is a threshold of crime that will get people to vote for people running as law and order Republicans.
Bohemians supply better parties and nightlife, though this is a composite view of all coastal megacities, not just the US
it is probably the case that cities concentrate both the economic and social vanguard, even under monarchy, the cities are the lefter part of a country
Dallas is the only city over a million with a Republican mayor.
Fort Worth is close to a million and has a Republican mayor.
A few assorted thoughts:
1. A Republican politician power-hungry enough to adopt the leftist policies that urbanites favor would probably be power-hungry enough to just become a Democrat.
2. Leftist voters want leftist policies delivered by Democrats for roughly the same reason don't want their filet mignon served on a paper plate.
3. The Republican party donors and leaders have probably never made any serious effort to take over the cities because they perceive that as a lost cause that would waste resources that could be used on winnable races. Correctly or incorrectly.
4. The formation of even one Republican mega city faces a major collective action problem. See the Free State Project.
Living in the city selects against several republican characteristics, such as having children.
City living also emphasizes collectivism (NYC fines if you fail to compost!), and extreme specialization (renters that need a handyman to fix anything, can’t cook, etc).
Interesting points Rob. Thanks
I had thought that Miami was a counterexample to your main claim, but it isn't. Its population is only about 500,000.
Much of the democratic dominance of big cities is tied to organized labor. The conclusion comes from several studies looking at the funding of D and R candidates. Ds get early and substantial money from organized labor.
I just asked DuckDuckGo a couple of questions.
Only 6%, 7.2 million, private sector workers are unionized, probably mostly in big cities. But there are 3 million federal workers and 20 million state and local workers I'd wager that most government workers are in big cities too.
Federal unions were allowed by JFK in 1962, I think. But I doubt that changed big city politics much. Those state and local workers probably made a bigger difference.
It would be interesting to see statistical comparisons of R/D mayorships and unionization of state and local workers.
It would also be interesting to see how this changed in closed shop and right to work states.
Searching ScribD for studies was where I read about the statistics tied to elections and funding. I was researching the origins of money used to fund candidates. Couples vote 92% of the time for the same candidate. So, for 1 union family member, you get 2 votes. The major unions include Teamsters, Teachers, Police, Firefighters, and Municipal Workers. Remember, you don't need to win by much; winning by 1 vote is all it takes. Once a party has a majority for 10 years, gerrymandering makes challenges to the Status Quo even harder. Additionally, the longer a party is in power, the more arrogant and corrupt it tends to become. This has been true for thousands of years.
And I think on the other side, rural areas have(or at least used to have) many farmers who liked independence and the government just not getting too involved in anything they do
The more self-reliant a person is, the less likely they are to join a group that requires subjugation of the individual to the whole. P.S. I do too much reading and research.
Your question is so good because I have never heard it asked.
The answer is less good.
I hypothesize that white flight removed almost all the common sense voters to the suburbs, where Republicans are still found.
Then, educated youth, brainwashed by postmodernism, flocked to the cities in an act of rebellion against their suburban parents
The result? A toxic brew of the “oppressed” and the self-loathing descendants of their “oppressors” that cannot turn any way other than left.
However, these constituencies are being mugged by reality, and “people of color” are turning red.
Throwing an easy answer out there—it's because of two slopes:
1a) there is a regular and smooth path in democracy-as-she-is-known (city policy, originating from the executive, council, etc.) for increasing amounts of essentially authoritarian and compulsory *stuff* (legislation, policies, codes, covenants, bureaucracies, rules, programs, departments, etc.) in municipalities;
1b) the path for removing those positive requirements is extremely difficult even with an overwhelming democratic mandate.
2) it's very easy to leave a municipality.
Let's say you own a house in an HOA. The HOA board passes a rule against building garages. You always wanted a garage and you are incensed. You now have two choices. You can wage an unpopular, uphill battle against the existing powers that be, rallying apathetic neighbors in defense of a freedom they may not even care about, for an uncertain result, which even if you win may take years to realistically pay off for you personally, and even if you win, at any time the board could pass another rule making your window treatments illegal or telling you that your grass is 0.25" too tall or saying your bird feeder is an eyesore…
Or you could just sell your house and move to a place where the HOA doesn't exist.
Now there's selective evaporation. If you're the sort of person who likes rules, a place where it's easy to make rules and hard to get rid of rules is fine. You stay in the HOA, even if many of the rules start to chafe, because fundamentally you think a place where there are lots of rules is better than the wild west.
But if you're the sort of person who values personal freedom, then unless you're incredibly attached to that neighborhood, the burden placed on you to defend it is going to seem unbearable and unnecessary.
As more of the latter leave, the more likely it is that others like them will leave, because the possibility of changing the neighborhood to be more free becomes increasingly improbable and quixotic.
Note that this explains why world-historically cities were not any more left-liberal. Beyond the fact that left-liberalism is a novelty, it's the democratic legislative process, where elected representatives and executives delegate legal authority away to unaccountable permanent staff, and bureaucracy takes on an inertia that is too ponderous to arrest, which causes partisan evaporation. In cities dominated by aristocratic elites (the historic norm), the dynamic is not present.
I think you are overlooking how strong the party line heuristic is for mayoral elections, when very very few republican candidates (all of whom would be viewed as longshots in a democratic city) are well funded enough that they can increase awareness among a generally very very uninformed electorate.
I have a theory that the more government meddles in daily life, the more people look to government first for all answers. It literally becomes more profitable, both emotionally and financially, to sic government on other people before they sic government on you.
If most people's involvement is with city government, cities seem a natural place for the first demands for more government.
Big cities also provide more scope for more lucrative corruption, so the more corrupt politicians would gravitate towards the bigger cities, and bigger cities would also breed more corrupt politicians. More meddling, more promises to voters.
I believe your first two paragraphs are key, and also suggest why urban areas are epicenters for social diseases such as high crime and generational dole driven poverty. Cities not only select for people who want more government oversight (or at least are willing to tolerate it) but also condition people to both expect other people ("authorities") to handle their problems and expect that they cannot do it themselves. Combine that with the network density of cities allowing for easier grey/black markets to develop into large subcultures, and you have the breeding ground for all kinds of bad things at all levels of society.
The most prominent counter example of Bryan's observations is Rudy Guiliani in NYC, and he specifically ran on cleaning up lawlessness. Once the excesses of the lower levels of society were cleaned up, voters went right back to the party of bigger government. That suggests to me that their preferences are for more government oversight until things get so bad that their secondary preference of "orderly society" needs meeting, and that secondary bar is pretty low.
People who want less government oversight and more order/less crime move to the suburbs or rural areas. People who want more government activity and are less interested in order move to cities.
one factor: the electoral college incentivizes the national republican party to ignore the needs of city-dwelling republicans in blue states, and therefore ignore the needs of city dwellers overall
https://www.richardhanania.com/p/the-conservative-case-for-abolishing
A moderate republican mayoral candidate would never win a primary even if they would have a shot in the general election. The ideological extremity of the republican base, even in cities, nominates candidates who are too far right to put up any serious competition.
Here are three possible reasons:
(1) Democrats are all about controlling others. Except for abortion and gay rights, Democrats love control. The Democrats could rename themselves the anti-freedom party. When in close quarters in a big city, people feel an increased need to control the behavior of others.
(2) In big cities the rich and poor are in closer proximity. The rich see the poor and want to help. The poor see the rich and want a piece of the action. Both groups look to Democrats to solve perceived inequities.
(3) Big cities have some richer, better educated citizens who may believe they are better than the regular folks in "fly over" country. The reputations perpetuated by the media are that Republicans are selfish bastards and Democrats are kind, generous people. If you already feel better than others, it makes sense to join the party of the "better" people.
I think it gives too much credit to urban voters to ask why they vote against their own best interest. I focus here on middle and upper class urbanites versus working poor or unemployed. For the working poor and unemployed, it certainly seems rational and in their own real material best interest to vote for more socialist policies as these will be redistributive in nature. That is, vote yourself a larger piece of the pie.
The more difficult question is middle and upper class urbanites who vote Democrat/socialist. There is more at work than simple material self-interest. The motivation to vote against one's own self interest can be explained in terms of psychic or emotional benefits, bordering on religiosity. There is a parallel between traditional religious self-denial (e.g., thou shalt not commit adultery) and the self-denial of the "new religion" of environmentalism for example (people must deny ourselves and others creature comforts and even forego procreation to save the planet). So ultimately I think we don't really have to answer the question why urbanites vote against their own real material self interest. It is at base a question of their "moral" or "religious" commitment to policies that they perceive to be in their own self interest, even if the policies are ultimately destructive to themselves individually as well as the cities they inhabit.
Cities are full of childless people and browns. It’s demographically impossible for the party of white families to win in that environment. Once that’s the case the median voter becomes the median voter in the democratic primary.
People who can’t handle that move to the burbs.
How did rudy giuliani win in New York city.
It was whiter and more family oriented back then. And you still had some Archie bunker holdouts.
1990s liberalism required 1990s demographics. At a certain point it just becomes impossible for a republican to win, and then the new “median voter” becomes the median voter of the democratic primary.
I wonder about that. It seems an alternate answer is that if a city gets low enough on law and order a candidate that can credibly promise to restore law and order can get elected. His party will lose again once the job is done, but it can get elected to do the job.
The trouble with that theory is that one has to assume then that cities where that never seems to happen just have a very high tolerance for criminality. However, given the state of many cities, that might be true, so long as the upper classes have a way to avoid the problems.
Let us imagine a city has 100 units of crime. They go through something like the crack wars and it becomes 300 units of crime. At this point, even the blacks and the childless liberals in gentrified neighborhoods think it's too much. They can only stomach 150 units of crime.
So they elect someone that gets crime back around its original 100 units. Once this is achieved they go back to voting for whoever promises more welfare or rent control or pride parades or excessive pensions.
But the white middle class family with kids will only tolerate 20 units of crime. That's their upper limit. 100, 150, 300....who cares. Just move to the suburbs.
Yes, I think that is a pretty good model of the situation. Cities select for people who tolerate more crime. The "whiter and more family oriented" part is probably not necessary to explain Rudy Giuliani, just that there is a threshold of crime that will get people to vote for people running as law and order Republicans.
The median shifted in NYC, but this same story explains Eric Adams getting elected.
And crime got at least somewhat better.
When it inevitably gets worse under Mayor Mamdani, I expect we will see another Adams-type win.
Bohemians supply better parties and nightlife, though this is a composite view of all coastal megacities, not just the US
it is probably the case that cities concentrate both the economic and social vanguard, even under monarchy, the cities are the lefter part of a country