Suburbs: Young vs old

[All Along The Watchtower]

One interesting correlation that I've noticed in American political demographics is how the voting patterns of suburbs change over time.

The younger, less established, fast-growing suburbs/exurbs tend to be very Republican. However, the older and more established, more diverse, and slower-growing the suburb is, the more Democratic it votes.

For example, snowguy716 mentioned to me that the older suburbs of the Twin Cities in Minnesota like Bloomington, Richfield, etc. are lean Democratic, while the ones that are "middle-aged" in the second ring are lean Republican or 50/50, and then the young exurbs are very Republican.

I can think of a few possible reasons for this.

1. Younger, fast-growth areas tend to have residents that are very hostile to high taxes and regulation, and supportive of "pro-family" politics.

2. Older, more established areas, in contrast, tend to want to maintain social policies through government spending, rather than promote growth through pro-business policies.

3. The further you get away from an urban core, the less Democratic/more Republican you get (in general in America, though there are exceptions).

[fezzyfestoon]

A lot of it probably has to do with the general philosophy of the town itself. The fast-growing places in this country are forced and artificially cheap. People have a sense of being able to flee government to unrestricted, economically fantastic wonderlands where growth and prosperity never end. Then they end and the place turns realistic. Growth slows, people leave, the exciting new developments are exposed for being symptoms of out of control sprawl that is ultimately uninviting and stale. Things get old fast when the new stuff stops being built. Newly developed areas are full of people who think the government should let them do anything, because for the time being they can do anything. Little do they know (or care) it'll come back to haunt the people who can't afford to leave when they get sick of it. And those people vote Democratic because there's a reality there that what they've done to their town sucks and there needs to be control over growth. But the Republicans and their money have left to go smother another tow in unnecessary, unsustainable, falsely inexpensive growth fueled by a desire to take more money from people who think they "need" new fast-food houses and strip malls.

That's just my frustrated stream of consciousness though, I have some more fully developed ideas on this kind of thing I'll post later on.