3 simple Q's (Who are buying homes? Why are suburbs Rep? Why are cities Dem?)

[Beet]

Please rant your opinions on this topic. Before I get flamed for ignorance, let me first point out that I am from a county that is both highly suburban and highly Democratic. We are pretty middle class but are definitely higher than the median household income here.

Here is my shot at starting this:

One obvious answer would be income-- most poor people live in cities, and most rich people live in the suburbs. But does this explain why rural areas, where there are plenty of poor people, tend to vote heavily Republican?

Another possibility is that cities tend to have more blacks and other minorities while suburban areas are heavily white. This explanation holds some water, but cannot by itself explain the variation. For example, whites in D.C. and probably most other big Democratic cities are overwhelmingly Democratic. Why?

Another possibility is that suburban areas tend to have more "normal" families who are concerned with things such as keeping taxes low and family-oriented values, while cities tend to have more singles, who are socially more lax in their behavior or have weaker family values. They live in the city because they are poor, but it is cultural issues that provides the difference. This of course begs a question: is the GOP the party of "normal" people?

And finally, I am not sure any of these explanations explains the "trend" of recent decades of an increasing suburban-urban polarization.

So let me just pose three simple questions:

1) What are the population factors behind the growth of the suburbs? We have seen no massive outflux of inner city families into the suburbs. Nor have we seen a massive increase in the nation's home ownership rate since 1997 (perhaps 2-3%) Hence, who are the people buying these new houses in the housing boom? The answers to this question may explain some of the partisan makeup of the suburbs, and whether a "conversion" occurs when one moves from area A to area B, and one's economic interests and social idenficiation perhaps alter.

2) Why are the suburbs so Republican? Is it class, race, family structure, or something else?

3) Why are the cities so Democratic? Is it class, race, family structure, or something else?

[Beet]

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You could be right about this, at least for your area. It could be that both rural and city populations are moving to the suburbs. I just looked at the housing data and the national home ownership rate increased from 63% in 1965 to 64% in 1995-- a 1% gain for three decades. In 2004 it was at 68.6%, an over 4% gain in just the past 9 years. While 4% of households is a tiny fraction, it is a lot more movement than we've seen up until now.

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This doesn't explain why rural voters are heavily GOP though.

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In which direction?

Smash255-- true, but I want to establish the general patterns, and then look at the inevitable exceptions, like my own county. But feel free to post why you think these exceptions exist.

[Beet]

Smash and Flyers, great replies!

[Beet]

Smash and Flyers, great replies!

I simply gave you New York and Philly's trends.  Boston and Baltimore-Washington's trends are generally different from what I just described, but having been to some of their neighborhoods, there are a lot of similarities politically and "urban structure."  I guess Baltimore would kinda be like what I described in regards to Philly-NYC.  However, Washington is drastically different because you don't have somewhat socially conservative transition areas and you basically have "tax and spend" government worker liberals in Maryland and higher paid gov't workers plus lobbyists in Northern Virginia.  Boston is very funny because the only area that's socially conservative is really South Boston, which reminds me of a classic 1950s-1960s white ethnic, VERY socially conservative yet heavily Democratic neighborhood called Kensington in Philadelphia where my dad's family's from.  Of course the neighborhood is now mostly Latino.  Anyway, the rest of the Boston area is very liberal. 

Baltimore's suburbs are pretty conservative compared to the rest of the Northeast. I'm sure you've heard that many people consider Baltimore to be a "Southern" city in the North. Baltimore county (doesn't include the city) votes Democrat because of the inner Baltimore suburbs which are heavily Democrat (minorities moving out of the city), but the rest of the Baltimore suburbs are conservative Republican, and the exurbs are VERY conservative (Baltimore exurbs are spilling into York county, which is one of the reasons I think it trended Bush in '04).

Baltimore itself isn't very liberal, and much of Maryland is populist. The liberal areas are around D.C.

Based on religious sect which does not say everything but tells a lot, Baltimore is very Catholic along with much of the western shore, which would certainly put it in the north not the south. But it certainly is much more conservative, and you could say that it's trending conservative, whereas the D.C. suburbs are going the other way. Ehrlich was able to win because he ran up big margins in Baltimore county. By the way, would you generally consider Howard county as more part of the D.C. suburbs or more part of the Baltimore suburbs?

[Beet]

Thanks all for your replies. All quite fascinating.

The reason why I asked about the suburbs to begin with, is, that absent some gargantuan New-Dealish revolution to restore wealth equality in this country back to what it was in its heyday, and to restore parity among our three modern macroregions (city, suburb, country), it seems quite clear that the future of American living increasingly will be dominated by the suburbs. This has been the trend of the past 80 years, and barring what I mentioned or economic disaster, it will continue to be the trend for at least the next 20. Hence it seems that any political party that bases itself in winning over huge margins in the shrinking macroregions (city, rural) at the expense of the suburbs, as both parties increasingly are doing, are condemning themselves to a position in the long-term minority ; and that further, these shrinking macroregions are becoming less and less competitive and thus less and less relevant.

The growth of the suburban voter is no accident. Nor is it entirely due to the fact that a progressing people seek a comfortable life in the suburbs. The family will live in the suburbs and want to escape the city and country.

You must distinguish between the family voter and the single voter. The family is the most basic unit of society. You surely know by now I am not a social conservative, so this is no political hogwash. The family is the most basic unit of society primarily due to the rearing of children, presents many rewards but also makes demands, including stability, a decent income, health, finances, a social network, and planning. In short it demands responsibility and health, and in return it is self-perpetuating as children go on to emulate the parents. It is through the family that what we call social capital, in our postmodern day and age, in the absence of socialist cooperatives, is organized. On the other hand, the single voter, while he may be responsible, healthy, and be well connected to society, has no obligation of necessity to do so. He or she is ephemeral, rootless. Risk-taking yes, having more time and energy perhaps yes, younger yes, but she does not reproduce, and her situation is that of a minority.

What does this have to do with politics? Well, politics is an expression of society. Studies of partisan identification, political participation (including voting behavior and other forms of pariticipation), and public opinion all point to the fundamental part played by social context in each of these three political concepts. Social context is not everything, but no durabe political majority can be formed without an underlying social majority, or set of social majorities.

In the New Deal transition period, it was possible to form a coalition of a diverse set of distinct social entities, or sub-societies, within the umbrella of American culture. The industrial revolution generated a balance between the urban (from which unions arose), rural (from which farmers formed a large bloc), and suburban (the as yet Republican minority), a clash between the haves and the have-nots, and had weakened but not yet eliminated a different between geographic macroregions (North, South, West, as opposed to today's economic macroregions based on population density). The New Deal coalition and its reverse GOP coalition operated in kind of a bridge between agrarian and industrial societies; as it was still possible to form a majority out of fragments of America which were mutually balancing.

As industrialization consolidated and we move into the information economy, however, the economic macroregion balance is increasingly being disrupted by the growing dominance of the suburbs; the have vs have-not divide has become disrupted by the growing dominance of haves; the geographic macroregions are dissolving altogether in the face of southern and western development. We are used to thinking of our postmodern society as being more diverse, or heterogenous than industrial society; we have the image of the Leave-It-to-Beaver family that was the paragon of homogeneity, and we have the image of a relatively much more heterogenous society today. This view has been accepted not only in the common mind but by media, academic and government elites. But these post-industrial diversities of economic disparity, race, cultural values, and resurgent individualism mask an underlying counter-trend of increasing homogeneity:

1) while economic disparity has increased, the increase has mainly come due to the rising of a portion of the middle class into the upper middle class and the rising of a tiny minority in the very wealthy. It has come from changes at the top, not the bottom. And changes at the top are inherently log-limited in their form due to diminishing returns. In other words, there was more class warfare in the relatively egalitarian 1940's than there is in the highly unequal 2000's because the 1940's featured mass deprivation, having a car vs not having a car, whilst the inequality of the 2000's is the difference between a Kia and a Mercedes. A "have" in the 1940s might own a car worth $10,000 today; a "have-not" in the 1940s would own none. Today, the "have" owns a $100,000 Mercedes, the "have-not" owns a $15,000 Kia. Wealth inequality has increased tremendously, but the difference in the latter case is actually less when measured from a human perspective.

[Beet]

2) while racial diversity has increased with immigration, racial discrimination, though still existent, and racial segregation, though still existent, is less today than it was in the 1950s and 60s. Thus while there are more different races today, ceteris paribus, race is not as defining as it once was, relatively speaking. Once again, on paper, heterogeneity has increased, but in reality, it has not, due to countervailing homogeneity forces.

3) while cultural values seem to have become more divisive over issues of abortion, the shift of the public attention away from bread-and-butter, every day economic issues to social issues such as school prayer, "decency", religion in government, etc. has undercut the salience of political issues as a whole. Conflict has moved away from real battle over real resources to a simulation, as Lunar I think you pointed out to me over in the off-topic board, modern society is increasingly defined by the image rather than the reality. This undercuts the supposed 'polarization' over social issues because these issues are a lot less tangible and salient to most people. Further, there is evidence the public isn't nearly as polarized as the elites themselves are-- and convince us that we are. The real story isn't polarization but trivializatio.

4) Robert Putnam's 2000 work "Bowling Alone" is supposed to epitomize the resurgence of individualism as a consequence of the postindustrial society and thus provide evidence for growing heterogeneity in our society. The elements of this are that people are no longer as tied to certain social groups like bowling leagues as they were, people now change jobs more frequently, and move around more frequently, etc. But this is not evidence of growing heterogeneity but growing homogeneity. In the industrial age, a person who grew up in a mill town and worked in a factory from age 18 in the same town knew little or nothing else beyond it. He was highly distinguished, highly diverse, comapred to say, a professional working in a city or someone living two states away. In today's more mobile world, people come into contact with more different kinds of environments, different kinds of people, and have more diverse experiences--- diversity which in the aggregate leads to more interactions and hence more homogeneity of the society as a whole!

In fact I would argue that America had the most heterogeneity antebellum, when the south and north were so different that they would actually go to war with one another. They really were virtually different countries. Not today. America has more in common with English-speaking, McDonald's patronizing, surrender-monkey France than the north had in common with the south before 1860. The only place in the world slavery is legalized today is Sudan. Image of Sudan was a U.S. state!

This long diatribe into the relatively heterogeneity of the New Deal coalition, whose cause can be traced to economic processes, and the relative homogeneity and increasing homogeneity of our postindustrial society, leads me to the political conclusion that a majority political coalition cannot be built by either the Republicans or Democrats without an effort to capture the dominant, emergent homogenous culture. This culture is emergent in the suburbs. It is emergent there because people want to live there, because families are there, and because families reproduce themselves and perpetuate, whereas the fringes of society, people who stay single, or those who are elderly, or those inner city minorities or poor whites who can't make it out of their rural home towns, do not self-perpetuate in a way that could, even if all their forces were combined, ultimately challenge the standard suburban family.

Hence, the suburban voter is the bedrock of politics, even more so now than 10 years ago, and even more so 10 years from now than today. Any successful political party must study the suburban voter, his likes and dislikes, the causes and determinants of his party choice, the social context factors that influence his thinking and interest. Politics will continue, in the absence of a crisis such as Sept. 11, to trend towards trivialization, as the human psyche attempts to create conflict to occupy itself, even as society becomes more and more homogenous around suburban social capital, around which the primary institution is the either church or the union, but mostly the former as of now.

The Democratic party, for one, can take no more sure step towards ultimate oblivion and extinction than to drift towards today's anti-suburban, anti-society, anti-social capital wing of itself, of adult BRTDs. No amount of voter registration drives, strangers knocking on doors of unfamiliar communities, college kids trying to mobilize inner city single mothers, will or can succeed as a suburban community of men and women, gathering together at church, and exploiting their social networks, to exhort their friends and neighbors and vote-- for our kind of people! For our values! For our way of life!

[Beet]

Dude, we've finally found a guy who can spout out more stuff than I can!

You make a lot of interesting observations.  The ones about the differences between the haves and have-nots today, versus the 1940s, is particularly good.

One thing I would add, as a side effect to all this, is the different way poverty is perceived today versus then.  When the poor or relatively poor are part of the majority, poor people are ultimately viewed more as victims of circumstance or hard luck. 

Today, poverty is viewed, correctly in many cases, as a moral weakness.  I say correctly because there are cases in which moral weakness leads to poverty, through a complex interplay between illegitimacy, crime, drug abuse, and the degredation of available educational opportunities.  Despite the fact that the poor today are better off materially than in the 1940s, to be truly poor today is probably a lot worse today than it was then.

Thanks for your reply Dazzleman.

When you say that to be truly poor today is worse than in the 1940s, do you mean the truly poor today are worse off than in the 40s, or do you only mean that it requires greater moral weakness to be truly poor today than then?

This view of how poverty is looked at is interesting because it is all tied up with race. There's a substantial body of research out there that suggests that since poverty became tied up with images of welfare and blacks in the 1970s and 80s, tolerance of welfare programs and poverty has gone down a lot because it's viewed as "giving money to blacks." In fact, I think that there might soon be some evidence suggesting that the notion that blacks are lazy has declined since the end of welfare, but I'm not sure about that.

Also, I've heard it suggested that the Great Society changed people's perceptions of poverty in the opposite direction which you suggested... that prior to the 1960s, it was seen that if you were poor, this was a character fault, and that since then, it has come to be seen more as a facet of environment, although these people would probably categorize "illegitimacy, crime, drug abuse, and the degredation of available educational opportunities" as facets of environment rather than inherent personal factors.

[Beet]

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I read this right after you posted it and realized I basically agreed, but I suppose I should let you know.

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This could actually be true. I think it's the collapse of the Keynesian state more than the Great Society that ended the decline of poverty though. Even without the Great Society, the Keynesian economic policies of the Fordist era after 1930 were tending towards equalization. This ended around 1973, and Great Society or not, I think it fundamentally changed the structure of poverty reduction; basically killing it.

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I think it's a difference in the way New Deal vs. Great Society programs were structured. The goal of the New Deal was primarily to restore employment, security and economic vigor, and was structured around means to achieve that. Utilizing economies of scale, it alleviated poverty by increasing productivity and demand for goods. The goal of the Great Society on the other hand was to increase the absolute living standards of people through various forms of transfer payments. It had nothing to do with increasing productivity amongst or demand for the poor whom it was meant to serve. This is why I believe that it failed.

[Beet]

I don't think economic equalization can ever realistically take place, no matter what the economic policies are that are being pursued.

Again, I agree with all that you said except for this. Firstly, public opinion does undergo change after long periods of time. Change is possible in what the public is willing to accept, and as I've said to Al, there's evidence of a more populist mood in this country lately as a backlash to Bush's overwhelmingly "my base are the haves and the have-mores" legislative agenda. Second, there is no correlation between economic equalization and performance. Jeffrey Sachs has I think done a great regression on this in his new book on poverty which I was browsing through about a month ago.

[Beet]

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I've defined equalization exactly as it sounds-- a more equitably distributed gradient of income and wealth across society. I don't think that's impossible at all. There's a notion out there that there's some kind of a trade-off between equality and growth... I don't think that's true at all. History has shown it's not true. An analysis of cases over the years since World War II have shown it's not true. That's what I'm saying.

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I agree with the first 2 paragraphs, but that's not incomptible with equalization. Equalization can be achieved by helping the lower classes be copetitive. I don't agree that "no amount of legislation can make" people who would otherwise be poor competitive. If that was true, public funding for education would be pointless. Yet perhaps the biggest problem is societal rather than governmental. The government's policies will be reflected and mediated through the society. If our society is divided, then the government's efforts will be undermined and fail. It's hard to get a society as big as the U.S. to see a common good. Not impossible, but harder. That's why to a certain extent I think it might be better to try and do it at the state level. But it's an uphill challenge in the U.S. because of the way our society works, not because of economic impossibilities.

[Beet]

You are defining economic equalization as narrowing the gap between the rich and poor.  This implies that there will still be a gap.

Yup. There will always be some kind of gap, no matter what. Its the relative differences that do make a big difference though.

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I agree.

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Politically, the busing issue was terrible for activists, I'll easily admit. It screwed over efforts to improve the lot of the poor for a generation or more.