Didn't modern progressive/liberal ideologies mostly originate in cities?
Welcome To TV Tropes | How To Write An Example | Text Formatting Rules | List Of Shows That Need Summary | TV Tropes Forum | Know The StaffBasically, cities have a shitload of people really, really close together, with a lot of bleed-over from other countries due to business. This has a lot of general effects via forced exposure to different cultural strata, hence social progressivism. It also means less privacy overall, and people tend to be a bit more okay with more invasive measures.
edited 15th Jan '11 6:01:58 PM by Pykrete
People in rural areas are less likely to be employed by or affected directly by big businesses. They don't get the same amount of benefit from many city-oriented social programs (like mass transit, or road maintenance programs). They're more used to depending on themselves and their neighbors rather than the government.
Cities tend to be much more racially diverse as well.
Also, I guess people who live in sparsely populated areas are used to fending for themselves and don't want the government to intervene. I've heard that libertarianism is popular in the rural west.
Blind Final Fantasy 6 Let's PlayWhat Madrugada said. Rural people are less dependent even on the primary function of the state (law enforcement). They're not going to be interested in paying higher taxes for peripheral functions like mass transit.
As to social conservatism, I'd suspect a strong inverse correlation with years in school, since public schools and especially universities socialize students to be progressive. A university town is going to skew farther left than a much larger city where older people and other classes are dominant.
“Love is the eternal law whereby the universe was created and is ruled.” — St. Bernard
Yeah, that's pretty much 100% bang on.
I'd wager that poverty has something to do with it as well. Someone posted it in another thread around here but basically the lowest earners tend to vote liberal and there's high poverty in cities so yeah. As to why poor people vote liberal? That's an easy answer, social programs are often the only thing keeping them from turning to crime or becoming homeless.
edited 15th Jan '11 6:27:44 PM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?Urgh, remembering statistics...
The lowest earners were liberal and the professionals like doctors, professors, lawyers etc went to liberals. Everything in the middle was conservative and I can't remember for CEO's etc but I'll bet a silver dollar they went conservative as well.
edited 15th Jan '11 6:45:28 PM by thatguythere47
Is using "Julian Assange is a Hillary butt plug" an acceptable signature quote?I figure it's due to the higher proliferation of different ideas. Rural areas tend to be more isolated. Using my own state as an example, NYC is pretty liberal, but the rest of Long Island and upstate tend to be more conservative.
Hugging a Vanillite will give you frostbite.Really depends on the area of the city. San Fran and San Jose still have a sizable Republican population.
Half-Life: Dual Nature, a crossover story of reasonably sized proportions.My theory: There is a large minority of (usually) fiscal conservatives - Wall Street, for instance - who thrive in urban habitats. Capitalists are drawn to cities because the higher population means more finance. Business attracts blue-collar workers. For reasons stated above, blue-collar workers skew left of center. One capitalist can employ thousands of proles, so the majority population tends toward the left.

I mean, it seems the left-wing parties seem to be strongest in large cities, while right-wing parties seem to do best in small towns and the countryside in general. Why is this so? Discuss.