Why Cities Lose: The Deep Roots of the Urban-rural Political Divide. Jonathan A. Rodden.
It is hardly surprising that a system of political representation designed 234 years ago for four million people in a handful of Northeastern former colonies is burdened by many flaws when applied to 330 million people in in today’s vastly larger and more varied US. In recent decades these flaws have resulted in marked disadvantages for Democrats.
Since 1990, Democrats have won the presidential popular vote in seven of eight presidential elections but have won the presidency only five times. Democrats have won the popular vote for Senate seats in eleven of the last fifteen US elections but have won control only six times. In 2012, Democrats won 1.4 million more votes than Republicans for the US House of Representatives but only 45% of seats. These imbalances are even worse at the state level within many legislative bodies.
The Electoral College, two senators per state despite large population differences, and state-level gerrymandering are flaws that contribute to this imbalance. Attempts to correct these flaws face major hurdles. Changing the Electoral College requires either a constitutional amendment or cooperation by many states to honor the popular vote. Changes of representation at the national and state level require major legislation. Good luck with these approaches, since the system’s beneficiaries would have to vote to end the flaws and forgo the usual obstruction, such as by the filibuster.
BUT WAIT! THERE’S MORE! THE IMBALANCE IS ACTUALLY WORSE AND MORE INTRACTABLE THAN DESCRIBED ABOVE. Even If gerrymandering and Republican malfeasance were entirely eliminated much of the problem for Democrats would still persist. The reason for this is a combination of present urban-rural demographics and the US system of political representation by winner-take-all regional districts (majoritarian democracy). The author explains the reasons for this and makes his case by presenting and analyzing an enormous volume of big data about politics and demographics.
The author’s discussion begins with the industrial revolution when large numbers of workers migrated to and settled in the core areas of Northern cities. This settlement also extended along the rivers and railroad lines of the old transportation network. Eventually, worker’s leftist political parties and unions became highly concentrated in these regions. Subsequently, factory owner’s moved their businesses to the South or outsourced them. Nevertheless, many workers’ families remained in the old industrial cities and retained their political allegiances. Eventually, they were joined by migrating Southern Blacks and by many workers in the new information industry.
Today’s urban-rural political divide developed in the 20th Century as Democrats gradually transformed into a truly urban party. In the 1960s, the coalition of the Democrats with rural Southern segregationists began to fray during the civil rights era and subsequently with the Nixon Southern Strategy to capture racially-oriented voters. Their transition to the Republicans was complete by the 1990s when Democratic blue dogs and bool weevils could no longer disregard the Democratic national party platform. Also, during this time, manufacturing moved from Northern cities and old transit hubs to exurban and rural places along interstates, especially in the South. Meanwhile, dynamism and jobs for educated workers became concentrated in a small number of global cities like San Francisco, Seattle, and Boston in collaboration with universities and entrepreneurs.
Thus, Democrats became concentrated in cities as the party of the urban poor and racial minorities as well as social progressives and the globalized knowledge economy. Simultaneously, Republicans became more prevalent in suburbs and rural areas as the party of low taxes, deregulation, gun rights, social conservatism, traditional manufacturing, resource extraction, and agriculture. Accordingly, terms like “left” and “right” and the context of industrial “class war” have lost much of their 20th Century meaning. It might be more accurate to refer to this US political conflict and polarization as “urban” versus “rural.”
The author then explains how the US system of “winner-take-all” district representation combined with emerging urban-rural demographics resulted in a substantial rural advantage. Evolutionary change since the industrial revolution has resulted in hyper concentration of Democrats in city centers, but more modest concentration of Republicans at increasing distances from the city center in suburban and rural areas (as shown by accompanying graphs). When regions are divided into winner-take-all voting districts, those mostly composed of cities will have highly concentrated Democratic majorities and those composed of suburbs and rural areas will have much less concentrated Republican majorities.
Thus, Democrats waste many votes winning a smaller number of urban districts by large margins, while Republicans spread their votes more efficiently to win a larger number of districts by smaller margins. This results in lower numbers of seats per votes for Democrats than for Republicans, which facilitates control of congress and especially state legislatures by Republicans, even with a minority of overall votes.
This same process does not apply to statewide elections for senators, governors, and presidents because state representation is not divided into districts, although the Electoral College imposes similar distortions at the national level. Accordingly, states may have Democratic governors, senators, and presidential votes from statewide majorities while Republicans may still maintain long-term, iron-clad control of state legislatures, even with a minority of votes scattered efficiently in district elections.
The truly bad news is that all of this occurs even if there is no partisan gerrymandering. It is certainly true that gerrymandering is often performed by partisan state legislatures and that it does enhance their advantages. Nevertheless, Democrat’s substantial disadvantages are mostly structural and still occur with nonpartisan redistricting, even with no gerrymandering at all. The author demonstrates this by hundreds of computer simulations of nonpartisan redistricting that show the Republican’s advantage with today’s demographics cannot be eliminated, even when gerrymandering is not allowed. The author also presents much additional data analysis for all federal, state, and local governments.
Most of us probably have assumed that this is just the way democratic voting is done and that nothing can be done about it. The author shows that this is not the case by comparing the majoritarian system of the US and other English-speaking countries with the proportional representation of many European countries. In the European system, districts are larger, and multiple seats are assigned to parties according to the percentages of votes received. A party that receives 30% of the vote across all regions receives 30% of the seats in parliament. This applies to all parties and is not affected by geographic distribution of voters, so national representation is truly proportional to the pattern of votes cast.
Many markedly antidemocratic results occur in the US that would never occur with proportional representation. For instance, in Wisconsin, Republicans received 45% of the votes but 63% of the seats for the 2018 Assembly. In Pennsylvania, Democrats won 51% of the vote but only 28% of the seats (five of eighteen) for the 2012 Congress. From 2012 to 2018, Pennsylvania Democrats demonstrated overall majorities by winning 15 of 18 statewide contests but have never won a majority of congressional seats, and have never come anywhere near winning either chamber of the state legislature because of elections distorted by multiple winner-take-all small districts.
As the author looks to the future, he notes that the pattern of increasing suburbanization and mixed voting patterns in pivotal suburban regions is tending to favor Democrats. This could result from more knowledge workers and Democrats in suburbs or from Republicans alienating suburbanites by emphasizing divisive rural issues over suburban issues. But this could be just a temporary phenomenon that will pass with changing Republican leadership. On the other hand, for Democrats to benefit from this trend, they will have to counter dominance by a strongly progressive urban faction to create the flexibility for centrist blue dogs to win in the suburbs.
He also notes that polarization aggravates growing battles over interregional flow of resources. The 500 counties (with the majority of votes) won by Hilary Clinton, compared to 2,500 counties won by Donald Trump, were responsible for over two-thirds of federal income taxes collected in 2014. This revenue was then disproportionately distributed to the counties won by Trump. The recent Republican tax cut shifted benefits to Republicans by eliminating deductions most valuable to metropolitan Democrats. Future Democratic administrations are likely to shift the burden back to wealthy Republicans in red states. These and many other battles are contributing to instability that undermines democracy.
The author ends with a desultory discussion of a few possible solutions, such as electoral and redistricting reform, unbundling urban and rural issues from the two party system, and changing to proportional representation. None of these seem to be particularly achievable. He then notes that polarization may be here to stay and that we will have to learn to manage it. He suggests that one possible way might be decentralization with the hope that state and local governments can govern in ways our dysfunctional central government cannot. Unfortunately, this is also not particularly likely, given that polarization is fractal and includes similar divisions at the state and local level.
