January 11, 2005
Social Work on the Left and Right
2004 was the One state, two state, Red state, Blue state year. An obvious trend has been evident for many years. The red states were typically more rural. Blue states were typically more urban. Even within the blue states, the more remote areas were strongly red, while the cities were firmly blue.
It has become such an axiom that city voters trend heavily Democrat, and country voters trend Republican, that I don’t think anyone even bothers now to ask why. There are many possible reasons. Running the gamut from values to economic factors, security to social welfare.
Political sociology being a small interest of mine, I have a theory as to why, at least relating to social welfare, rural voters tend to be Republican, and city voters tend to be Democrat. This is a fledgling theory, and of course is not intended to be a final treatise on voting habits. I’d love to get some thoughts on whether you think this makes sense.
In rural areas, there is much more of a sense of community. The people who live in your town, the families you’ve grown up with, are the same families that you’ve known all your life. Your kids play with their kids, the dad works at the local factory with his neighbor, you all go to church together. Since there are less people in any given area, you are forced to live with, and see, the people near you. Then, when someone loses a job, or a house gets flooded, people pitch in to help. Since there is no real charitable infrastructure out in rural areas, and since you know your neighbors and the people in your community, misfortune of others affects you personally. And since there may be no organization around to help, people step up to do so as needed.
In city areas, that sense of community does not hold as closely. There is a much higher transition rate of the people living near you. With the increased population density, you have many more options to choose the people you associate with. While you may barely know the neighbors you’ve lived near for 2 years, the person you’re closest to is the coworker from 2 miles over. There is a strong infrastructure of private and public charities to help in the case of misfortune. Even when those close to you undergo misfortune, you help them by being there and friendly, but refer them to the institutions best able to help. You may contribute to and occasionally volunteer at those institutions, but the responsibility for organizing and maintaining such organizations is handled by the charitable institution or government.
I think for this reason, rural voters tend Republican. They are used to solving problems in their area by their own methods. They know their school board, see the mayor once or twice a year, have a neighbor on city council, and see the individual contribution to government. They don’t see the need, other than natural disaster, for the federal government to have a presence. They see a small government as the right government, because they don’t feel the federal presence in their lives.
City voters, on the other hand, are used to these problems being solved by institutions and government. Since a city brings increased population density, it naturally brings increased density of misfortune. The mayor of your city is a public figure you only see on TV, your school board oversees a district of 10,000 students. When your natural way of seeing problems solved is by large institutions, you see the way to affect change is to support the party that will further and expand those institutions. From education to social issues, you see the government doing a job too big for individuals to handle. Thus, solutions to problems invariably involve government involvement.
The real question, at this point, is how we can get these opposed groups to find a middle ground? My thought is that we have come to rely too much on government. Government needs to play a role in society, but government has reached a point where it supercedes private charity. I think we need to find a point where government is available for major disaster relief, but the day-to-day problems are handled by people on the ground. Private charities have much more flexibility to deal with the changing realities of the world. They can do the job, and they can do it better.
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