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Here's a map of the Presidential vote swing from 2012 to 2024:
https://x.com/PatrickRuffini/status/1860310329248325759
It makes me wonder how much of Trump's appeal to midwestern industrial workers is dependent on trade rather than a broader, cultural working-class identity. I don't think farmers in Iowa swung massively toward him because they were mad their factories were being sent to China. Ditto with the Rio Grande Valley and Miami-Dade county.
I wish that infographic could include population change on the z-axis, in addition to the voting change.
I live in an extremely blue enclave of an extremely red region, and one thing I've seen is that all the aspiring PMCs move as close to the blue enclave as they can manage, or they flee to the DC/Baltimore/Philly/NYC megalopolis, never to be seen again.
More people are moving from blue areas to red ones than the opposite.
I would attribute that to the population getting older in general. City life, and its progressive paeans, are more attractive to the young who seek opportunity and change. They are willing to tolerate things like noisy neighbors and the homeless because they are willing to bear that burden, even if it annoys them privately. The old and those with families wish for the reverse and move away to where they can get away from that within their financial means.
It very well may be that the blues diminish because their societal bedrocks self-select and become redder in the bargain.
It’s not just financial means. Nobody really wants to live in a downtown area of a city, because of homeless people, drugs, crime etc. unless you happen to be rich enough to afford one of the very expensive and exclusive areas of the city, you basically live with crime as an everyday reality of your life. Leaving the door of your car unlocked so thieves don’t smash it. Women carrying at least mace (because guns are illegal) and often being consigned to their homes after sunset. Using the buddy system or proactively telling people everything you’re doing so someone knows where to start looking if something happens. I can’t imagine any woman tolerating the idea of having a baby in the city if they have the means to flee somewhere safer.
I live in downtown Chicago and this does not reflect my experience. It's less that you need to be in an excessively exclusive area, just avoid the very bad areas. People actively want to live in several of the downtown clusters, especially in their youth. We'll probably move out to the burbs when we have out kid of school age for the better schools, not because we fear the area.
This is exactly the kind of problem Democrats need to solve if they want to win people back. People dont want long commutes and to move out for schools, but the reality is that if a default place requires very close oversight of a 2 year old, its not really fit for humans. If there is glass on the ground or shit, perhaps you have a dog and have had to pull them away in your neighborhood. Kids shouldnt be on leashes, they are humans that need to learn, but learning not to step in the dog shit is not so valuable a lesson for a 2 year old. Particularly when that dog shit is mixed with glass in a kids playground where, in more normal places, you can trust to just let said 2 year old march around while you enjoy a coffee.
Plus the playground bullies are out of control ATM in cities. Many biters. Cops will charge YOU if you discipline or physically separate a kid while defending your own. Particularly if the stack isn't in your favor.
And you know all this. You know "better schools" is a euphemism for better peer students and peer parents. No amount of Stuyvesant and Stevenson teachers would make Haitian kids learn. And I sure as heck know the Stevenson kids dont have any broken glass on their feeder campus.
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