Posted in another thread, but relevant to this one (but since modified) :
There's a far simpler explanation, and it has nothing to do with rural people being unsophisticated hicks. Rural voters are less sophisticated only to the extent that the Mountain and Deep South are more rural than America on the whole. High-school completion rates are very high in the rural North. Why shouldn't they be? There just aren't many distractions in northern rural areas to cause someone to drop out of school. Unless one wants to stay on the family farm, one will need a college education, so college attendance rates are above average.
It's the difference in the costs of public services and infrastructure. Such basic needs of education and law enforcement are much more expensive in cities than in rural areas. Anyone trained to be a teacher or a cop in rural areas has few alternatives, and will almost certainly be paid far less than his urban counterparts. Cost of living? that's not the whole story, although the cost of living in part reflects the cost of public services and taxes for paying them. An urban teacher has typically a skill set well fitting sales, professional white collar jobs, and blue-collar management. Those opportunities are rare in rural areas. The best predictor of pay is pay in comparable work -- if it is available. Rural areas might have sweat-shop manufacturing or retail and restaurant work, so the farmer's wife who teaches fifth grade doesn't get paid well. Police? Urban police departments must pay the police well so that they do not become de facto employees of gangsters. Law enforcement is thus much more expensive in big cities than in rural areas. Think also of tax collection, courts of law, and the welfare system.
Look also at infrastructure. A four-lane expressway in the Dakotas is typically far less costly to build than a similar expressway in northeastern New Jersey; in fact, such an expressway might be woefully inadequate in northeastern New Jersey, where expansion of a ten-lane expressway to twelve lanes requires expensive condemnation of real estate and dislocation of people and costly relocation of utilities. But a two-lane blacktop (US 83) is apparently adequate for connecting the state capitals of North and South Dakota. An expressway is not built because it is a bargain to build in comparison to a superficially-similar highway somewhere else.
Now another point: government is necessarily much more intrusive in urban areas. If your pet dog craps at the edge a corn field, then nobody knows. If your dog craps on an urban sidewalk, then everyone knows. If the police see you walking away from the scene of the fouling of a sidewalk, then you will get ticketed and you may pay a very steep fine. Government is more intrusive in urban areas, and such is expected, because it is far easier to get in someone else's way. People expect their government to be more costly and intrusive in rural areas. People in rural areas don't like paying taxes to support the higher cost of city dwellers. The low-tax pols, low-service pols are now Republicans, in part because rural folks don't like paying high taxes to support needs in bigger cities. Rural Michigan is about as politically conservative as Oklahoma.
There's a far simpler explanation, and it has nothing to do with rural people being unsophisticated hicks. Rural voters are less sophisticated only to the extent that the Mountain and Deep South are more rural than America on the whole. High-school completion rates are very high in the rural North. Why shouldn't they be? There just aren't many distractions in northern rural areas to cause someone to drop out of school. Unless one wants to stay on the family farm, one will need a college education, so college attendance rates are above average.
It's the difference in the costs of public services and infrastructure. Such basic needs of education and law enforcement are much more expensive in cities than in rural areas. Anyone trained to be a teacher or a cop in rural areas has few alternatives, and will almost certainly be paid far less than his urban counterparts. Cost of living? that's not the whole story, although the cost of living in part reflects the cost of public services and taxes for paying them. An urban teacher has typically a skill set well fitting sales, professional white collar jobs, and blue-collar management. Those opportunities are rare in rural areas. The best predictor of pay is pay in comparable work -- if it is available. Rural areas might have sweat-shop manufacturing or retail and restaurant work, so the farmer's wife who teaches fifth grade doesn't get paid well. Police? Urban police departments must pay the police well so that they do not become de facto employees of gangsters. Law enforcement is thus much more expensive in big cities than in rural areas. Think also of tax collection, courts of law, and the welfare system.
Look also at infrastructure. A four-lane expressway in the Dakotas is typically far less costly to build than a similar expressway in northeastern New Jersey; in fact, such an expressway might be woefully inadequate in northeastern New Jersey, where expansion of a ten-lane expressway to twelve lanes requires expensive condemnation of real estate and dislocation of people and costly relocation of utilities. But a two-lane blacktop (US 83) is apparently adequate for connecting the state capitals of North and South Dakota. An expressway is not built because it is a bargain to build in comparison to a superficially-similar highway somewhere else.
Now another point: government is necessarily much more intrusive in urban areas. If your pet dog craps at the edge a corn field, then nobody knows. If your dog craps on an urban sidewalk, then everyone knows. If the police see you walking away from the scene of the fouling of a sidewalk, then you will get ticketed and you may pay a very steep fine. Government is more intrusive in urban areas, and such is expected, because it is far easier to get in someone else's way. People expect their government to be more costly and intrusive in rural areas. People in rural areas don't like paying taxes to support the higher cost of city dwellers. The low-tax pols, low-service pols are now Republicans, in part because rural folks don't like paying high taxes to support needs in bigger cities. Rural Michigan is about as politically conservative as Oklahoma.
The ideal subject of totalitarian rule is not the convinced Nazi or the dedicated Communist but instead the people for whom the distinction between fact and fiction, true and false, no longer exists -- Hannah Arendt.