Sociological question regarding population and political liberalism.

[Don't care]

Query: Why are many, if not all, higher populated areas, tend to be politically liberal?

Seriously, I don't understand the circumstances of the environment. Anyone care to explain it to me?

[BrokenPaw]

Possibly because the collectivist mindset that leads to liberal political thought also leads to comfort in populous areas, whereas the individualism that leads to conservative political thought also leads one to seek less crowded places?

Correlation without causation.  Or, rather, correlation because of common cause.

Interesting to note, also, that in nature, predator species tend to be loners or to live in small cooperative groups, whereas prey species tend to gather into much larger social collectives.

-BP

[WiscTJK]

That is a very interesting thought.

I also feel that smaller towns / rural areas tend to be more individualisitic and you fight for yourselves, where as if you need "assistance" you go the larger metropolitan areas.  Also, the morals in the large metropolitan areas tends to be more liberal which pushes more conservative people to the smaller suburban and rural areas.

Just my .02.

Todd

[ctdonath]

Methinks urban areas are tolerable & functional only because of the high degree of cooperation and order. Small actions by individuals can rapidly disrupt many lives; with such high concentration of people, the odds of disruptive activity happening frequently are high. To maintain a tolerable environment, small disruptions must be squelched rapidly and severely lest they soon become extensive and costly to others. This soon leads to creation of government to decide and implement acceptable cooperation and order, and police to enforce it, to a very nit-picking and pervasive degree. Without enforced cooperation and order, most individuals would waste a tremendous amount of time & resources counteracting such chaos.

Contrast rural areas: one can exercise a great deal of non-cooperation and disorder, and few will care.

Put grossly, it's the difference between difficulty to avoid human contact vs. difficulty to invoke human contact. The more people you encounter (directly or indirectly) in a short time, the exponentially greater the need for defining and enforcing order - right down to normalizing the lowest and highest in society (disparity is disruptive).

[Manedwolf]

Methinks urban areas are tolerable & functional only because of the high degree of cooperation and order. Small actions by individuals can rapidly disrupt many lives; with such high concentration of people, the odds of disruptive activity happening frequently are high. To maintain a tolerable environment, small disruptions must be squelched rapidly and severely lest they soon become extensive and costly to others. This soon leads to creation of government to decide and implement acceptable cooperation and order, and police to enforce it, to a very nit-picking and pervasive degree. Without enforced cooperation and order, most individuals would waste a tremendous amount of time & resources counteracting such chaos.

Contrast rural areas: one can exercise a great deal of non-cooperation and disorder, and few will care.

Put grossly, it's the difference between difficulty to avoid human contact vs. difficulty to invoke human contact. The more people you encounter (directly or indirectly) in a short time, the exponentially greater the need for defining and enforcing order - right down to normalizing the lowest and highest in society (disparity is disruptive).

[Don't care]

Good points. Thanks.

I imagine by extension that the United States as a whole, is considerably more conservative than European countries, for variations of the same reasons given above too.