Metro Consciousness: The Knowledge Economy and Democrats' New Metro Coalition

• In Event: Public Policy and Spatial Politics in American Political Economy

Abstract

The ongoing transition from an industrial economy to a knowledge economy has transformed the geography of American economic and political outcomes. Sparsely populated rural areas have mostly fallen behind while aligning with the GOP. Dense urban areas—and, increasingly, their suburbs—have mostly prospered while aligning with the Democratic Party. Scholars have focused on the rural side of the transformation, tracing the economic and social bases of what Cramer (2016) has termed “rural consciousness. The metro side—both urban centers and their suburbs—has received far less attention. This paper aims to fill this gap. We first show that the post-1970s partisan trajectory of suburbs in the biggest metro areas has varied greatly by political-economic characteristics. We then undertake an investigation using original survey data into whether and how “metro consciousness,” or a metro-based political identity, impacts urban and suburban voters today. We survey voters in six cities that vary on the political-economic characteristics identified in our initial analysis. We find substantial evidence for a distinctive place-based identity among metro voters that combines economic connections and group attachments and is highly associated with Democratic partisanship. However, we also find that such consciousness is not clearly rooted in resentment of “outsiders,” as is seen with rural consciousness. Moreover, divisions between urban and suburban communities within metro areas are also evident—divisions that, while place-based, overlap considerably with racial and class divides within the Democratic Party. Fully understanding America’s recent geographically rooted economic transformations requires studying metro consciousness alongside rural consciousness.

Authors

• Jacob S. Hacker, Yale University

• Amelia Malpas, Harvard University

• Paul Pierson, University of California, Berkeley

• Eric Scheuch, Yale University