Why's the Urban-Rural split so enduring?

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Okay, based on my reading of political history, there seems to be quite an enduring urban-rural split. Whether it be US elections in the last few decades, Canadian elections (including, quite prominently the 2011 Manitoba General Election), or even the French Revolution, the left does well in more urban areas and the right in the rural areas, with suburbs as a toss up.

I mean, a lot of support for the Jacobins in the French Revolution came from the urban working class of Paris, with rural Peasants (similarly in the "Third Estate"), more royalist or Girondins.

The "labour-farmer" coalitions of the Canadian prairies and - to a lesser extent Upper Midwestern US - are the few exceptions I know to this trend (uh, and the genocidal monstrosity of Mao's "down to the Countryside Movement" might count - though I don't know exactly how "popular support" for Mao - if he had any during the middle of his reign - tallied up, as I haven't researched it as much as I'd like).

What, then, is the reason for the overall trend as well as the exceptions?

In the United States fewer than 3 percent of the working force is engaged in agriculture, cattle raising or primary food production and distribution. In short 3 percent feed 100 percent. What rural?

ruveyn

I think rural means small town. Small towns are to some extent more cooperative as a community than urban areas, that is, everyone knows everyone's business and when someone has a problem there usually friends, neighbors, or relatives to assist them. The urban settings are different and thus assistance is usually sought elsewhere.

I honestly think the big difference is that tradition tends to be emphasized in rural or small-town areas, often for the sake of tradition itself. That naturally kinda slots into a conservative mindset; after all, they're already resistant to change, so why not make it official?

Small towns make small minds. Small minds are considered prime examples of the lofty "Git'r Done" mindset in most Conservative vernacular

From study it seems that all urban areas exploit rural areas to their own advantage - this trend seems to happen worldwide.

When you're constantly providing necessities and people keep dismissing you or your opinion as a group as useless or not worthy or somehow "less than", naturally people who can are going to take advantage of that in their own attempts to gain power. It's the perfect way to use peoples (often valid) discontent to somebody else's advantage (although whether they are valid is another story entirely).

Maybe rural people feel more self sufficient.

Or they have doubts about receiving as much help from bigger government as larger urban populations.

So why would they like to see bigger government and their taxes going up when it mostly benefits the city folks?

ruveyn -- I agree that today most of US is "urban", but there are still many people who were raised in small towns alive today.

Interesting question this.

Very very crudely defining rural as any settlement with a population of 100,000 or more and everything else as suburbs / rural I would conjecture the following...

In the UK at least traditionally the left (Labour) is the party of the worker (the man or woman who works for someone else) the right (Conservative) is the party of the boss (the manager or business owner or self-employed). The right is often seen as the party of the more affluent and the left the party of the less affluent...this may be somewhat different to other countries in particular the US.

It's obviously a lot more complicated than this but I think these basic assumptions may apply in a simplistic way at least for Labour and Conservative voters who still in the majority in England at least. {As an example of complexity the Liberal Democrats sit somewhere in the middle, the Greens tend towards the left. It gets even more complicated in Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - for example in Scotland I would just describe the left-right position of the Scottish National Party as quite simply complicated and variable...}

Anyway taking the basic left = worker and right = boss, in recent times (1870s onwards- maybe a bit earlier, maybe a bit later) 'the worker' has tended to live in the city, in the urban area closer to where the employment is, and 'the boss' has tended to live in the suburbs or the countryside - the rural. So on this basis the urban areas tends to vote left and the rural right.

Secondly you are more likely to get large areas of concentrated poverty in urban areas (poverty definately does exist in rural areas but you don't tend to get as many poor people concentrated in the same area - at least not in the UK) thus the left as the party of the less affluent gets more votes in the urban areas, and the right as the party of the more affluent gets more votes in rural areas.

I'm not sure this conjecture would work at all for the US though - as I understand some rural areas can have quite high poverty levels? Also I'm not sure the same kind of left = worker and right = boss distinction exists in the US either...

ruveyn -- I'm 62 and was raised in a small PA Dutch town, then for most of my life I lived in urban areas (Washington, DC & greater Philsdelphia).

The attitudes are interesting. My impression is that there is more passion on one side of the equation. Obviously there are people who flee the city for country living, and vice versa. Some will have negative things to say about what they left behind. Given the discrepancy in population density, and resulting lack of diversity of opinion, resentful attitudes may have an outsized effect on country views of the city.

It reminds me a little of the effect you get in smaller nations that border a larger nation where both share a similar culture. Ive listened to the "You Americans' speech from Canadians several times. It would never occur to me to lecture a Canadian or to be particularly interested in his business. My impression has been that Norweigans have stronger opinions of Swedes than vice versa. New Zealanders of Australians, than vice versa. Canadians of Americans, than vice versa. (using the term American alone will irritate some). I think of it as younger brother syndrome but maybe it's also sightly related to the outsized effects of individual opinion on a smaller population. Or to resentment over cultural flow.

Ive known one anti-urban person who fled to the deep country and who couldnt say enough negative about the rat race. Did he go out there and reinforce his neighbors views with his tales? If his neighbor fled to the city and denigrated country living, would it have the same impact? Does a smaller group naturally feel more defensive when culturally opposed by a larger group? Do they feel oppressed by a larger entity that has more bandwidth to broadcast it's culture?

Well I'm in a rural area now and would like to get back to the city.

I mean yeah there is a very small town here but it doesn't even have a traffic light. Maybe you could call it suburban.

But I'm not in town I'm out in the country and we even have Amish living here.

I think the divide has increased over time due to a number of things:
**Core and traditional values upheld in rural and less urbanized areas as opposed to urban, central and industrialized areas.
**The dependency and consumerism in cities, and the self sufficiency that is more abundant in quieter districts.
**The value based on state / private educational institutions.
**The perception that city folk have moved with the times, and the so-called rural folks are somewhat Amish in their social and economic evolution.