Bacon's Rebellion

James A. Bacon

One State, Two State

Red State, Blue State

As Americans sort themselves out geographically by lifestyle affinity, the culture wars can only get worse.

I got a chuckle after the 2004 presidential elections when droves of distraught Demos started applying for Canadian visas rather than live four more years under the oppressive rule of George W. Bush and the yahoos who re-elected him. I also took note, with some sympathy, of gay Virginia couples who talked of decamping to a state where they are more welcome than in a Commonwealth that considers them a threat to the institution of marriage.

That's one of the consolations of living in America. Even if you lose at the ballot box, you can still vote again -- with your feet. Moving from a hostile locale to one more hospitable is as American as turkey on Thanksgiving. Our forefathers have been doing it ever since the Puritans left England, wore out their welcome in the Netherlands and then moved to the New World.

The difference now is that relocating has never been so easy. Rent a U-Haul, throw in your belongings, and off you go. No 20-percent mortality rates crossing the Atlantic Ocean. No hostile Indians setting your wagons on fire.

As a result of this unprecedented mobility, the United States is undergoing a massive re-sorting process. With increasing frequency, people are moving to communities where the inhabitants are of like mind. Availability of jobs, proximity to family, cost of living and quality of life all still influence where people settle down, but people are looking for something else: They want a sense of shared values and a tolerance for, if not an outright embrace of, their way of life. If you're gay, for instance, you undoubtedly will feel more welcome in New York City than in Lynchburg, home to the Rev. Jerry Falwell. Conversely, if you disapprove of sexual promiscuity, you might feel a tad uncomfortable raising your children in Los Angeles, center of the North American pornography industry.

It wasn't long ago that class divisions and ethnic differences marked the great social cleavages in the United States. Today, the culture wars predominate. Cultural liberals, I would hypothesize, are migrating to blue states where they find social conventions, laws and institutions more to their liking, while cultural conservatives are moving in the opposite direction. The rate of change may be imperceptible year to year, or even election to election, but over time, I expect, we'll find the blue states getting bluer and the red states getting redder.

For sure, there are innumerable cross currents within this broad trend. By and large, people identify most closely with the specific communities, not the states, where they reside, and there are blue cities within red states, and red towns within blue states. Sometimes, the cultural sorting process may be as simple as people moving from one locality to another one nearby--from Danville to Charlottesville, say, or from Fairfax to Harrisonburg.

Indeed, the migration may be even more finely granulated than that: It often occurs within an MSA. Here in Virginia, metro areas offer a surprising diversity of cultural environments.

My adopted home of 19 years is Richmond, renowned for its social and cultural conservatism. But the region is not uniformly "red." The central city of nearly 200,000 people is decidedly different from the suburban counties surrounding it. The urban core is predominantly African-American, and even the white people are of a fairly liberal cast of mind. One of the city's largest employers is Virginia Commonwealth University, a haven for the orange-hair-and-lip-ring set, while a vibrant advertising industry supports one of the largest communities of commercial artists--not a very button-down crowd--in the Southeastern U.S. Moving a few miles in the Richmond region can make an immense difference in one's social milieu.

Geographers long have noted that certain demographic groups prefer the urban environment: singles, married couples without children and empty nesters. They value the cultural and entertainment opportunities typically available in the city. By contrast, families with children have very different priorities. Parents are concerned about the safety, education and upbringing of their children, which, rightly or wrongly, they perceive as being easier in suburban settings.

New York Times columnist David Brooks set off a wave of commentary with a column he wrote in December about the so-called natalist movement. Birthrates are falling across the industrialized world, from Western Europe and Japan to many parts of the United States. People are marrying later, and women are postponing childbirth while they pursue their careers. But, according to Brooks, the idea of the three- and four-child family is making a comeback.

The personal identity of the natalists, writes Brooks, "is defined by parenthood. They are more spiritually, emotionally and physically invested in their homes than in any other sphere of life, having concluded that parenthood is the most enriching and elevating thing they can do."

The natalists, suggest Brooks, shun crime, disorder and vulgarity and move to places that are congenial to their values, typically to small towns or the sprawling exurbs of major metro areas. In the era of the culture wars, the natalists tend to be conservative. And in the long run, they enjoy one huge advantage over the cultural liberals: They breed faster.

Steven Sailer, a writer for the American Conservative, put it this way: 

Bush carried the 19 states with the highest white fertility (just as he did in 2000), and 25 out of the top 26, with highly unionized Michigan being the one blue exception to the rule. (The least prolific red states are West Virginia, North Dakota, and Florida.)

In sharp contrast, Kerry won the 16 states at the bottom of the list, with the Democrats’ anchor states of California (1.65) and New York (1.72) having quite infertile whites.

(See "Baby Gap: How birthrates color the electoral map.")

If, according to the Brooks/Sailer theory, the care and upbringing of children is increasingly a dividing line in the culture wars, we should be able to detect some sign of it in the 2004 presidential election results, which hinged largely on "values" issues here in Virginia, as elsewhere.

Northern Virginia is part of a predominantly liberal metropolitan area. The Washington, D.C., core favored Kerry over Bush by an astounding 10 to one margin (90 percent vs. nine percent). On our side of the Potomac River, the urbanized localities of Alexandria and Arlington County voted strongly for Kerry, though not by quite the same lopsided margin. It is no coincidence that those two jurisdictions have the smallest number of children, expressed as a percentage of their population, of all jurisdictions in Virginia.

Moving toward the metropolitan periphery, the percentage of children in the population rises. Fairfax County, which tracks the state average for the percentage of children, voted narrowly for Kerry. Moving farther toward the periphery, the jurisdictions have larger numbers of children -- and they tended to favor Bush.

A similar pattern can be seen in the Richmond metro area.

Once again, the urban core (the city of Richmond) voted heavily for Kerry. Henrico, with its aging suburbs and smaller number of children, voted for Bush but narrowly. Hanover and Chesterfield, where the percentage of children is highest and the fastest growth is occurring, favored Bush by wide margins.

The pattern was repeated in Roanoke, Lynchburg and Danville and, though less clear cut, in Hampton Roads. Virginia's small towns and rural areas voted overwhelmingly for Bush, excepting only those jurisdictions with large African-American populations. 

As the culture wars intensify in the U.S., the migration of households to compatible locales will sharpen the demographic differentiation between states, between metropolitan areas, and between sub-units of metro areas. If my logic is correct, downstate Virginia will take on an ever redder tint, balanced to some degree by the phenomenal population growth of blue-leaning Northern Virginia. As the population segregates itself by cultural orientation, politicians will reflect those divisions with increasingly strident rhetoric. For those of us who wonder, "Why can't we just all get along?", it won't be pretty.

-- February 14, 2005