I was thinking about the political divide between democrats and republicans – or perhaps more accurately – between liberals and conservatives today. One concept that is commonly discussed are Red States vs. Blue States. Another is the phenomenon of a Purple State, where most of the state is Red but it has one or two major Blue cities.
I think about population all of the time. Often, when the social support structures and laws from the US are compared to other Western democracies and come up short (eg. Nordics, Australia, UK etc.), I compare the size of those countries to the US. In almost every case, those countries are tiny by comparison in terms of total population. For instance, many European countries have populations under 10M. We have 10 states that each have more than 10M plus another 40 states giving us a total population of ~350M. We can’t replicate what a country that is 10x smaller than us can do. It’s logistically improbable.
Back to the Red/Blue/Purple issue. Here’s a snapshot of the US population by state:
- 4 states with over 20M: CA, FL, TX, NY.
- 8 states with 8-13M
- 12 states with 5-7M
- 26 states with <5M
Some cities in our larger states have more people than other states have entirely. For example, the metro areas I have lived in (Pittsburgh, Ft. Lauderdale, Raleigh) all have populations of at least 1M. None of these were huge cities. New York City has 18M and LA has 4M. Now consider some Western States with total populations under 3M whose largest cities might have 100k populations and most towns are well under that figure.
No wonder there’s such vast differences between the Red and Blue state residents. Everything is impacted by these population differences:
- Daily Life
- Traffic
- Shopping
- Hobbies
- Job Opportunites
- Educational Opportunities
- Racial Diversity
- Transportation
- Basic Services
- Cost of Living
- Housing
- Local Customs
- Climate
- Population Count and Density
- Utilities
Personally, I lean toward libertarian and liberal values. I suspect part is due to my natural inclinations (I’m a realist and pragmatist) and part is due to having spent the majority of my life in midsized cities.
Had my family remained in Tamaqua (population 7k) where I lived for my first 7 years, I would have grown up in a vastly different environment. How could that not affect everything?
This is not a problem to be solved. Nor can I offer any deep insights.
It’s interesting to consider this though.
