Journal: News & Comment

Urban = liberal?

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This screed from Seattle's alternative newspaper The Stranger raises some interesting points, the most central of which is that U.S. presidential candidate John Kerry, and U.S. Democrats more generally, won by huge margins in their elections at the beginning of November—in cities, that is. In other words, in America, cities are overwhelmingly more liberal than rural areas.

Despite the stereotypes, Canada is even more urban than America: some 80% of our population lives in cities, significantly more than in the United States. Is that a major reason why Canada's politics are more left-leaning than America's?

In the world as a whole, close to half the population is urban, and the number is rising. Can we expect overall world opinion to become more liberal with time?

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