Cheer Up, Liberals: City Dwellers Will Soon Rule the World

American progressives are anticipating heavy losses when Americans go to the polls on Tuesday. But even if Republicans end up with control of both houses of Congress, the long-term trends are on the Democrats’ side. Voters going to the polls in cities are far more likely to be voting for a Democrat than those in the country. The gap between urban and rural voting patterns has sharpened in each election. This is a big concern for Republicans—the proportion of the country that lives in urban areas has been rising for more than a century and shows little sign of stopping.

But it isn’t just the relative population that’s shifting. The U.S.’s population hit “peak rural” a long time ago. In 1990, there were 62 million Americans living in rural areas. Today that number is down to 59 million—even while the national population has climbed by 66 million people over the same period. The countryside is emptying out. And the rest of the planet is following suit: The number of people living outside of towns and cities worldwide will begin to fall over the next few years. That’s probably good news for long-term trends in sustainable development but bad news for those who remain in rural areas—and might help explain both growing urban-rural inequality and the widening ideological divide.