Quote:
Originally Posted by wwmiv
Politically, at the statewide level, yes. You are spot on.
However, who votes and decides statewide elections only matter at the margins of government spending (executives can only do so much to alter the geography of spending). The bigger factor is the underlying distribution of population and the consequent distribution of legislative elected officials. The legislative process more greatly dictates spending patterns than any specific choices an executive can make while in office. All of my previous points still speak to this: Pennsylvania has a much more even popular distribution than either New York or Illinois. I’d also add to my original comment that rural Pennsylvania is significantly more populated than rural Illinois and similar to (or maybe also more populated than) rural New York.
So, yeah, the collar counties matter most in determining the executive (and other row offices), but does that mean that collar counties matter most in determining the distribution of funding? No, it means they marginally affect the statewide outcomes such that their preferred candidate can marginally affect spending patterns.
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Am I wrong in thinking that most of those PA rural counties are socially closer to counties in Alabama than they are the urban counties of PA? I'm sure that's overstating it a bit, but by how much?
I've always been under the impression it's the level of conservative antipathy for cities found in the rural PA counties which hurt Philly and Pittsburgh.
Contrasting Philly to Boston is always a bit touchy, but this is a case in which Boston clearly lucks out: MA's rural counties are even bluer than Boston's and its suburbs. There are still fair arguments made that Western Mass gets the funding shaft, but there's always clear statewide agreement that Boston's success powers the MA economy on the whole (and most of NH's and RI's economies too).
Even our Republicans are pro-city, especially the governors (Charlie Baker, Mitt Romney believe it or not, Paul Cellucci, Jane Swift, William Weld...).