Professor Nestor Davidson co-authored an op-ed for City Lab regarding the power of urban voters.
Striking an optimistic tone after the midterm elections, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel has called for a coalition between urban and suburban voters in what he envisions as a durable metropolitan majority built around issues like education, health care, and infrastructure. There is much to Mayor Emanuel’s argument for city-suburb common ground, but this coalition will face fundamental structural difficulties implementing its agenda. As currently constructed, our electoral process systematically favors the preferences of rural and exurban voters.
To move forward with its agenda, any urban-suburban political coalition must recognize this stark reality and decide how best to respond: fight for change, or work within it.
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Working within our current system, urban progressives might choose to partner not just with suburbanites, but also with rural voters, hearkening back to the New Deal’s grand coalition between urban progressives and Southern agrarians. On issues like economic development, health care, and opioid abuse, such a coalition seems natural. But it is difficult to see how such a coalition could survive inevitable disagreements on issues like gun safety, just as civil rights eventually drove a wedge through the New Deal coalition.
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