Conversely, Republican districts-failing as a group to gain traction in the new sectors-have reverted to more “traditional” ones. Just since 2008, Democratic districts’ share of professional and digital services employment surged from 63.7% to 71.1%, while their share of the nation’s manufacturing and extractive activities shrunk from 53.8% to 43.6% and 46.1% to 39.5%, respectively. Relatedly, and equally striking, Democratic districts are rapidly increasing their dominance of the nation’s urban-tilting professional and digital services employment while ceding their historical, more rural shares of manufacturing and agriculture-mining activity. Republican-district productivity, by contrast, remains stuck at about $110,000, reflecting only slight improvements of bachelor’s degree attainment and Republicans’ increasingly non-metro domain. Overall, “blue” territories have seen their productivity climb from $118,000 per worker in 2008 to $139,000 in 2018 as recent demographic changes and electoral sorting ensured they became better educated and more urban. Look at the matrix of 10-year trends depicted here:ĭemocratic districts, for example, have grown significantly more dynamic in the last decade. Looking deeper, it’s clear that big shifts in industry geography and composition are driving the parties’ changes of identity. Democratic-voting districts have seen their GDP per seat grow by a third since 2008, from $35.7 billion to $48.5 billion a seat, whereas Republican districts saw their output slightly decline from $33.2 billion to $32.6 billion. Underlying these changes have been eye-popping shifts in economic performance. By contrast, the income level in Republican districts began slightly higher in 2008, but then declined from $55,000 to $53,000. With their output surging as a result of the big-city tilt of the decade’s “winner-take-most” economy, Democratic districts have seen their median household income soar in a decade-from $54,000 in 2008 to $61,000 in 2018. These shifts are massively altering the two parties’ economic identities.įor one thing, the two parties have in just 10 years gone from near-parity on prosperity and income measures to stark, fast-moving divergence. Turn to our economic and demographic data, however, and it’s clear that a series of genuine, penetrating shifts have been happening at warp speed through the last decade. By the 116th Congress, just ten years later, the Democratic share had fallen to 20% of the map. land area compared with the 61% expanse of Republican districts. In 2008, Democratic-voting, often-urban districts encompassed 39% of U.S. Certainly, those numbers point to economic change, although they also reflect gerrymandering and the low population density of rural areas. By the 116th Congress, just ten years later, the Democratic share had fallen to 20% of the map, with Republicans’ expanse rising to 80% of the nation’s land area. In the 111th Congress in 2008, Democratic-voting, often-urban districts encompassed 39% of U.S. Some of the change is already familiar based on how the map of congressional vote outcomes has evolved in the last decade: What do the new numbers show exactly? Based on standard economic data linked to recent congressional district outcomes that we have tracked over time, the Journal/Brookings analysis depicts above all the extreme pace in which the economies of the two parties’ districts are changing in this decade. Which is a key takeaway of a new data analysis-published today-that we developed with the Wall Street Journal’s Aaron Zitner and Dante Chinni. In fact, radical change is transforming the two parties’ economies in real time. Not only are red and blue America experiencing two different economies, but those economies are diverging fast. Yet now comes another wrinkle to the story. Where Republican areas of the country rely on lower-skill, lower-productivity “traditional” industries like manufacturing and resource extraction, Democratic, mostly urban districts contain large concentrations of the nation’s higher-skill, higher-tech professional and digital services. To be sure, racial and cultural resentment have been the prime factors of the Trump backlash, but it’s also clear that the two parties speak for and to dramatically different segments of the American economy.
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