A chart sure to confuse the Undemocratic Party

The vertical axis shows a Congressional district's population density (the number of people who live in each square mile). The horizontal axis shows the district's Cook PVI score, which is really just the proclivity of the district to vote Democratic. The pattern is clear, Congressional districts with low population density (rural) are much less democratic-leaning. As the density rises, the inclination to vote D rises fast. Business Insider

Interpreting this chart illustrates one of the great misperceptions about American politics. The naive look would say that dense populations get greater economies of scale from government programs. It would make sense, the mass delivery of government goods is cheaper when the recipients are all co-located, agglomeration effects.

But that is only half the story. Agglomeration of federal programs works in dense populations because federal facilities can be efficiently built there, instead of DC. In other words, the gain comes from distributing federal facilities out from the center. Rural pupulations much prefer to co-locate federal facilities in DC, where the economies of scale can be justified. And that makes the large state/small state difference plain. Small states prefer concentration at the center, contrary to popular believe, but the amount of concentration in DC is limited, and so the expansion of federal programs is limited.

Democrats are completely confused and disoriented because they forget that expanding federal programs into dense populations tends to make DC more of a banker, and less of a distributor. The Democrats typically work contrary to their own constituents needs when they mistakenly believe more government makes for more DC.