Eliminate NYC from new york state and what happens? Same Chicago and LA in their respective states. Likewise, many western states have huge flows of government spending for reasons that don't make sense on the surface. Those states, tend to have military installations, and huge allocations of national parks and national forest land.
In other words, that type of government spending is not social policy handouts. But rather is the US paying to keep up assets that it owns already (basically security and maintenance).
Rural appalachia is an exception (eg, west va = highly democratic; TN home of senator gore, etc) as these states were the target of many early government projects (like TVA and Food Stamps).
Lastly, huge amounts of governmnet spending are on healthcare
(& social security, which again have nothing to do with modern red state/blue state issues).
Eliminate NYC from new york state and what happens? Same Chicago and LA in their respective states. Likewise, many western states have huge flows of government spending for reasons that don't make sense on the surface. Those states, tend to have military installations, and huge allocations of national parks and national forest land.
In other words, that type of government spending is not social policy handouts. But rather is the US paying to keep up assets that it owns already (basically security and maintenance).
Rural appalachia is an exception (eg, west va = highly democratic; TN home of senator gore, etc) as these states were the target of many early government projects (like TVA and Food Stamps).
Lastly, huge amounts of governmnet spending are on healthcare
(& social security, which again have nothing to do with modern red state/blue state issues).