There is a chart that the Democratic Party-aligned Brookings Institution loves to put out after every presidential election. It shows the “candidates’ share” of “GDP by county” for the most recent election.

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Right on schedule, just days after then-candidate Donald Trump beat Democratic rival Kamala Harris in 2024, Brookings published the latest version of its favorite chart showing that, all together, the 427 counties that Harris won “represent” 62% of the nation’s GDP compared to the 38% of GDP that the 2,633 counties that voted for Trump produce.

In case the political message of Brookings’s chart wasn’t obvious, the accompanying press release spells it out for you. “Once again, a relatively small rural and small town economic order will wield inordinate authority over an economy anchored by big city metro areas,” the Brookings website reads.

But when you look at the chart, its underlying truth becomes clear. All the biggest counties by GDP are just those counties with big cities. It is really just a chart showing that most economic activity in the United States takes place in cities. In fact, according to the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, about 90% of all economic activity takes place in metropolitan areas, which isn’t surprising because they also contain about 90% of the country’s population.

But a chart showing Democrats won all the nation’s biggest cities wouldn’t be news. People already know the Democratic Party controls almost all major cities. Dallas has a Republican mayor, and the Dallas-Fort Worth metroplex is the fourth-largest metropolitan area in the country. But Dallas Mayor Eric Johnson was first elected as a Democrat. He is the exception that proves the rule. The next largest city with a Republican mayor is Oklahoma City, way down at No. 20.

Graphing the data at the county level makes it seem like there is something about Democratic governance that is economically superior to Republican governance. But why the county level? Are counties where most economic policy decisions are made? Not at all. Taxes, regulations, labor laws, energy policy, those are mostly set at the state level. In fact, states can and often do overrule city laws, which makes sense. According to the Constitution, municipal legal authority is derived from state power.

So why doesn’t Brookings do its chart based on state GDP? Because not only would the results be very different — Dallas County, Texas, and Fulton County, Georgia, would suddenly flip from blue to red — but it would also quickly become apparent that red states are growing much faster than blue states. And because cities are the real engines of economic growth in this country and, in fact, the world, it isn’t surprising that cities in red states are thriving, while cities in blue states are failing.

Just look at the Census Bureau data. Over the past 10 years, the populations of New York, Los Angeles, and Detroit have all declined while Chicago and Philadelphia have treaded water. Meanwhile, Houston, Dallas, San Antonio, Phoenix, and Jacksonville, Florida, are all booming, adding hundreds of thousands of jobs and citizens. Just in the past five years, Jacksonville has even pushed past San Jose, California, to claim the last spot on the 10 most populous cities in the nation.

The real question isn’t, as Brookings tries to frame it, how “a relatively small rural and small town economic order will wield inordinate authority over an economy anchored by big city metro areas,” the better question is, “Why are cities in blue states so vastly underperforming their counterparts in red states?”

Affordability

The Bureau of Economic Analysis puts out a Regional Price Parities index every year that measures the cost of living in each state. The index is set to average out at 100, so a state with a 105 rating is a more expensive place to live, on average, than the rest of the country, while a state with a 95 would be a comparably more affordable place to live.

According to the most recent data, the 10 least affordable states on the RPP index are blue: California, New Jersey, Hawaii, Washington, Massachusetts, New York, New Hampshire, Oregon, Maryland, and Connecticut. The first red state doesn’t appear until No. 11 with Florida. By contrast, the 12 most affordable states are all Republican.

For most items measured by the BEA, the difference in prices between red states and blue states is small, just 7% for goods such as groceries. But for big-ticket items, blue-state prices were much higher, including 52% higher for housing and 45% higher for utilities. Housing is a particularly sensitive price point, as annual Census Bureau surveys find that it is routinely named as the No. 1 reason people move.

Why is housing so much more expensive in blue-state cities than it is in red-state cities? Because of policy choices made in blue states and blue counties.

Minimum lot size rules make it impossible for starter homes to be built on small lots in some communities while floor-area ratio regulations, rules that cap the amount of floor space on a given lot, effectively restrict how many floors developers can add to an apartment or condo building. Both regulations create scarcity driving up housing prices.

Then there are the environmental regulations that drive up housing costs, such as urban growth boundary rules that restrict commercial and residential development near a city to preserve natural beauty. Boulder, Colorado; Seattle; and Portland, Oregon, all have such regulations and high housing costs.

Blue states also have a slew of other environmental laws that are often stricter than national standards, including wetlands protection in New Jersey, water quality certifications in Oregon, and stormwater management in Maryland. Many blue states also have so-called “mini-NEPA” laws, modeled after the federal National Environmental Policy Act, that allow activist groups to sue in state court to stop pretty much any development project. Like NEPA itself, these citizen suits do not just delay projects — the extra legal costs and delays often end them entirely.

These same environmental laws also drive up utility prices in blue states. In addition to the mini-NEPAs, which make permitting for power plants, pipelines, and transmission lines more difficult, blue states also have renewable portfolio standards, which mandate a certain percentage of power created comes from renewable sources. There are also cap and trade programs in California and Washington that effectively act as carbon taxes. This is the reason the five states with the highest electricity prices are all blue. The first real red state of any size has only the 19th-highest electricity prices. Blue states may emit less carbon per capita than red states, but consumers and manufacturers pay the price in higher utility costs.

Jobs

The second-most cited reason that people move, according to the Census Bureau, is jobs. And the numbers on job creation over the past decade, but especially since the COVID-19 pandemic, are striking.

According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the three largest blue states, California, New York, and Illinois, have only increased the number of jobs in their states by 14%, 8%, and 4%, respectively, over the past decade. Contrast that with Arizona, Florida, and Texas, which have grown by 25%, 26%, and 21%, respectively. The red-state job advantage is clear. And that job creation advantage has only become more pronounced since the pandemic. California, New York, and Illinois have only grown their workforces by 2%, 1%, and 1%, respectively, since the prepandemic high, while Arizona, Florida, and Texas have grown by 8%, 10%, and 10%, respectively.

What had been a small but distinct prepandemic red-state jobs advantage has turned into a postpandemic route. Blue states are simply being left in the dust by red states economically. And red-state cities are leading the way.

While New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago have only added to their workforces by 11%, 10%, and 6%, respectively, since 2015, Phoenix, Dallas, and Jacksonville have grown by 30%, 29%, and 28% respectively. And the numbers since the pandemic are again telling. Los Angeles has actually lost jobs, while New York has added just 2% more jobs and Chicago just 1%. Meanwhile, Phoenix and Jacksonville have both added 10% more jobs, while Dallas has added 11%.

The usual suspects for slower job creation are all apparent when comparing California, Illinois, and New York to Arizona, Florida, and Texas. California has the highest personal income tax rate in the country, but New York isn’t far behind. In fact, once New York City adds its own personal income tax, it actually passes California’s tax burden. Illinois’s personal income tax is about half of New York’s, but it is still double Arizona’s rate, while Texas and Florida don’t tax personal income at all.

California, Illinois, and New York also have relatively high state corporate tax rates, while Arizona and Florida have lower rates and Texas has none at all, though Texas does have a small franchise tax.

On top of the taxes, blue states also inflict a burdensome regulatory regime on the business community. In addition to the permitting, land-use, and energy regulations mentioned in the housing section, blue-state employers also face more burdensome workers’ compensation and unemployment insurance systems, more generous family leave policies, and more occupational licensing requirements.

According to the Pacific Research Institute’s ranking of Burdens from State Regulatory Structures, California is at the bottom in terms of regulatory environment for businesses. New York ranks 41st, and Illinois stands at No. 38. Meanwhile, Texas has the third-best regulatory environment, Florida ninth, and Arizona 18th. The blue state with the least burdensome regulatory environment is Delaware at 19.

Whatever economic advantage blue-state cities had in previous decades is gone. Red states are simply better business environments than blue states, and they have the job growth to prove it.

Public order

Crime is down across the country after the highs caused by the Black Lives Matter movement in 2020, but many blue cities still feel much more chaotic now than they did before the pandemic.

In New York, despite increased enforcement efforts, half of bus riders still don’t pay the fare. Homeless people are allowed to loiter on the buses and the subway. The smell and trash just make the whole experience feel dirty and unsafe.

In Chicago, mobs of teenagers, sometimes as large as 300, materialize in the glitzy Loop, fighting, looting, robbing, and assaulting people. Revelers leaving the upscale bars and nightclubs of the River North neighborhood are assaulted and robbed. And migrants have been known to violently assault commuters on the L.

And while the new centrist mayor of San Francisco has begun to turn things around, the city is still a mess. Just ask Sen. Adam Schiff (D-CA), who relayed this story to Bill Maher in April:

“I went to this Target in South San Francisco, 10 o’clock at night. I’m getting the toiletries I’m going to need for my next two days in the city,” Schiff said, recounting a time when his luggage was stolen. “And I get to the cashier. The cashier asked me if I wanted one of those Target bags with a little bullseye on it. And I said, ‘Yes, that Target bag is going be my luggage for the next two days.’ And she asked me what happened, and I told her. And she basically said in not‑so‑many words, ‘Yeah, Democrats are a**holes.’ And I thought, you know, if the cashier in South San Francisco at 10 o’clock at night believes that Democrats are a**holes because the shampoo is locked up and my stuff got stolen out of the trunk, we’ve got a major problem that we have to address.”

Yes. Democrats do have a major problem they need to address.

In addition to crime, all of the cities with the highest per capita homeless populations are in blue states. The recent Supreme Court decision in City of Grants Pass v. Johnson will make it easier for blue states to combat homelessness with anti-loitering laws, but blue-state cities still need to summon the political will to do it. The Democratic Party is still run by activist groups that believe housing homeless people must always come first and that incarceration and mandatory treatment are inhumane. Red states are just better at using the criminal justice system to clear the streets and push homeless people into the treatment they need.

Undemocratic Democratic states

The high taxes, burdensome regulations, and public disorder that are causing blue-state cities to fail are all just symptoms of a deeper problem. The Democratic Party has been captured by a deeply undemocratic force that prevents voters from being able to hold their elected officials accountable: government unions.

The Wagner Act of 1935, signed into law by President Franklin Roosevelt, specifically did not grant collective bargaining privileges to government employees. In 1937, the president of the National Federation of Federal Employees asked Roosevelt to support collective bargaining for government workers, and he declined.

“All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service,” Roosevelt wrote in a letter. “It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with government employee organizations.”

Unfortunately, starting first in New York and then spreading to California, many blue-state governments gave government unions the power to bargain collectively. And it has been every bit the disaster Roosevelt foresaw.

Multiple studies show that government union collective bargaining increases the cost of government without making it any more effective or efficient. Other studies show that states with collective bargaining for government unions issue more municipal debt following fiscal deficit shocks and have higher bond yields.

The costs of government union salary and benefits are just the beginning of the problem. Collective bargaining laws allow for government unions to negotiate over workplace rules as well. This means government unions effectively control how their agencies are run. Even if a reform-minded Democrat were to get elected in a blue city and seek to modernize and reform how government workers can do their jobs, they would be prevented from acting by collective bargaining contracts.

And that is assuming a Democrat interested in taking on government union power could ever get elected. In blue states such as California, government unions are by far the biggest and most unified campaign donors in the state. No other interest group comes close to matching their power. Government unions dictate who holds office in blue states. That means that when elected officials sit down to “negotiate” with government union officials, the government union is essentially negotiating with itself. The taxpayers have no real seat at the table. This is why Chicago has $40 billion in unfunded pension obligations and recently took out an $800 million loan that doesn’t pay down any premium in 20 years just to keep the lights on.

FOUR OF THE TOP FIVE MOST GERRYMANDERED STATES ARE CONTROLLED BY DEMOCRATS

Government unions are like kudzu that can strangle a state’s vitality. Just look at Fairfax County, Virginia, one of the most prosperous counties in the country. For decades, it was known for good government and balanced budgets. Just a few short years after Democratic Gov. Ralph Northam signed a law giving government unions collective bargaining powers, those unions signed a huge new contract with Democratic Party supervisors, and the county quickly found itself in a $300 million hole.

Cities have risen and fallen throughout U.S. history as new land was acquired, infrastructure completed, and technology changed. But now red-state cities are set to grow and pass blue-state cities almost entirely because of public policy choices made by those blue states. The Democratic Party’s alliance with government unions is strangling economic growth and family formation in blue cities. Until the Democratic Party breaks this dependency, blue-state cities will continue to decline. And red-state cities will continue to thrive, as long as they keep government unions out.

Conn Carroll is the Washington Examiner commentary editor.