There are non-animal welfare reasons one might vote to ban slaughterhouses or factory farms in one’s city (but be more okay with them elsewhere). Doing ~zero research to approximate the median voter, they sound like things with some potentially significant negative local externalities (adverse environmental effects, reduced property values, etc.) So you may have some NIMBY-motivated voters.
In addition, because the meat market is a regional or even national one, opponents cannot plausibly point to any effect of a localized slaughterhouse/factory farm ban on the prices that local voters pay at the grocery store. I think there’s probably a subset of voters who would vote yes for a measure if and only if it has no plausible economic effect on the prices they pay.
Finally, these cities are more progressive than the states in which they exist, and a state can almost always pre-empt any city legislation that the state political system doesn’t like. So I’d want to see evidence that the city voters weren’t too far out of step with the state median voter before updating too much on city-level results. (Unlike the states—which American political theory holds to pre-exist the Federal government and possess their own inherent sovereignty—cities and counties are generally creations of the states without anything like their own inherent sovereignty.)
There are non-animal welfare reasons one might vote to ban slaughterhouses or factory farms in one’s city (but be more okay with them elsewhere). Doing ~zero research to approximate the median voter, they sound like things with some potentially significant negative local externalities (adverse environmental effects, reduced property values, etc.) So you may have some NIMBY-motivated voters.
In addition, because the meat market is a regional or even national one, opponents cannot plausibly point to any effect of a localized slaughterhouse/factory farm ban on the prices that local voters pay at the grocery store. I think there’s probably a subset of voters who would vote yes for a measure if and only if it has no plausible economic effect on the prices they pay.
Finally, these cities are more progressive than the states in which they exist, and a state can almost always pre-empt any city legislation that the state political system doesn’t like. So I’d want to see evidence that the city voters weren’t too far out of step with the state median voter before updating too much on city-level results. (Unlike the states—which American political theory holds to pre-exist the Federal government and possess their own inherent sovereignty—cities and counties are generally creations of the states without anything like their own inherent sovereignty.)