Political Oddities

[GAinDC]

What are some regions that don't have the type of partisanship one would expect? Here are a few:

Western North Carolina -- Many of the counties in this region are much less Republican than you see in other rural areas of Southern Appalachia. They also aren't swinging R by much, so there appears to be no reversion to the mean.

Miami Dade -- Even factoring in the Republican leanings of the Cuban community, a large, diverse, cosmopolitan, gay friendly tourist area such as this has no business being so Republican.

Oklahoma City/Tulsa -- Probably the most Republican leaning major cities in the country. Why?

Iron Range, MN -- It has shifted right, but not as much as other WWC areas in the Midwest and Great Plains

Interior New England (excluding Vermont) -- You'd think this area would be much redder than it is, judging by the many Trump signs you see driving through these parts.

Any others?

[Roll Roons]

For a wealthy and educated suburban county in the Northeast, Morris County, NJ is far more Republican than you’d expect it to be.

[pikachu]

Orange County’s mythos is so well-known among our type of people that it’s not an oddity, but in a vacuum you’d expect a 63% nonwhite county with a significant college-educated white population that’s also the major suburb of LA to be more of a blowout for Dems than it is.

[TML]

Orange County’s mythos is so well-known among our type of people that it’s not an oddity, but in a vacuum you’d expect a 63% nonwhite county with a significant college-educated white population that’s also the major suburb of LA to be more of a blowout for Dems than it is.

To be fair, a significant portion of OC's nonwhite population is Vietnamese, and this is the one Asian ethnic group that is R-leaning (due to the political leanings of their ancestral homeland, although younger generations tend to be more D-leaning).

[ProgressiveModerate]

The ethnic enclaves of NYC - tons of swingy and R leaking enclaves in NYC and the political self-sorting is insane compared to basically anywhere else in the Country. Look at Kings County (Brooklyn) for probably the clearest example of this - most of the county is like 90% Biden and then you have borough park at like 90% Trump.

Spring Valley also fits into this category - hyper conservative Jews play a big role here.

[Sol]

Western North Carolina -- Many of the counties in this region are much less Republican than you see in other rural areas of Southern Appalachia. They also aren't swinging R by much, so there appears to be no reversion to the mean.

Western NC being less hyper-R is the result of a couple factors:

• Asheville is a very bohemian city, with a lot of hippies. There's overspill from that in surrounding areas to a certain extent, though important not to overstate.
• There are colleges in Boone (Watauga), Asheville, and Cullowhee (Jackson), which have dramatically influenced the politics of those areas.
• There's the Qualla Boundary in Jackson and Swain counties, including the Snowbird community in Graham County.
  
• WNC gets a lot of tourism from Florida because of the scenery and its cooler, seasonally variant climate. A lot of retirees have moved to the area. These people are fairly Republican, but not as much as the locals in some areas. A few places, like Asheville and Hendersonville, attract hippie retirees. The 2020 swings in WNC are a good proxy for this stuff.
• Moreso than Eastern Tennessee, there are parts of WNC which are ancestrally Democratic, and most of the Republican counties excluding Avery, Mitchell, and Madison were winnable for Democrats in a good year in the early 20th century. The 1950s-1970s saw a weakening of the deeply entrenched 19th century voting patterns in much of the South as the older generation started dying out. The obvious example of this is the Southern Strategy, but in historically Republican parts of the South Democrats became increasingly competitive, with their redistributive message resonating in poor places. The quintessential example in WNC is the Ponder Machine in Madison County, which flipped the area in the mid-1950s, but there are a lot of examples of this. There's more discussion of this here and here.

[GAinDC]

Western North Carolina -- Many of the counties in this region are much less Republican than you see in other rural areas of Southern Appalachia. They also aren't swinging R by much, so there appears to be no reversion to the mean.

Western NC being less hyper-R is the result of a couple factors:

• Asheville is a very bohemian city, with a lot of hippies. There's overspill from that in surrounding areas to a certain extent, though important not to overstate.
• There are colleges in Boone (Watauga), Asheville, and Cullowhee (Jackson), which have dramatically influenced the politics of those areas.
• There's the Qualla Boundary in Jackson and Swain counties, including the Snowbird community in Graham County.
  
• WNC gets a lot of tourism from Florida because of the scenery and its cooler, seasonally variant climate. A lot of retirees have moved to the area. These people are fairly Republican, but not as much as the locals in some areas. A few places, like Asheville and Hendersonville, attract hippie retirees. The 2020 swings in WNC are a good proxy for this stuff.
• Moreso than Eastern Tennessee, there are parts of WNC which are ancestrally Democratic, and most of the Republican counties excluding Avery, Mitchell, and Madison were winnable for Democrats in a good year in the early 20th century. The 1950s-1970s saw a weakening of the deeply entrenched 19th century voting patterns in much of the South as the older generation started dying out. The obvious example of this is the Southern Strategy, but in historically Republican parts of the South Democrats became increasingly competitive, with their redistributive message resonating in poor places. The quintessential example in WNC is the Ponder Machine in Madison County, which flipped the area in the mid-1950s, but there are a lot of examples of this. There's more discussion of this here and here.

Fascinating! Thanks

[wnwnwn]

The ethnic enclaves of NYC - tons of swingy and R leaking enclaves in NYC and the political self-sorting is insane compared to basically anywhere else in the Country. Look at Kings County (Brooklyn) for probably the clearest example of this - most of the county is like 90% Biden and then you have borough park at like 90% Trump.

Spring Valley also fits into this category - hyper conservative Jews play a big role here.

Most of those deep republican Brooklyn areas are conservative jewish areas.

[TML]

In terms of Miami-Dade, it's not just Cubans who are right-leaning, but also Chileans, Colombians, and Venezuelans (the left-leaning Hispanic groups are mostly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans). Additionally, in Hialeah (a city with a high concentration of Cubans), the share of people with higher education is also relatively low (about 20%), which is another factor contributing to its rightward lean.

[iceman]

Miami Dade -- Even factoring in the Republican leanings of the Cuban community, a large, diverse, cosmopolitan, gay friendly tourist area such as this has no business being so Republican.

Miami-Dade is not by any means a republican county yet, Dem’s still has a slight edge with registration, but it’s shrinking fast. As of the moment, it’s a purple coutny at best.

[Bernie Derangement Syndrome Haver]

Interior New England (excluding Vermont) -- You'd think this area would be much redder than it is, judging by the many Trump signs you see driving through these parts.

As a resident of non-deep blue "rural"(-ish) New England...yes, there are more Trump signs. But this is more an enthusiasm gap issue than an outnumbering issue. It's still New England - even the rural areas are largely secular, college educated, and most places are within commuting distance of a city. You've got exurban white collar workers who want a larger yard mixed in with Swamp Yankee country bumpkin types who are a bit uncomfortable with the fact that their towns aren't quite as rural as they would like or perceive them to be.

[Roll Roons]

In terms of Miami-Dade, it's not just Cubans who are right-leaning, but also Chileans, Colombians, and Venezuelans (the left-leaning Hispanic groups are mostly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans). Additionally, in Hialeah (a city with a high concentration of Cubans), the share of people with higher education is also relatively low (about 20%), which is another factor contributing to its rightward lean.

Hialeah specifically may have low college attainment, but the county as a whole is 32.5%, which is not that far below the national average.

[kwabbit]

In terms of Miami-Dade, it's not just Cubans who are right-leaning, but also Chileans, Colombians, and Venezuelans (the left-leaning Hispanic groups are mostly Mexicans and Puerto Ricans). Additionally, in Hialeah (a city with a high concentration of Cubans), the share of people with higher education is also relatively low (about 20%), which is another factor contributing to its rightward lean.

I think educational polarization doesn't work the same for recent Latin American immigration. The quite educated (55% bach) city of Doral, which is heavily Venezuelan, has moved about the same as Hialeah.

This makes sense in the context of Latin American politics. In the US, education is not really the driving factor itself in educational polarization, it's that educational attainment is correlated with trust in institutions. As the GOP becomes more anti-institution, people who trust them will go turn to Dems. This explains the military becoming more Democratic even though it's lower educational attainment.

In Latin America, and specifically for Venezuela, distrust in institutions could be right-coded again. The regime is left-wing and those who align with the regime, like major media institutions, are left-wing. However, relatively educated and wealthy people are right wing, and therefore being educated correlates with distrust in institutions.

Therefore, when the GOP bangs on its anti-institution and anti-left drum, it might be drawing in educated Latin Americans just as much as less educated Latin Americans. In more established communities, American educational polarization takes effect, which can be seen in Kendall, Pinecrest, Coral Gables, etc., which are all quite Latino, educated, and less foreign born.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Interior New England (excluding Vermont) -- You'd think this area would be much redder than it is, judging by the many Trump signs you see driving through these parts.

As a resident of non-deep blue "rural"(-ish) New England...yes, there are more Trump signs. But this is more an enthusiasm gap issue than an outnumbering issue. It's still New England - even the rural areas are largely secular, college educated, and most places are within commuting distance of a city. You've got exurban white collar workers who want a larger yard mixed in with Swamp Yankee country bumpkin types who are a bit uncomfortable with the fact that their towns aren't quite as rural as they would like or perceive them to be.

Yep this has been my expiernce too. I'd just remind people in general "rural" in the context of New England isn't really the same type of rural as you have in a place like Ohio or Texas. Most of "rural" England is still close enough to some major city to still have major influence from it.

[Roll Roons]

Maybe someone has already done this, but I think an interesting project would be an analysis of how counties would be expected to vote based on their demographics (education, race, density, religiosity) versus how they actually vote.

[Alcibiades]

Maybe someone has already done this, but I think an interesting project would be an analysis of how counties would be expected to vote based on their demographics (education, race, density, religiosity) versus how they actually vote.

If someone has a county dataset with e.g. 2020 election vote shares and that demographic data, then it should be pretty easy to run a regression of the former on the latter in, say, R and map the residual for each county.