Talk Elections

...excluding Florida...

Perhaps:

Chapel Hill, NC
Carrboro, NC
Durham, NC
Asheville, NC
Atlanta, GA
DeKalb County, GA
Austin, TX
Arlington, VA
Nashville, TN

As of right now...

Probably Austin, TX.  Of course, you've got to remember that the suburbs and rural areas outside of the city are somewhere to the right of Attila the Hun, but the city is still extremely socially liberal (while being less economically liberal, but still so a little).

I live in Austin, and I have to agree that we are one of the most liberal cities in the south. However, like Sam Spade said, the surrounding areas tend to be conservative. Small towns within or around Ausitn like Rollingwood, West Lake Hills (where I live), Cedar Park, Bee Caves, Lago Vista and Round Rock all lean conservative. Also, Cedar Park tends to be Libertarian.

I think Arlington is pretty liberal, but not really as its not really much of a college town.

I would say Arlington is fairly liberal, it is a Democratic stronghold & unlike some of the other cities listed the surrounding areas of Arlington aren't Conservative either  (Fairfax use to be, but not anymore)

Isn't New Orleans fairly liberal socially?

I remember seeing somewhere that, had the largest county in the state not voted, SC would have gone Democratic.  I'm going to assume that the largest county is in Columbia, the conservative state capital.  My town Charleston almost went Democratic, going Bush 52-47.  We've got a socially liberal mayor, Joe Riley, too, who's had the job for decades (he led a march to get rid of the Confederate flag on the State capital).  But generally the most Democratic counties are where the most blacks are, and blacks aren't really social liberal (I think they're generally more populist, in the old sense of the term).  So SC doesn't really have any socially liberal towns or counties.  :)

Yeah

I suppose, although it is two-thirds black, and southern blacks tend to be socially conservative.

Greenville County, home of Bob Jones University and heart of the upstate Bible Belt is SC's largest county, but even subtracting out its 2-1 pro Bush vote wouldn't affect the result.  Last time knocking out the results of a single SC county could have affected the result was 1980 when subtracting either Greenville or Lexington would have given Carter the state.  South Carolina doesn't really have a socially liberal area, it's just that the upstate's arch social conservatism makes the coast's social moderatism stand out in comparison.

Really?  I ought to dig up the post that said SC would have gone Kerry subtracting the largest county (I found it hard to believe, but not impossible).  Thanks for the info Ernest.

Arlington, TX probably hates Bush's guts because they got screwed over by his baseball team, they were forced to give $200 million in subsidies to it.

The SC margin of victory for Bush in 2004 was less than the total population of Greenville County, but not everyone there voted, nor were all of their votes for Bush.

nclib you forgot boone nc and watauga county.  i look forward to each and every trip i take to boone.

Austin's a state capital.  State capitals are always more "liberal" than the state, in general.  Not unlike Boston or Sacramento or Nashville.  (yes, I know there are counterexamples:  Tallahassee comes to mind.)  State capitals have several important features in common:  1.  because the workforce depends heavily on government/education and socialized resources, they tend to be big government types.  2.  also because of this effect, state capitals tend to weather economic downturns better than the rest of the state.  3.  because capitals bring together people from diverse and far-away places (both ideologically and geographically), people who live in state capital cities get used to strangers and strange ideas quickly.  And a state capital like Sacramento or Austin would have that phenomenon more than most, since they are the capitals of the most- and second most-populous states, respectively.  They are also, respectively, the state capitals of the 3rd-largest and 2nd-largest states geographically.

For the South, I believe your argument will generally hold true.  The example of Sacramento, though, is problematic because the Sacramento metro area is somewhat more conservative than the Los Angeles metro area and a lot more conservative than the Bay Area, making it somewhat more conservative than the state as a whole... in states with mega metropolitan areas that skew the state's overall ideology (California, New York, Illinois), the state capitol is likely to be more conservative than the state as a whole, probably for the reason that you mentioned--that the capitol brings in people from all over the state.

Well in New York's case while Albany is more conservative than NYC metro, its slightly more liberal than the state as a whole.  Went to Kerry by 23, the state went to Kerry by 18, Albany went to gore by 27, the state 25, in 96 the state went to CLinton by 29, Albany Clinton by 33

I stand by what I said.  I freely admit you can find counterexamples.  I also stand by the fact that this phenomenon is not limited to Southern US, but in fact is true worldwide.  Sacramento is a dump.  But the people there are far fonder of big gov't and higher taxes than LA metro.

I didn't mention it before, but I disagree with the statement that the "...most socially liberal towns are in the South..."  I just tried to give a reasonable comment regarding specific cities on that list.  I realize they're not all state capitals.  You have to treat cities in which the largest employer in the city is a University much like a state capital in some regard, though.  And this may help explain the perception.  University folks tend to like big government, and not complain about high taxes, and weather economic downturns (thus escaping the need for the occassional demographic scapegoat). , etc. 

There is nothing liberal about Baton Rouge. Even the neighborhoods populated by LSU professors and such went for Bush. But that's just one of your exceptions..

okay, bitch-slap me like that.  fine.  Bear in mind that not only didn't I claim to agree with the original statement, I claimed to disagree with it.  I only mentioned some specific facts regarding many of the cities on the original list.  yeah, I'd actually thought about the red stick when I was originally posting that.  Hard to figure baton rouge.  really.  Some can try to say it's like Albany (more "liberal" than the state minus the only big city in the state, blah, blah, blah) but it really doesn't work in baton rouge's case.  And it's particularly difficult considering one of the state's largest student bodies lives in Baton Rouge.  (is tulane larger?)  I really am not sure what to say about baton rouge, and it probably deserves its own thread.  But I have noticed you can look up economic date from state capitals and university cities and find reams of support for what I posted generally.  Yes, like Tallahassee, Baton Rouge is an obvious counterexample. 

I'm too polite to bitch slap anybody! :)

Tulane is far better integrated in New Orleans than LSU is to BR. Then again, it's a great deal smaller (~10 K students in Tulane, 30 K in LSU)

LSU itself is enveloped in a tropical forest of live oaks. And most of the students live in a isolated part of the parish that was sugar cane fields just 20 years ago. The neighborhoods the professors live in is just as sheltered from the city.

As far as BR goes, it is small town and boring for the people who in Greater N.O., stuck-up for the Cajuns, and an urban hellhole for the rest of the white population. Even black people prefer to live in small towns (all the red south LA Kerry parishes are full of those towns) than in BR.

I always thought Tallahassee was extremely liberal, at least compared to the rest of the Panhandle.

Comparatively speaking, Charleston is more liberal (more Dem. whites, who are more liberal than populist as in other Dem. parts of the state).  But Charleston is such a large county (encompassing much, much more than Chucktown, incl. tax-cut-richies across the bridge in Mt. P).  The people on the Islands (Sullivans, Isle of Palms, etc.) are probably so rich, they don't feel as compelled to vote Republican.  Though Charleston is still socially liberal, I absolutely love it and might stay there after college and/or grad. school.

Depends on what you include in Atlanta. If you are talking about "I.T.P. Atlanta" (Fulton, Dekalb, Clayton) then Atlanta looks about 65-68% Democratic. However, when it comes to "O.T.P. Atlanta", it's about 60-65% Republican. If you are talking about Metro Atlanta in general, it's fairly split, but has a slight Democratic lean.

I.T.P.: Inside the Perimeter, which is the circle of interstates that surround Atlanta.
O.T.P.:Outside the Interstate Perimeter.

College towns in most states.  Check out Charlottesville, Va. and Chapel Hill, N.C. as good examples.  What about Athens, Ga.?

The county votes Dem

I think many of the Louisiana parishes around the Mississippi are reliably Democrat, though this might be because of the high black population.

That's it

Shelby County, TN (metro Memphis) voted 58% for Kerry. I haven't seen the numbers for Memphis proper, but they are certainly higher without the white-flight suburbs. Plus, Memhis is greater than 60% black. I would guess that Memphis by itself was probably 70-75% for Kerry.

City of Memphis was 68% for Kerry,  Shelby County excl. Memphis went 73% for Bush.