Talk Elections

10 most affluent communities according to the Census Bureau and their Presidential results in 2000 according to this Site:

DC Metro:
Loudon County, VA - Bush +13 in 2000
Fairfax County, VA - Gore +1.5 in 2000
Montgomery County, MD - Gore +32 in 2000
Howard County, MD - Gore +11 in 2000

NYC Metro:
Somerset County, NJ - Gore +0.2 in 2000
Hunterdon County, NJ - Bush +15 in 2000
Morris County, NJ - Bush +8 in 2000
Rockland County, NY - Gore +20 in 2000

SF Metro:
Santa Clara County, CA - Gore +30 in 2000
Marin County, CA - Gore +43 in 2000

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My predictions for this year are:

DC Metro:
Loudon County, VA - Bush +10
Fairfax County, VA - Kerry +3
Montgomery County, MD - Kerry +35
Howard County, MD - Kerry +15

NYC Metro:
Somerset County, NJ - Kerry +2
Hunterdon County, NJ - Bush +12
Morris County, NJ - Bush +6
Rockland County, NY - Kerry +22

SF Metro:
Santa Clara County, CA - Kerry +35
Marin County, CA - Kerry +45

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Comments?

Every single one will be an improvement for Kerry (over Gore)?

Does this take cost of living into account?  People get very high incomes compared to the rest of the country, but a one-room shack on a .2 acre lot costs $500,000.

Actually, a 1 room shack in half of those counties is a half mil.

Sure, the areas where Bush is improving are rural.  The Dems are picking up ground in the suburban areas as "Starbucks drinking" types move in.  Just look at how Bush's father did in these places:

DC Metro:
Loudon County, VA - Bush +33 in 1988
Fairfax County, VA - Bush +23 in 1988
Montgomery County, MD - Dukakis +3 in 1988
Howard County, MD - Bush +13 in 1988

NYC Metro:
Somerset County, NJ - Bush +29 in 1988
Hunterdon County, NJ - Bush +39 in 1988
Morris County, NJ - Bush +37 in 1988
Rockland County, NY - Bush +14 in 1988

SF Metro:
Santa Clara County, CA - Dukakis +4 in 1988
Marin County, CA - Dukakis +29 in 1988

In my experience, the Dems are the ones who are anti-Starbucks (symbol of globalism, forces the mom+pop shops out of business, etc.).

Dems who are against Starbucks are either Union guys who their party left behind but haven't realized it yet or hypocritical "Liberals" who sit at Starbucks drinking frappuchinos while trash talking about globalism and such things.

State, Average Monthly Income, Bush's 2000 PV
District of Columbia   1039   8.95
Connecticut   911   38.44
New York   904   35.23
Massachusetts   871   32.5
New Jersey   863   40.29
California   784   41.65
Illinois   764   42.58
Delaware   759   41.9
Michigan   734   46.14
Washington   731   44.56
Colorado   731   50.75
Maryland   728   40.18
Minnesota   722   45.5
Texas   707   59.3
Virginia   707   52.47
New Hampshire   704   48.07
Georgia   692   54.67
Alaska   691   58.62
Pennsylvania   678   46.43
Ohio   648   49.97
Arizona   647   50.95
Missouri   640   50.42
Rhode Island   639   31.91
Oregon   636   46.52
Nevada   635   49.52
Indiana   626   56.65
North Carolina   625   56.03
Tennessee   624   51.15
Wisconsin   618   47.61
Florida   612   48.85
Kansas   597   58.04
Hawaii   595   37.46
Kentucky   591   56.5
Vermont   589   40.7
Alabama   587   56.47
Louisiana   577   52.55
Utah   577   66.83
South Carolina   567   56.83
Maine   562   43.97
Iowa   561   48.22
Nebraska   559   62.25
Wyoming   544   67.76
New Mexico   542   47.85
Oklahoma   542   60.31
West Virginia   535   51.92
Idaho   534   67.17
Arkansas   533   51.31
Mississippi   506   57.62
North Dakota   502   60.66
South Dakota   498   60.3
Montana   477   58.44

Very strong correlation

Lies, damn lies, and statistics. In most states, the poorest areas go Dem and the richest GOP.

Does anyone see Bush winning any of the 10 other than Morris, Hunterdon, and Loudon?

Are those figures really average monthly income or are they average *weekly* income?  They seem awfully low.

If Bush really has gained in NJ he'll win Somerset again... I suppose he has a chance in Fairfax... but Kerry will probably win that one.
Out of interest, what are the 10 poorest counties (according to etc) ?

<Cough> Ahem...whoops...
Here's the link (http://www.bls.gov/cew/ew02table6.pdf).

Well, I won't do a state-by-state analysis, but I can speak for CO.  There are 4 notable Democratic strongholds in CO:
Pueblo (steel mill, big union/blue collar town)
Central Denver (mostly high-income resisdents)
Boulder (CU campus, upper middle class and ivory tower liberals)
Aspen (Ultra rich)

Much of the poorest regions are either Republican-leaning or strongly Republican, as are most middle class suburb areas.

Had done a correlation between level of education and voting you would have found that the lower the education level - Bush's numbers are going up

Percent of People Below Poverty Level:
Population for Whom Poverty Status is Determined (County level)
 
    County                            Percent Impovrished
1  Hidalgo County, TX         36.2
2  Cameron County, TX       34.8
3  Bronx County, NY            29.8
4  El Paso County, TX          26.7
5  Tulare County, CA           25.0
6  St. Louis City, MO            24.0
7  Nueces County, TX          23.1
8  Orleans Parish, LA           21.7
9  Philadelphia County, PA  21.2
10  Baltimore City, MD         20.6
11  Kings County, NY           20.4
12  Fresno County, CA        20.1
13  Kern County, CA            19.8
14  Mobile County, AL          19.6
14  New York County, NY     19.6

Al-

For kicks, look at the blackest and most hispanic counties list and compare.

Exactly. The main reason income and voting are correlated is because income and education are correlated and education and voting are correlated.

In many states, the poorest areas are majority-minority and therefore go Dem.

Once race is controlled for, wealthy areas are much more Democratic than poor areas.

This isn't the case by any means.

Who won Knott, KY?

Who won Logan, WV?

Not Dumbya!

There is some correlation between poverty and ignorance and between ignorance and voting for Bush.

By poorest I meant lowest income

CTGuy:  OFF!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I've said it before and I'll say it again: it's all relative. Take Connecticut as an example.
Look at the 2000 Town map on the Atlas (it's free) and compare it to This (http://216.55.182.132/FairData/SocioEconMapper/map.asp?command=zmin&annot=%7C&vis=&map=0&width=0&table=&scope=-96770401%7C38753018%7C2912.671638%7C2642.587541&zoomrect=494%7C176%7C24%7C16&panshift=)

P.S:
Median Household income is more useful than personal income IMO.

Recommended:

http://www.fairdata2000.com/SocioEconMapper/ (http://www.fairdata2000.com/SocioEconMapper/)

Like I said earlier, compare Oregon.  The richest areas vote DEM!

Your theory doesn't hold water.

My town is particularly affluent and it votes Republican by a wide margin. I think it has to do with its low tax rate (even for NH) and the amount people spend on luxuries like summer homes and skiis. There are just too many factors that govern what party people vote for.

Believe me, you are not more liberal than me! on anything!

Patrick,

I bet you are to the left of me. Most are...but I am not a right winger in the least.

Your a rare breed in the Republican party now adays.  All your positions are liberal ones.

The richest and the poorest have always been more Democrat-leaning and the middle class has always been more Republican-leaning.

This fact is further corroborated by the fundraising issues.  The Republicans have tons of $2,000-level contributors.  Pre-BCRA, the Democrats had tons of uber-rich contributors.

Of course, there are exceptions to the rule.

But wealthy areas are more Democratic than white-majority poor areas, at least at the congressional district level.

I think that the poorest are more than leaning to the Dems, while the middle class is more of a slight GOP lean, though that's nitpicking.  The original point of my post is the the Upper middle class is trending to vote more like the upper class than the middle class.

Welcome, to the forum, patrick1. Where in Queens are you? My mother grew up in Jackson Heights.

Are Bronx County and Queens County officially under the rule of the NYC Council and the Mayor?  If so what happened to the Bronx County Council and the Queens County Council?

New York City, New York County and Manhattan Island have been identical since colonial times.
In 1885(? - somewhere around that time, anyways), the Southern tip of Westchester County (the modern South Bronx) was added to NYC and to NY County.
In 1898, Greater New York was formed, to consist of 5 Boroughs:
Manhattan (the old, pre-1885 NYC)
Richmond (Richmond County; the borough was renamed Staten Island not so long ago)
Brooklyn (the entire old Kings County, not just the former city of Brooklyn)
Queens (only part of the old Queens County. The remainder was organized as Nassau County.) All these were identical with Counties of the same size.
Bronx (the area added to New York county, plus an additional bit of Westchester County.) Bronx County was only created in 1910(?) - until then Bronx borough was partly in New York county, partly in Westchester county.

Patrick,

Former Great Necker here.  Welcome.


Trondheim,

Meant to ask you earlier - What part of Hawai'i are you from?  Former Millilani Town stomper here (back when it was still a town and still had pineapples growing across the street from the high school).

:)
Read my signature, dude.
For fantasy purposes: Not Oahu. :) Molokai or Kauai or Maui.
And as I'm ethnic German I think I'll consider myself fantasy ethnic Hawai'ian from now on.

HAHAHAHA . . . got it.  :)  In that case, I enjoyed bremerhaven.  

MODU gets around.  *laughs*

So did I...many years ago when I spent one afternoon there on a tour of the harbour. The city itself is a dump though. :(

Well, that was what . . . 1994 if I remember correctly, when I sailed into there.  You want to talk about a dump, I left Bremerhaven to go to Felixstowe, England.  Kinda reminds me of Bayonne, NJ.  hahaha . . . ahhh, the good ol' days.  :)

Historical Geography is often very importent... rural Tennessee being the usual example.
I think that cultural issues are over-rated as a voting indicator... unless you're using it as a euphamism for racial voting...

This comment gets to the core of the problem with a national income tax, and how it affects perceptions of the parties. Since costs of living vary so much, income for the same profession tends to vary as well. When the two are combined the type of people that fall into a particular tax bracket in a rural Midwest county may be quite different than those who fall in the same bracket in an urban center in the Northeast.

The national graduated tax structure cannot take into account the regional differences. Until the types of expense are identified, the current tax structure will fail to differentiate between these groups. As such, the perception of which way to correct the tax system, will have a regional, and not purely economic basis.

Bush won Somerset county in 2000 and in 2004.

It has become less Republican over the years.

Smallest Republican swing in New Jersey.

This is an old topic, but an interesting one.  Bump.

It was insane how wildly Rockland County, New York swung in 2004. It's almost entirely wealthy NYC commuters (having basically no poor communities or local communities despite being semi-rural in areas), so I suppose it was hit hardest by the 9/11 effect.

Regardless of how counties vote, income is a very poor predictor of how people will vote. The poorer the income bracket, the better the Dem will do, but this is largely a function of higher numbers of minorities. Ethnicity is a much better predictor. Generic Whites vote about 60-40 Republican. Blacks vote 90-10 Democrat. Jews vote 80-20 Democrat etc.

Protestant (and Evangelical, for those who insist that they aren't Protestant) Whites are the only significant demographic that votes Republican, interestingly, but by a wider margin than Catholic Whites vote Democratic, and those two together make up the vast majority of the population.

It's mostly just polarization between urban and inner suburban areas and outer suburban and exurban areas. The two areas are nearly equal in population, but the urban/inner suburban areas have a slight edge, so they win. New Jersey was also heavily hit by the 9/11 effect in 2004. In 2000, it was further affected by gun control, which New Jersey, having no rural areas to speak of, is strongly for. With the fading of gun control as an issue combined with the 9/11 effect, Bush did much better in NJ in 2004 than 2000, but I don't think any Republican could improve on that performance running nationwide.

Bump for 2008 discussion.

To respond to this (with the retrospect of 2008 in mind now, of course), the odd result for Ocean County was 2000, not 2004. And it was gun control that made Ocean County almost vote Democratic; it's exactly the sort of area that's full of easily frightened middle class whites. Upper class whites like those populating northern Bergen, outer Somerset, Morris, Hunterdon, etc. are not so easily scared. (Plus, Somerset in particular and Morris and Hunterdon to a lesser extent are experiencing demographic changes that are making them more Democratic in the long run.)

Anyway, on the urban-rural divide, there certainly are rural areas in NJ, so I suppose I was misspeaking. There are essentially no people living there compared to urban and suburban areas, however. (Warren and Salem Counties are the two smallest counties in the state by population; nearly nine-tenths of Burlington County's population lives within 10 miles of the Delaware River.) The only rural area with any substantial population is Cumberland County, and the high Hispanic population there combined with some urbanization in Vineland, Millville, etc. makes even those areas not particularly opposed to gun control.

I live in one of those counties, for safety, I'm not telling which, and my family is fiercely independent. We swing between Republican and Democrat most elections, but vote for most third party candidates that look promising.

Maybe (even if I must refer to 2008 to express a trend that began earlier) we can address poverty itself and ethnicity as they interact in voting.


Of course, in 2008 the correlation between income and voting was practically nil. Regional and ethnic differences mattered more. Poorest communities tended to be in the South, and without surprise those poor communities with largely-black, Hispanic, or Native-American populations voted strongly for Obama -- but very poor white communities in Appalachia voted overwhelmingly for McCain.

According to the New York Times'  (http://elections.nytimes.com/2008/results/president/explorer.html|Electoral Explorer) (which applies to 2008), counties with median incomes up to $34,128 voted 50-49 for McCain, and those above that cut-off voted 53-46 for Obama. This contradicts the old political wisdom that poor people were more likely to vote for Democrats because they expected to get more goodies from a "nanny state". That device shows trends that have continued from 2000 to now.

Note well, however, that poverty is heavily concentrated in the American South... and that most of the poor, contrary to a common myth, are white people. Poor white people seem to vote very differently from poor black, Hispanic, or Native American people. The county with the lowest median income in the United States is Buffalo County, South Dakota  -- and it voted 73-25 for Obama. It is on an Indian reservation. Relatively few counties have populations predominantly of American Indians... but they voted for Obama. The second-poorest county in median income was Owsley County, Kentucky.. and it voted 62-36 for McCain. It is predominately white. Third-poorest by this standard is Starr County, Texas, a county on the Mexican border, and with a heavily-Hispanic population. It voted for Obama 75-24.  Obama does not claim Hispanic or Native American origin, so voting for Obama isn't a vote for someone of shared ethnic heritage. Fourth-poorest is McDowell County, West Virginia... probably in coal country. It voted 68-31 for Obama... I'd like to know what the economic activity is. If the people are unionized coal miners who underwent mass layoffs or had a long and ugly strike, then one would have an explanation.

It's not until the seventh-poorest county in median income, Wilcox County, Alabama that one has a county with a large African-American population (72%), and it voted 71-29 for Obama, likely along the ethnic split.

At a median income of $23,415 one finds that counties with populations below that threshold 54-45 for Obama... but one can notice some patterns. First, almost all of the poorest counties in America are in the former Confederacy or in southeastern Kentucky. Those from Arkansas and Louisiana to South Carolina are largely-black, and they voted heavily for Obama even if they were in states that voted heavily against Obama. Those in Texas are heavily Hispanic and are close to the Mexican border, and they voted heavily for Obama.  If all poor people in America were to turn white and vote like poor whites in southeastern Kentucky as they did in 2008, then the Republicans could reliably win in landslides. Ethnicity mattered far more than did income.

The drift toward the GOP in the South seems well marked among poor white people who seem no longer to see poverty as a cause for voting Democratic. Maybe the GOP has wisely chosen to avoid imposing the most draconian measures against the poor -- measures that might cause hunger or force people into some modern form of peonage, or shove them into the Democratic Party. Maybe the Democrats have abandoned discussion of poverty per se as a dangerous third rail of politics.

The Democratic nominees for President in 2000 and 2004 talked little about alleviating the plight of the poor. Their rhetoric effectively abandoned poor whites who used to vote reliably for Democrats -- at least as late as 1996. In 2008, Obama did discuss poverty -- but not so much structural poverty of people who endured Third World conditions in a largely-prosperous society -- but instead the threat of poverty that faced people who saw themselves on the brink of asset devaluation and mass layoffs. White people who feared an economic meltdown ended up voting for Obama -- but those already poor for decades -- voted for McCain.

Poverty is a third rail of American politics. Most contemporary politicians evade the issue of poverty as an ugly topic that reminds people of what they dread personally. During eight years of the most plutocratic Presidency in at least 70 years, poverty intensified as more of the GDP went to fewer people and asset-formation among the middle class being drawn into assets whose values would eventually plummet. But even if it is a third rail, poverty remains an issue that politicians will eventually need to address. The Democrats failed to remind Americans that they are their brothers' keepers and the Republicans kept quiet and did nothing rash to the poor over eight years. Why should the Republicans bring up the "third rail" issue if the other Party doesn't?

Poor white people are in no lesser distress than are poor black or poor Hispanic people. 






 

 

Go figure poor whites out. I really don't get it.

The only people who could tell their stories are themselves, barring so great a writer as Faulkner.  Regrettably, William Faulkner is no longer available.