What major metro areas are more GOP than the state they are in as a whole?

[Torie]

Using Jimtex's perimeters of urban clusters, and using a cutoff of say 1,000,000, the only one's I can think of are Cincinnati, Phoenix, San Diego, Sacramento and Milwaukee. Have I missed any?

[Torie]

Using Jimtex's perimeters of urban clusters, and using a cutoff of say 1,000,000, the only one's I can think of are Cincinnati, Phoenix, San Diego, Sacramento and Milwaukee. Have I missed any?

How about Jacksonville, FL?

Indeed it is. And I missed Pittsburg (Pub enough by a considerable margin), Baltimore (Pub enough by a bit), and Buffalo (big enough). Missing the cut are Albany (not big enough), and Richmond (big enough barely but not Pub enough by a bit). I suppose one could check Dallas, but I doubt it makes the cut. And Indianapolis (which I had checked before), is not Pub enough.

[Torie]

The Inland Empire. I guess that's kind of cheating... but if it was part of the combined Los Angeles area, would it make LA conservative enough?

Maybe, even quite likely come to think of it given OC is included too and CA is so Dem overall given the Bay area swamping what's left of the state, but loading CA on the Dave utility is a masochistic exercise. Oh, Jimtex has the inland empire in a separate metro area. No dice. And in 2012, Obama got 61.9% of the two party vote in CA, and 61.7% in the LA metro, including the inland empire and Ventura county, so yes, barely, the larger LA metro area was a tad more Pub in 2012.

Or, if you really want to get into silly technicalities... the New Jersey portion of the NYC metro area is both less Democratic than NJ as a whole, and has well over 1 million people.

That doesn't count, even though it's in a separate state. I make the rules here.

[Torie]

Grand Rapids, Michigan.  The metro has just over 1 million people according to the 2014 estimate.

Yup,  Michigan would be as democratic as Illinois if not for Grand Rapids.

Jimtex's urban cluster is just Ottawa and Kent counties, so by that metric it's under 1 million. I checked.

[Torie]

I don't have much to add, but I'd like to say that I think it is WAY more interesting to look at the politics of entire metro areas rather than cities.  Even if you fancy pointing out the number of White liberals in a city, fine - that's not the reason they are Democratic, that's the reason they are SOLIDLY Democratic.  Any city beyond a certain size is going to 1) need enough low-income jobs to support that many establishments that require them (e.g., McDonald's, Wal-Mart, pretty much everywhere with multiple cashiers, etc.) and 2) a significant minority population, which the GOP is trying harder by the year to alienate.  Just about every city is going to vote Democratic, even if it's close.  Similarly, just about every wealthy, White "exurb" in the world is going to vote Republican, so the interesting part is looking at the metro as a whole (i.e., which way do the inner suburbs swing things?).  For example, I go to Indianapolis all the time (my sister goes to school there), and you would never get the impression it's a "liberal" city.  Affluent?  Educated?  Cosmopolitan?  Of course, but none of those things in and of themselves indicate "liberal."  However, given its segregated nature, the county Indianapolis is in votes Democratic ... but the metro area definitely votes Republican, and on any given day, a lot of the people walking around Indy, frequenting the restaurants and bars, don't live in the city.  Obama won 60% in Marion County (Indianapolis), but Romney won 68% in Boone, 66% in Hamilton, 69% in Hancock, 68% in Johnson, 69% in Morgan and 66% in Shelby.

Back in the day, the Pubs used to say hey the fastest growing counties in the state are Pub so the future is ours. I laughed, because while that may have been true, the core county with the inner city was getting more Dem. So one has to look at metro areas as a whole to get a better picture. These days, as exurbia loses its cachet, sometimes in is the inner cities that are growing the fastest in the state. That is certainly true of NYC. As to the Indianapolis metro area, while still Pub, I suspect it has trended Dem overall, offset by the Pub trend in rural areas, particularly southern Indiana. The Columbus metro area in Ohio has gone Dem. The Dem trend there has been strong, but TJ suggests that much of it is just Democrats moving there from the Cleveland area, which is losing population.

[Torie]

What about the metro area I'm visiting this weekend (Phoenix, AZ/Maricopa County)?

I listed that one in my opening post.