Dukes County, MA (Martha's Vineyard)

[soniquemd21921]

What caused Martha's Vineyard to shift from heavily Republican to heavily Democratic in the '70s and '80s? It used to be the third most Republican county in the state (after Barnstable and Nantucket), but over time it became 70%+ Democratic. What caused the shift? A large influx of wealthy residents?

[Lloyd Bentsen's Ghost]

The '80s was around the time Reaganomics and the stock market boom created a lot of "new money" that wanted summer homes in MA and on Long Island. Most of those towns were previously pretty insular, understated places - old-money WASPs who had inherited their beach cottages from their families; they didn't put a lot of money into them because they didn't want to be ostentatious so the property values had been fairly reasonable up to that point. A lot of the more middle-class ones ended up selling because they couldn't afford the property taxes. So yeah, basically a large influx of wealthy residents who were often of a decidedly different sociocultural origin.

[Vasall des Midas]

Much the same considerations that turned blue opebo into red opebo.

[Lloyd Bentsen's Ghost]

Much the same considerations that turned blue opebo into red opebo.

Red opebo used to be blue opebo?! What the what?!