Realignments 1980-2000

[minionofmidas]

I did some research (if you can call it that) that was supposed to be about how the nation's largest counties swung 1980-2000. (I wanted it to be 1960-2000, but there's gaps in Dave's data.)
I picked the 109 counties that cast over 200,000 votes in 2000 and, among other things, summed up by how much Dems or Reps led there.
I noticed that the *average* (not aggregate) result of these counties was 2% more Dem than the Nation's through 1980-1988, 3% more in 1992, but 6% more in 1996 and 12%!! more in 2000. (We're talking about the Dem or Rep lead
here. The percentage of the total vote would be half that, except third party candidates sometimes were more urban, sometimes more rural)
Then I looked these figures over, shook my head in wonder because I'd expected something like that but not this much, went back to the raw data and noticed that the swing is strongest in the Suburban rather than the Urban areas that I'd originally been interested in. That looks like a major realignment: In the 70's and 80's the countryside and the suburbs were solidly Rep and the totally Dem inner citys didn't matter. Now the Countryside trends more overwhelmingly Rep but if the Suburbans keep defecting it's not going to help the Reps for long.
An urban-suburban Dem Coalition might be under way.
Now what would rural people do if they are all Reps but have very little chance of getting a president in, as happened to inner-city people under Reagan? The militia movement might be just a small foretaste of what's in store...

[opebo]

That looks like a major realignment: In the 70's and 80's the countryside and the suburbs were solidly Rep and the totally Dem inner citys didn't matter. Now the Countryside trends more overwhelmingly Rep but if the Suburbans keep defecting it's not going to help the Reps for long.
An urban-suburban Dem Coalition might be under way.
Now what would rural people do if they are all Reps but have very little chance of getting a president in, as happened to inner-city people under Reagan? The militia movement might be just a small foretaste of what's in store...

I don't agree with your analysis.  What your observing is that older suburbs are becoming more Democrat, precisely because of economic and population growth (and movement).  The 'exurb' counties are growing hugely and are extremely Republican - these are what the old suburban counties you're tracking were 20 years ago.  And even older suburban counties are only marginally Dem., mostly by a few points rather than the 75-25 split you get in the inner cities or the rural and exurban counties.  I think the success of Republicans in the Congress and in State government tends to contradict your conclusions.

Lastly, I find the remark about militias marginally offensive.  As someone who grew up in a rural area, I can tell you that the militia thing was hyped by Hollywood and the Media - in fact it is a minute number of people and doesn't represent the rural community.  Its just part of the left-wing elite's usual misrepresentation of rural people as less intelligent or more violence prone.  Its also a convenient and absurd mantra of the left to claim that terrorism has a 'domestic' half - when in reality its nearly all from extreme Islamic sources.

[minionofmidas]

Okay, forget the militia comment. That was taking extrapolating a bit too far.
But even most exurban places are becoming less overwhelmingly republican than they used to be. Morris Co NJ or DuPage Co IL, say. *If* these trends continue they'll soon see Dem victories.
What may be true, however, is that we're talking is mostly the suburbs of the really big aglomerations. These areas certainly are overrepresented in the 109-county list.
The general point that compared with 1980 or 1988 there has been massive realignment of the suburbs going left and the countryside right holds, though.
Another question is how much good exactly that will do the Dems in the EC. There aren't that many strongly suburban states they don't have yet: Florida of course, Nevada, Arizona, Virginia... What else? And of course (since a swing compared to the national result always means a swing in the other direction somewhere else) there's losses in Iowa and New Mexico, Maine, Wisconsin to counterset that...

[opebo]

Okay, forget the militia comment. That was taking extrapolating a bit too far.
But even most exurban places are becoming less overwhelmingly republican than they used to be. Morris Co NJ or DuPage Co IL, say. *If* these trends continue they'll soon see Dem victories.
What may be true, however, is that we're talking is mostly the suburbs of the really big aglomerations. These areas certainly are overrepresented in the 109-county list.
The general point that compared with 1980 or 1988 there has been massive realignment of the suburbs going left and the countryside right holds, though.
Another question is how much good exactly that will do the Dems in the EC. There aren't that many strongly suburban states they don't have yet: Florida of course, Nevada, Arizona, Virginia... What else? And of course (since a swing compared to the national result always means a swing in the other direction somewhere else) there's losses in Iowa and New Mexico, Maine, Wisconsin to counterset that...

You're right about their being a big difference in political trends between the big aglomerations and the smaller metros.  The bigger metro areas are just more Democrat, overall, than the more common medium to small sized ones.  This reflects a new phenomenon - the old 'white flight' to the suburbs of the big cities, followed by further flight out to the exurbs, has now spawned a third wave - flight out of bigger, older metros entirely, to seperate smaller metros that may be hours away, and truly constitute separate entities.  The examples in my state are Columbia and Springfield, both growing fast at the expense of St. Louis and Kansas City.  There are others in most states, and they tend Republican.  

Another reason I think the trends you're describing haven't led to major shifts nationally - even though many quite populous older suburbs have moved left to become marginally Democrat, the huge loss of population in the cities themselve has reduced Democrate vote totals.  Getting 75% of the 300,000 people in St. Louis city is a lot less impressive than getting 75% of the 500,000+ that lived there just 20 years ago.  This more than makes up for the fact that St. Louis *County* (the older suburbs around the city) is now 50/50 instead of marginally Republican like it used to be.  

[minionofmidas]

Yeah...The city of Saint Louis isn't even in the data...But the major agglomerations do keep growing, and often growing faster than the state they're in, maybe not in Missouri (okay, very probably not in Missouri, with its fast growing Southwest) but in New York, in Pennsylvania, in Ohio, in Illinois...
Saint Louis is really not a place to draw too many conclusions from. No other major inner city has declined quite so amazingly, not even Buffalo or Cleveland... It had 857K inhabitants 50 years back and 348K now. That's a decline of almost 60% Though my knowledge of the place is largely courtesy of Jonathan Franzen, "the twentyseventh city". Now that's what I call a Novel

[opebo]

Saint Louis is really not a place to draw too many conclusions from. No other major inner city has declined quite so amazingly, not even Buffalo or Cleveland...

Actually I find the City of St. Louis ideal for this kind of analysis because its political boundaries really reflect the limits of the 'old' city due to some odd politics in the old days.  St. Louis County would in a normal city arrangement in the US be at least partly absorbed within the boundaries of the city.   St. Louis itself is truely 100% 'inner city' with few real suburbs within its limits.  I think the inner or downtown parts of Buffallo, Cleveland, etc etc have declined just as much, but the decline is somewhat masked by the larger city territory.

[minionofmidas]

Those too are very extreme cases. Take Baltimore by comparison. That City boundary has been fixed where it's now since before Independence. It's not been included in Baltimore County since round about then. It's declinied by about 30% since 1950 and yes, that's the highwater mark. Anyway, that city is probably much closer to typical. (And it narrowly misses the 200,000 votes mark...)

[opebo]

Those too are very extreme cases. Take Baltimore by comparison. That City boundary has been fixed where it's now since before Independence. It's not been included in Baltimore County since round about then. It's declinied by about 30% since 1950 and yes, that's the highwater mark. Anyway, that city is probably much closer to typical. (And it narrowly misses the 200,000 votes mark...)

I'm sure you're correct in detail - that many inner cities have lost population somewhat less spectacularly than others.  But the my argument still holds - in general the Democrat controlled inner cities have lost a huge amount of population, and to a great extent this makes up for their moderate gains in the older suburbs.  Coupled with continued Republican dominance of the rural areas and the spectacular growth of exurbs I think this portends a shift to the right.   You mentioned Dupage co IL and Morris co NJ as exurbs not trending Republican.  I don't know much about those particular exurbs but its hard to imagine any Republicans remaining in NJ, and IL is almost as bad.  Try having a look at exurbs in Republican states or swing states that narrowly went to Gore in 2000.  I think regional cultural trends will influence exurbs direction, though they'll always have more Republican potential than extant cities because the very act of 'voting with your feet' (and pocketbook) to escape crime, taxes, and even zoning is a right-leaning political act in itself.  

Btw, I'm not trying to debunk your arguments entirely, I just love discussing thist stuff as demographics are fascinating - particularly of Suburbs.  Is it 75% of americans that live in suburbs now?  I grew up around real estate developers and they always said there's one simple rule to making money - always go out as far as you possible can.

[minionofmidas]

Well, I could claim that "hardly any Reps remaining in NJ" is precisely the point. They were a solid majority in 1988. Delaware and Connecticut similarly swung further to the left than anywhere else and are also basically entirely suburban.
But I had a look at suburban counties in swing states or Rep states. I'm not sure to which extent each of them can be classified as exurban, what system of classification to use. But let's see:
Macomb and Oakland MI swung very heavily Dem, but they had also swung very heavily Rep in the 70s and 80s. Waukesha WI is actually trending Republican. I guess Saint Louis County is too much old suburban, but it swings Dem. So does Johnson KS, very exurban I guess, but the swing is slight there. Florida's left swing in recent years is basically entirely based on suburbs and some "new" major cities like Orlando. Rural Florida swung heavily Rep, and Dade County also swung Rep of late. The only Southern counties of interest outside Florida that are on the list are Cobb and DeKalb GA, but they are difficult to analyse because one is going ever whiter and the other ever blacker. Oh, and Fairfax VA, exurban DC. That trends clearly Dem. So does Jefferson CO.
So basically the picture that emerges is that it's happening there too, but it's not as pronounced as, say, on Long Island.
Of course this doesn't say much on smaller cities' suburbs in these regions. And of course
some of these places are still heavily Rep, only no heavier than in 92. It's swings I'm talking about not current majorities.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Something worth noting here would be the difference between a Suburb and Suburbia.
A suburb is basically an urban area outside city limits, while suburbia/suburban refers to something very different.

For example, Seine-St-Denis is a suburb of Paris, but it is most definatly not suburban.
Another example would be Pittsburgh's inner suburbs.

[opebo]

Something worth noting here would be the difference between a Suburb and Suburbia.
A suburb is basically an urban area outside city limits, while suburbia/suburban refers to something very different.

For example, Seine-St-Denis is a suburb of Paris, but it is most definatly not suburban.
Another example would be Pittsburgh's inner suburbs.

Yeah I think the American usage is more along the lines of more sparsely populated, newer areas outside the urban core - which in America is usually a wasteland or at least in severe decline.  Nowadays there are plenty of 'older suburbs' that are not very dense but are beginning to experience a similar decline.

[nclib]

I did some research (if you can call it that) that was supposed to be about how the nation's largest counties swung 1980-2000. (I wanted it to be 1960-2000, but there's gaps in Dave's data.)
I picked the 109 counties that cast over 200,000 votes in 2000 and, among other things, summed up by how much Dems or Reps led there.
I noticed that the *average* (not aggregate) result of these counties was 2% more Dem than the Nation's through 1980-1988, 3% more in 1992, but 6% more in 1996 and 12%!! more in 2000. (We're talking about the Dem or Rep lead here. The percentage of the total vote would be half that, except third party candidates sometimes were more urban, sometimes more rural)

I do think the Dems are getting stronger in urban areas. Just wondering in 2000, how many of the 50 largest counties went for Bush? I'd also be interested in how the 50 most densely populated counties (by census) performed, if you have the time.

[minionofmidas]

I did some research (if you can call it that) that was supposed to be about how the nation's largest counties swung 1980-2000. (I wanted it to be 1960-2000, but there's gaps in Dave's data.)
I picked the 109 counties that cast over 200,000 votes in 2000 and, among other things, summed up by how much Dems or Reps led there.
I noticed that the *average* (not aggregate) result of these counties was 2% more Dem than the Nation's through 1980-1988, 3% more in 1992, but 6% more in 1996 and 12%!! more in 2000. (We're talking about the Dem or Rep lead here. The percentage of the total vote would be half that, except third party candidates sometimes were more urban, sometimes more rural)

I do think the Dems are getting stronger in urban areas. Just wondering in 2000, how many of the 50 largest counties went for Bush? I'd also be interested in how the 50 most densely populated counties (by census) performed, if you have the time.

Well the 109 of my list split 74-35 for Gore as opposed to 82-27 for Clinton 96, 75-34 for Clinton 92, 72-37 for Bush 88, 83-26 for Reagan 84, 75-34 for Reagan 80.
Note that they are based on votes in 2000, not votes in earlier elections, not inhabitants, so there's a bias towards suburban and against inner-city major counties here (exaggerating the rep majorities in the 80s). If you look at how many were more Dem than the Nation that's 74-35 in 2000 of course, 62-47 in 96, 56-53 in 92, 49-60 in 88, 55-54 in 84, 50-59 in 1980. Notice Carter's problems in the urban areas due to Anderson biuting into his votes there but not in rural Dem places, and Dukakis' totally extraordinary strength in the farm belt.
the most densely populated counties? Why don't you do it yourself at the Census bureau website? Correct it for all those independent cities in Virginia though...

[SingingAnalyst]

Georgia's congressional delegation. From 1990 to 1995 it went from 8 white Dems and 1 white GOP member (Gingrich) to 3 Black Dems and 7 Republicans. (It picked up a seat).