Talk Elections

I know I have a lot of questions, so instead of clogging up the forum with separate ones, I thought I would put them all in one, but feel free to just answer anyone of them, so here they are below.

Washington: How come Jefferson County is so heavily Democratic, similiar to King County and San Juan County which make sense, but why is not your typical Dems in the 50s and GOP in the 40s like the rest of Western Washington.

California: How come Santa Cruz County goes almost 80% Democrat as I don't think its minority population is any higher than the statewide average and it is a smaller urban centre, not a large one like San Francisco

Hawaii: How come Honolulu county is consistently the GOP's best showing in the state as this is the most urban county?

Arizona: How come Pima County usually goes Democrat while Maricopa County usually goes Republican as I thought the results in both counties would be similiar on average.

Montana:  How come Silver Bow County and Deer Lodge County still go massively Democrat since most other White Working class counties have swung over the Republicans but not here.

New Mexico: How come some Northern counties go over 75% Democrat since I know they have a large Latino population but this would either mean they are winning big amongst the non-Hispanic white population or the Latino population is going close to 90% Democrat.

Texas: Why is Austin so liberal compared to the rest of the state?  Any special reason.

Wisconsin: I know Dane County is strongly Democrat, but how come despite not being a small urban centre and very white, the Democrats routinely get over 70% here as opposed to say a 60-40 split.  And also how come the Milwaukee suburbs going usually over 60% GOP, while the rural areas are quite competitive; usually it is the suburbs that are competitive while rural areas that go heavily GOP.

Indiana:  Whats up with Perry County going Democrat as it is not part of the Rust Belt in the north, lacks a major urban centre, and is very white.

Ohio:  I know Ohio State University is in Athens County but 66-31 for Obama seems big, is the university the main employer of the county?  And also how come Ashtabula County which is fairly rural and white goes Democrat by more than 10 points.

New Hampshire: How come the GOP does best in the southeast which is the most heavily populated part of the state as opposed to the North or southwest which are far more rural.

Vermont: How come the GOP's best results are the border towns with Canada as they are right next to the most left wing Canadian province of Quebec so I would have thought like neighboring New York they would go more heavily Democrat not less.  The numbers are their own make sense, just not why they are more Republican than the rest of the state.

Massachusetts:  Whats it with Berkshire County going more than 75% Democrat as it is fairly rural and very white.  Yes I know it is in New England, but still over 40% of whites in New England voted for Romney and I would suspect in the urban centres the white vote would be more heavily Democrat than the rural areas.  This went almost as heavily Democrat as Boston which doesn't make sense.

North Carolina: How come Buncombe County went Democrat as I believe it is fairly white compared to most of the state and also in the case of Orange County the Democrat margin seems like the type you would expect in a minority-majority county in the South, not one like this

Georgia: What is the reason Clarke County goes so heavily Democrat.

Any answers to any of these would be appreciated, don't bother trying to answer all of them.

Ohio, Athens: The University is, by far, the biggest employer. With the university, it would be a small, unpopulated county. There is 66,000 persons there, of that 2,000 teachers and 20 to 30,000 students.

Vermont: The corresponding area in Québec isn't quite-left wing. The Vermont-Québec border, on both sides, is known for villegiature and rich people retiring there.

Western Massachusetts: It's voting like the Vermont.

ANot really certain exactly how it happened, but basically Asheville in Buncombe County is a liberal magnet.  If I had to guess, it was because at the time when liberals started getting into the "urban is cool, suburbs drool" mentality, Asheville had a largely intact Art Deco downtown that hadn't fallen into disrepair or been redeveloped with more modern stuff. Now it has a liberal artsy/touristy reputation, so people from the western Carolinas with a liberal bent move there to be with like minded people while still being reasonably close to their families.

As for Orange County, it's home to UNC.

Port Townsend is an artsy liberal enclave. It's full of people who used to live in Seattle but wanted a more rustic environment. Similar to Bellingham, except that Bellingham shares its county with a super-Republican Dutch Reform area around Lynden. Also similar to southern Island County, but northern Island County has a super-Republican military area around Oak Harbor. Jefferson County just doesn't have a corresponding super-R area like Island County and Whatcom County do.


UC Santa Cruz is a big part of it. In general, the city of Santa Cruz has been a hub of "alternative" (read: hippie and druggie) culture for a long time, and the presence of a big, very liberal college has perpetuated that. Similar to Sonoma and Mendocino Counties, but less rural.


Military.


Tucson has a larger college presence, relative to its size. They also attract different sorts of new residents; Tucson takes heavily from California, but most retirees in Phoenix are from the Midwest.


Butte (in Silver Bow County) is an old mining community, very different from the surrounding area. I believe it's been the dominant copper-mining location in the country for over a century. Unions are very strong and influential there. Deer Lodge County is in the ambit of Butte as well.

As to why they haven't swung... being isolated in a state that otherwise has very little industry going on and where fights over unions and labor and deindustrialization are all but unheard of as political issues has probably helped preserve old traditions.


Big Native populations in some areas, too. But the white population in northern New Mexico is also very liberal, especially in Santa Fe. That's not really an explanation, I know.


Combination of enormous college (UT-Austin) and state capital. (State capitals are almost all more Democratic than their state because there are more government workers there.)


Enormous college (University of Wisconsin-Madison) plus state capital, again.


This baffles me, too.


University of Ohio is a huge college and the center of Athens County's economy. Ashtabula County is not "mostly rural". Most of the population lives in the small rust belt cities of Ashtabula and Conneaut. It's similar to neighboring Erie County, PA (Erie) or Erie County, OH (Sandusky).


The sort of people who move from Massachusetts to New Hampshire are quite conservative, generally moving there to avoid paying state income taxes. They tend to settle near the MA border. Northern and western NH are much more similar to Vermont.


1. Nearby areas of Quebec are quite conservative.
2. There's little crossover because of the language barrier.
3. The border is quite liberal except in Essex County, VT, which is just incredibly isolated.


Like Vermont and western NH, it's one of the most intact areas of rural WASP New England, which is uniformly overwhelmingly Democratic these days.


UNC-Chapel Hill (huge college) is in Orange County. Asheville has been a hippie-liberal enclave for a long time, not quite sure why. There's no big college there, but there are a bunch of small, lesser known colleges.


University of Georgia.

I suppose I could use this thread too.

Alaska:
Why are Fairbanks and Anchorage so conservative?

North Carolina:
What is with the belt of rural, central-western counties that often vote Democratic? Why does Madison County sometimes vote democratic when Franklin or Avery Counties typically don't?

I was planning to respond but Benj has given some really good answers.


Santa Cruz is considered the hippie town of the Bay Area, more so than San Francisco.  There's a beautiful beach there, nice little shops, eastern medicine and a lot of other things that you don't find in typical American cities where every drives big cars, has a huge tv and nothing interesting happens.  It feels really different than the rest of the Bay Area.

Regarding Honolulu, I don't think the differences are that big to say that it's more GOP-friendly than the rest of the state.  The military presence is of course a big reason for the small differences you noticed.  The fact that it's more urban, as well as the only place in Hawaii with suburbs, surprisingly is another reason why it may have a slightly bigger percentage of right-wing voters.  Life on the other islands is slower and the caucasians who live there are more environmentally-conscious.  There are a lot of those hippie types here in Honolulu as well (almost exclusively caucasians) but there are a lot of people who are into buying and selling real estate who tend to be more republican. 

Regarding Santa Fe, I haven't been there but from what I know it is a very artistic city with many artist colonies.