Talk Elections

I know pretty much all major cities (other than OKC, Tulsa, and a few others, I guess) vote Democratic, but what I was wondering is, what are major cities where the white population of those cities voted for Romney?  And remember this is the city itself, not the whole county.

A few guesses:
-Dallas
-Houston
-New Orleans
-Atlanta
-Phoenix
-Tampa/Miami?
-Indianapolis

Nashville, Charlotte. 

Can anyone verify the ones I put down?

Provo
Salt Lake City
Boise
Fresno
Bakersfield
Colorado Springs
Virginia Beach

Are we talking about the city proper or the metro?

City proper

Is Cincinnati a possibility? I would doubt it, but Romney did actually win some mostly white precincts - though usually ones with fewer people.

He also won a precinct just east of downtown that's rather built-up. For the life of me, I don't know why.

San Antonio seems like a place that would fall into this category?

Is St. Louis a possibility?

Some of these that are being said are likely exaggerated, although I don't have numbers to back me up.

My guesses:

San Diego
Phoenix
Jacksonville
New Orleans

And that's about it. Cities like Pittsburgh, Las Vegas, San Antonio, Tampa, Indy, Pittsburgh...these would have been good guesses in the 80's, 90's, and early 2000's, but their trends would indicate that most whites in these cities are voting Democratic now.

For New Orleans, my estimate (based on the 2008 results) was Obama winning whites around 51/47. The white-majority precincts are collectively 78% white and voted for him 57/41.

Obama almost certainly won white by a larger margin in 2012 because 1) the parish itself swung to him and 2) the white liberal contingent of the city is becoming increasingly more influential.

No. The city itself is only plurality black, and Obama still managed to crack ~83 percent of the vote there.

Well considering Romney won Provo, Colorado Springs, and Va Beach outright, i'd say those are pretty good guesses. :P Ditto for Jacksonville.

Romney won whites in all the independent cities in the Hampton Roads area except Williamsburg and possibly Norfolk. He most likely didn't in Richmond though.

Pittsburgh whites voted overwhelmingly Democratic over the decades. It's only with decreasing unionization in the region that whites in the surrounding counties and suburbs have grown more GOP friendly. Pittsburgh whites remain rather Democratic, between a combination of lingering union strength and hipster artsie social liberalism.

Jackson MS and Birmingham AL for sure.

Cite major cities in states—whose counties carried Republican—won statewide by more than 20 percentage points for a 2012 Mitt Romney. Think right away of Oklahoma!

Wichita, KS

Indianapolis
South Bend

Obama got 75% of the vote in 2012, while non-hispanic whites were 65% of the population. So, Obama must have had a fairly large majority of the white vote.

While Romney probably did win Jackson and Birmingham Whites in 2012, I'd be surprised if he did so with anymore than 55-60% of the votes.  Whites would have been more GOP-voting in other large cities in Mississippi/Alabama, such as the Gulf Coast, Huntsville, and Montgomery.

Also, Birmingham is changing and gentrifying than any other city in the South - its getting to be very gay too.  Give B'ham another 5 to 10 years and it'll be seen as a mini-Atlanta. 

My sister goes to Butler, and I would be SHOCKED if Romney didn't win Indianapolis Whites.

Fort Wayne?

St. Louis City Whites are heavily Democratic, though if you merged St. Louis City and St. Louis County, I would imagine whites voted narrowly for Romney.

I can't see Romney winning South Bend whites. I know its a catholic college town, but its still a college town.

And White Catholics are still more Democratic than White Protestants.

Fort Wayne whites are defiantly republican. Indianapolis has to be pretty close, but this is because the inner suburbs are part of the city.

You'd probably know more than I would, but when I've visited (about four or five times now), Indianapolis seemed like a VERY Republican city.

Fort Wayne City Council has to be one of the most right-wing city councils of any major city in America.

That doesn't necessarily say that much.  Republicans have 100% control of the San Diego city council and only one vote short in LA, if I remember correctly.

Downtown Indy is very democratic, there is a large black population and white liberals. The white liberals downtown did vote for Mitch Daniels in 2008 while voting heavily Obama at the same time. The south side (Perry, Decatur, and Franklin Townships) are white suburban areas that are heavily republican. The far north side is rich white suburbs that are republican but have diversified in recent years and have trended Dem. The west side (Wayne Township) is diverse and has trended heavily Dem as whites have moved out and minorities have moved in. Whites here are definatly R's. Pike Township (northwest) is very diverse and is plurality black. I'm not sure how whites voted here. Overall Marion county is about 60 % non Hispanic white. So I would say whites as a whole there are not overwhelmingly R or D.

http://dpuadweb.depauw.edu/$1~kkauffman/newdrugzonelaws/Images/race/CensusBlocks.jpg]

Really cool results map for Indy elections.

and here is a map of black and hispanic population in Indy.
[url]http://dpuadweb.depauw.edu/$1~kkauffman/newdrugzonelaws/Images/race/CensusBlocks.jpg (http://maps.indy.gov/MapIndy/Index.html?theme=electionResults[url=http://Really cool results map for Indy elections.

and here is a map of black and hispanic population in Indy.
[url)

Yes, Fort Wayne. How could I miss that one?

Good work Chancellor!

After referencing Missouri SOS numbers and AdamGriffin's Obama % of White vote map, I am actually beginning to think Obama won white voters in St. Louis.

Billings, MT probably.

Fort Worth
Amarillo
Lubbock
Wichita Falls
Oklahoma City
Tulsa
Wichita

This is only semi-relevant, but I thought I'd drop it in.  My sister goes to Butler, a very White private school in Indianapolis.  She sent me some screenshots of this app that anonymously asks questions of people in and around the campus area and updates the results.  Anyway, here were the political party results:

48% Republican
28% Democrat
24% Independent

Again, this is skewing upper-middle class and White, but I thought I'd share it.  Every time I'VE been in Indianapolis, it has seemed quite Republican, and she said her friends from there have said most Whites are GOP-leaning, but I'm imagining their parents don't live downtown (they do live in the city, though, not the suburbs).

I have a friend who is going to Butler to study pharmacy, so this is kind of interesting.  

That's a very conservative result for a college town area!  Are there other major industries that would make  the place more conservative?  This obviously isn't a scientific poll, but the results are fascinating nonetheless.

The other thing is that a lot of cities may "feel" pretty Republican even if they aren't - Nashville comes to mind right away - famous for its country music and voted the #1 most Bible-minded city in the country (two big plusses in my book :) ).  Nonetheless, Nashville voted handily for Obama, though I assume whites voted for Romney.

Notre Dame isn't even in South Bend proper. South Bend is mostly blue collar union types and about average in the Catholic/Protestant department. It's the sort of rust belt city where the Dems clearly win whites.

I think Green Bay is a candidate here. It's "only" 78% white and Obama got 56% of the vote there. If the minorities voted 80% Obama then the white vote comes out to around 53-47 Romney.

"Major cities"

It's bigger than South Bend.

"Major cities"

Yes most definitely.  and To the person who said Tampa, Heck yes.

No way he won Atlanta whites:

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Even if you assume black turnout was 100% of VAP and Obama won 100% of the black vote in 2008 + assume that Latino/Asian turnout was 100% of VAP and Obama won 70% of them, then Obama would have won 61% of whites.

In reality, Latino/Asian turnout was likely 1/3 of its VAP and Obama probably won around 96% of the black vote. That'd mean Obama won 70% of ATL whites in 2008; probably closer to 65% in 2012.

It's worth noting that whites in Fulton County - the northern half of which mostly includes heavily white areas that come closer to voting for the GOP in numbers like the outer suburbs do, and has very high turnout - was 42% Obama in 2008 and 37% Obama in 2012 (http://www.whitdem.org/2012WhiteVote.html). Basically, whites in the non-ATL portions of Fulton vote 70-80% R; the whites in ATL are 60-70% D and skew the numbers/hide that reality.

^^^ Also, I forgot to really promote my 2012 white vote project by county that I linked to in my previous post. It can help answer at least one other one:


Since Marion County, IN = Indianapolis, apparently, then I can report that Obama won 50% of the white vote there in 2012, plus or minus a couple of points. It is more accurate in counties where the share of the non-white, non-black vote is lowest. It's safe to say that the white vote was effectively tied in Indianapolis.

Could you elaborate? Indianapolis seems like whites would narrowly vote Romney, simply because it annexed almsot all of its suburbs.

I hope this makes sense. I feel like I started repeating myself after a while.

I built the national map out by using formulas that combined voter registration/voter turnout data by race (where available), and where not, Census 2010/2012 data that compared the difference/discrepancy between the share of each state's electorate by race (2008/2012 exit polling) with the share of the population of each state. Essentially, the white share of the vote was calculated by reverse-engineering the totals using non-white support and turnout levels, which are far easier to project as a whole. With all of this information, I then had available the basis for a "national formula" that plugged in all of these variables (turnout as a share of their adult population + support for Obama), and proceeded to build custom state-by-state formulas based on the information I was able to find. For instance, the formulas had to be customized to a greater degree in states like Texas (Latinos), where I had to do three separate rounds of tweaking not only statewide, but at the county level in order to produce something that is still probably quite inaccurate at the county level, but definitely less so than before.

In states like IN - where whites swung by some of the biggest margins of any state - I was able to use the formula with a combination of 2008 exit polling, the racial makeup of the state/likely electorate in both cycles, and the amount of the overall swing statewide from 2008-2012 to further refine the white share of the vote. States like IN were a bit easier to do due to their relative whiteness, and on top of that, analyzing that statewide swing to calculate the white share of the vote was more reliable since whites were such a large share of it. That was then extrapolated to the county level.

I'm quite confident with my projections in Indiana; +/- 2 points or so. However, if it is off, then it is more likely that Obama did even better: I observed - where it was possible for me to do so thanks to exit polling - that my formulas more often under-represented Obama's share of the white vote than it did over-represent it. It's also worth noting that my statewide formula for IN spat out the exact same number as the NYT exit poll ("38.0%" in my formula; "38%" for NYT).

Indianapolis may be to a greater extent like ATL. It seems to me at a glance that the (real) city comprises a greater share of the county's population than ATL proper does of Fulton County; it's possible that just like in Fulton/ATL, your city whites were overwhelmingly Democratic (65-70%) and the suburban folks were 30-40%. Those are just approximations/examples; I haven't actually broken down the county's population proportions et al to see what the most likely ratio would be in that case.

San Diego city council is 5-4 Democratic and the LA City council only has 1 Republican on it.

Obama probably received a majority of the white vote in New Orleans proper.

Springfield, Peoria, Rockford, Aurora.

"Major cities"

Also, probably not Aurora.

Aurora is more major-er than Green Bay, South Bend, etc.

Oh also Naperville and Orland Park and Crestwood.

It is still suburban in nature whereas Green Bay is not, but I would be no means consider GB or South Bend to be "major cities."

Why do you think whites in Aurora voted for Romney?

Nevermind, Obama won Aurora 66-32, so he probably got mid 50's with whites.

I can tell you for a fact that Whites in Peoria did not.  Obama won Peoria County by a sliver, and it's 18% Black.

Peoria, AZ then.

Well Obama won Peoria County, Illlinois 51-47%. I couldn't get data for just the city voting in 2012 on Wikipedia.

But given the Black population, Whites clearly went Republican.

Irrelevant to this, but Peoria's suburbs are ruby red, too.

I guess Anchorage and Spokane don't count as major cities, right?

Yep - in 2008, he won the white-majority precincts 57/41-ish, and the white liberal presence has only grown since then.

Actually that all but confirms that Obama won whites in Indianapolis proper, since Marion County still has a few suburbs in it, and some of them are quite heavily Republican. In 2008 per DRA the non-Indianapolis Marion County vote was 54.8-44.4 Obama (and about 10% of the county) and 72.8% white VAP and Indianapolis was 64.8-34.5 Obama 63.1% white VAP. Obviously there was a big swing to Romney but the base numbers are still able to be compared.

Probably Nashville because there are a lot of 90% Republican conservative suburbs within the city limits.