Talk Elections

According to CNN exit polls, when it comes to white males, they were one of only 5 states to vote for Kerry in 2004, and the only state (out of the 28 polled) to vote for Clinton in 2016. What makes white men more liberal in WA than in the rest of the country, even than their lower west coast neighbors?

I'm not sure about Oregon, but "Western Washington" is 78.27% of the state's population, with the Seattle metro being 66.60% of the region (and therefore 52.12% of the state).  That can probably sway things pretty heavily.

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Washington is among the least christian identifying states in the country which is a huge factor for why white males in Washington are more liberal than those elsewhere.

I'm curious, what other states were polled? I'd think white men in Vermont would've voted for Clinton, especially since whites make up 95% there.

It's a major political factor but not the overarching one. Maine gave an EV to Trump, who almost won NH. Both are less religious than Washington.

Seattle and the social liberalism that goes with it.

I would think that Clinton won white men in Massachusetts, Vermont, and Hawaii too.

Maine swung heavily to Trump because the conditions in that state were reminiscint of the rust belt's problems. The state economy has been hampered by decades of outsourcing that has lead to a stagnant economy. Washington on the otherhand grew because of Seattle and Seattle is still humming along because of its tech industry that has literally trickled down to the rest of the economy in Pugent Sound where most of the population is based. So the better economy meant white men didnt swing to trump like Maine did. Otherwise the support for the dems in 2012 was the same in Washington last year with the dem winning white men by 2%.

Not sure about Massachusetts. White men swung Republican there in 2008 and Obama barely won them in 2012. Granted, there were Massachusetts politicians on the ballot in 2004 & 2012, but I would think MA has enough blue collar types to have swung this demographic to Trump.

Probably not Hawaii, white people only make up a small portion of Hawaii’s population, and they along with some of the Filipino community seem like they are the only Republicans in the state.

Seattle is both an extremely liberal city and one where the booming industry is male-dominated. This leads both to people self-selecting, and being more inclined to relocate to Seattle if it is culturally/politically similar to them, as well as having a moderating effect on would-be Republican white men elsewhere. This last point is particularly noticeable on the East Side of Seattle's suburbs, where many of Microsoft's wealthiest employees live - these areas are competitive/lean Republican in most local elections while voting 70+% for national Republican candidates, and swinging wildly away from the Republicans when they went from Romney to Trump.

Another thing about the tech industry, is that many people who are a part of it have a sort of reverse-West Virginia effect going on. Democrats are seen as the more friendly of the two parties to innovators and those on the cutting-edge, while Republicans are viewed as the party of luddites. Just as a life-long Dem will vote Republican if they think their job is at stake, even the most tech-broish of tech bros knows that their prospects are better under a Democratic president.

Third point: the "old guard" of Washington democrats, while small, is predominantly union-driven. Boeing workers, commercial fishermen, longshoremen, and loggers made up the backbone of the Washington Democratic party for decades before it became a reliably blue state (and again, all male-dominated industries). Unlike the old guard of other state's Democratic parties (working-class whites in the south, the Rhode Island elite, what have you), this is a group which still fits snugly into the modern Democratic party - maybe Boeing workers more than loggers - and are groups that, unlike auto workers or coal miners, have really not had a substantially harder time climbing out of the great recession than your typical middle class family or tech worker. In other words, the new and old Democrats really tend to see eye-to-eye a lot more than in other parts of the country, and were unified in their opposition to someone who made no overtures to either group in the last election. Loggers are kind of an exception to this, and many logging-heavy areas have been swinging against the Democrats for a while now.

Washington is home to three enormous private employers (Boeing, Amazon, Microsoft). Most states don't even have one private company employing as many people as one of these companies does, and Washington has three.

All three are in industries where the employees are disproportionately male and disproportionately Democrat.

I think that's a big factor. I imagine the port and shipbuilding industries are the same way. Even though California has a lot of these same industries, the state is so huge they just don't have the same overall influence there.

Washington is still a fairly white state. I think that means we might lack some of the racial tension that drives white men to vote Republican in other Democratic states likes California or New York.

Washington isn't very religious - the only reason we lost the least religious spot to Vermont is because that state is so much whiter. I wouldn't be surprised if whites in Washington were less religious than in Upper New England. But we have a lot more immigrants from Latin America and Asia who tend to be religious keeping our religious % up.

Also, we'll give up our legal marijuana when you pry it from our cold, dead hands! :P