Western Massachusetts (Berkshire, Franklin, etc.)

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

There was a time when Northampton was strongly Republican. Calvin Coolidge was Mayor there for a time.

If it started voting Democratic before Amherst did, it did so because until about the sixties or seventies Northampton was distinctly working-class outside the confines of Smith College. It's slightly but significantly more densely populated and less yuppified (although as or more hipsterfied) than Amherst is to this day.