Cold Climates

[Filuwaúrdjan]

France is more than a little complicated.

Nord-Pas-de-Calais is also left wing(especially Pas-de-Calais) :
Number of seats:

Nord(24)

PS      11
UMP   09
PCF    02
UDF    01
D Ind  01
Ind     01
Total Left: 13
Total Right: 11
Other: 01

Pas-de-Calais(14)

PS      10
UMP    02
PRG    01
G-Ind  01
Total Left:   12
Total Right: 02

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Pas-de-Calais is on the old Franco-Belgian coalfield.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Current Party control of regional governments(new elections 2004) :

UMP: Alsace, Auvergne, Basse-Normandie, Bourgogne, Bretagne, Champagne-Ardenne, Corse, Franche-Comte, Languedoc-Roussillon, Lorraine, Pays de la Loire, Picardie, Poitou-Charentes
PS: Aquitaine, Centre, Haute-Normandie, Ile-de-France, Limousin, Midi-Pyrenees, Nord-Pas-de-Calais, Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur
UDF: Rhone-Alpes

The UMP is expected to suffer heavy losses, forcing Rafferin's resignation(at least, that's what the Independent's excellent French correspondent thinks)
The FN is thought to have a good chance at picking up Provence-Alpes-Cote d'Azur.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Bavaria is VERY right wing.
The CSU was recently re-elected with over 60% of the vote, it gave birth to the NSDAP and people in the rest of Germany think that Bavarians are a pack of beer swilling, arrogant, racist, rednecks.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I have a theory of my own, that people who live on the coast, or near large bodies of water are very liberal. But I'm sure you can all point out instances where my theory does not hold to truth as well.

But of course
In the U.K, most of the South East is coastal(and right wing), while South Yorkshire is landlocked(and very left wing)

Also in the Carolina's, the coastal parts of both states seem to lean more GOP than much of the interior(although that could just be the gerrymandering)

In Poland, the industrial areas on the southern border are far more left wing than the coastal areas.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

My theory is that areas where mining happens/used to happen are almost always to the left of areas with no history of mining.

But that's kind of obvious

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I have a theory of my own, that people who live on the coast, or near large bodies of water are very liberal. But I'm sure you can all point out instances where my theory does not hold to truth as well.

Large cities are almost always found near the coast or larger rivers, those large cities tend to have higher concentrations of African-American voters who vote overwhelmingly Democratic.

In the U.K most large cities are near coal/mineral deposits, often quite away from the coast(though often a few miles upstream), and usually on relatively high ground.
And usually in a defensive position, but that's for another reason...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

In the U.K it's often the case that the most and least religious people tend to vote Labour(75-80% of Sikhs for example and 60+ for Methodists)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Actually rural Minnesota varies a lot(do you mean the farming areas or the iron mining area or both?) and ALL of Mississippii is rural.

Rural v Urban is innacurate, however suburban areas(not including working class "suburbs" and "new towns") are almost always right-wing.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

"mining Nth East" sounds about right

Farming areas also vary a lot(compare Iowa and Nebraska or Manitoba and Alberta...)
and in the U.K most hill farming areas are Liberal(big L not little l), whilst most arable areas are practically suburban nowadays and are very, very Tory.

BTW where's Wichita? I've heard the name before but can't remember where...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Ah...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I went to Devon this year(near Barnstable in North Devon)

Devon is politically quite mixed.
Until the rise of the Labour party, Devon was a stronghold of the Liberals, but as Labour grew stronger the Liberals became weaker and as Socialism had never really appealed to Devon it became a Tory dominated county by default.
This began to change when the Liberal M.P for North Devon(Jeremy Thorpe), became leader of the Liberals and for a while it looked like they might be able to rebuild in the county.
But Thorpe's career ended in disgrace and he lost his seat to a Tory in 1979.
In 1992 a Liberal(note: although the party had merged with the SDP to form the Liberal Democrats, it is still more accurate to refer to the LibDems in rural areas as Liberals), won North Devon and in 1997 the Liberals picked up a lot of seats in the West Country and Devon was no exception.

The Liberals are strongest in the hill farming/ex iron ore mining North and West Devon, Labour dominate Plymouth and also hold Exeter, while the Tories are strongest in the more touristy South East where a lot of OAP's retire.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

They nearly won TOTNES??? I knew they came close in Tiverton and Honiton(and will probably pick it up next election), but the Tiverton part of that seat is like North Devon.
But Totnes? They really ARE in trouble down sou-west...

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Interesting...

Northern Sweden includes those huge iron mines...
My mining theory gains ground!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

London is a huge place(over 6 million people) and is very varied.

Basically the working class East End is solid Labour, while the inner suburbs are either Tory or LibDem(except Thatchers old seat of Finchley and Golders Green!)

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Paris is *very* middle class and right wing, it's suburbs are poor and very left wing.

I was told Mexico City is like this too.

It is: the PAN dominate the city, while the PRD dominate the "inner suburbs" of the Federal District.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

The Paris area(the Ile-de-France) is immensely complicated.

The City of Paris itself is divided between the rich west and poor east(which is not "really Paris". Call it an "inner-inner suburb"), while the suburbs are also divided.

The Ile-de-France is composed of 8 cantons, however only 7 are part of the Paris area. They are:

Outer suburbs: Yvelines, Essonne, Val-d'Oise
Inner suburbs: Hauts-de-Seine, Seine-Saint-Denis, Val-de-Marne
City of Paris: Paris

Yvelines
Cantonial Government: UMP
Deputies[M.P's]:
UMP:11
UDF: 1

Essonne
Cantonial Government: PS
Deputies:
UMP: 7
PS: 3

Val-d'Oise
Cantonial Government: UMP
Deputies:
UMP: 7
PS: 2

Hauts-de-Seine
Cantonial Government: RPF
Deputies:
UMP: 9
PCF: 3
Ind-D: 1

Seine-Saint-Denis
Cantonial Government: PCF
Deputies:
PCF: 5*
PS: 4
UMP: 3
UDF: 1
*includes a Deputie elected as an independent who later re-joined the PCF

Val-de-Marne
Cantonial Government: PCF
Deputies:
UMP: 7
PS: 5
PCF: 1

Paris
Cantonial Government: PS
Deputies:
PS: 10
UMP: 7
Verts: 2
UDF: 1
Ind-D: 1


Complex, eh?      

[Filuwaúrdjan]

How do you know all these things??!!

I'm an obsessive researcher!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I guess New York City is kind of like this in a way. I think Manhattan is more Republican than the Bronx is (even though Manhattan includes the city's downtown). Manhattan has a lot of expensive high-rises and stuff. Staten Island, however, is more Republican than either one, so that fits the usual pattern of outer parts of a city being more Republican.

I would bet that St. Louis is more Republican than East St. Louis, IL.

I don't know a lot about the politics of NYC(although by this time tomorrow I probably will!), but I would guess that Bronx and the other inner-suburbs would be very strong Democrat.

East St Louis is dog poor so I'd guess the same.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I mean I'm probably going to spend about an hour wading through statistics on NYC!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've been looking at a load of statistics, articles etc. and here's what I've found out:

Manhatten(New York County) can be considered as the original city, and has gradually absorbed the other cities in the area.
Brooklyn(Kings), Queens and Bronx are what I would term inner-suburbs(ie: they have been absorbed by the rest of the city, a bit like the East End of London or Seine-Sainte-Denis in the Ile-de-France)
Staten Island can be considered as an outer-suburb(like Yvelines or Barnet), which has been partially absorbed.
Nassau and Westchester are outer-outer suburbs(like Epping Forest or Seine-et-Marne)

Bronx is mostly working class Hispanic(with a large working class black population), and is incredibly safely Democrat, Brooklyn has a higher % of both Blacks and non-hispanic whites and is strongly Democrat, although less than Bronx, Queens is more white and more middle-class, it's strongly Democrat but less than Manhatten, which is a combination of working class blacks and white intelligentsia, while Staten Island is white middle class and leans Republican.

Overall NYC resembles a large European city more than most other large American cities, this seems to be a result of it's age as much as anything else.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

It's a decaying "inner-suburb", in otherwords it was once seperate but has been absorbed by the urban sprawl.
Like Seine-Ste-Denis or Woolwich.
It certainly is not in suburbia!

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Oddly enough much of the rural areas that the Dems do very well in are in the Appalachian Mountains(which also contain very conservative areas like eastern TN)

Mind you they are HUGE(starts in the extreme North East of MS and finishes in Newfoundland), and tend to be poorer than average and have a large coalfield in them.
Interestingly the foothills tend to be more right-wing than the higher mountains(with the exception of the Pittsburgh area)

The other major area is the Mississippi Basin
Again poverty may be a factor.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

I've just been looking up Norwegian politics, and there are some very interesting trends there.

The Northern part of Norway (very cold) votes DNA (Labour), which backs up the cold climates theory.

But a very interesting trend is that the DNA do best in rural counties (as do the centrist Christian Democrats and the Senter Party) while H (conservatives) do best in more urban counties.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

...and there are poor people everywhere.
The Urban/Suburban-Rural divide seems much stronger in Norway than in most other countries I've looked at.
As far as I can tell the only right wing rural areas are farming areas in Southern Norway and the only particulary left wing cities are Trondheim and Tromso (both Northern).
Oslo and Bergen are both right wing, although it's all relative and the Scadinavian "right" is centre-left on an internation scale.
Even the Progress Party would be considered moderate anywhere outside Scandinavia.

BTW is there a reason why The Norwegian Labour Party includes the word "the" in it's abbreviation? (DNA)?