What are the most socially liberal towns/counties in the South?

[angus]

...excluding Florida...

Perhaps:

Chapel Hill, NC
Carrboro, NC
Durham, NC
Asheville, NC
Atlanta, GA
DeKalb County, GA
Austin, TX
Arlington, VA
Nashville, TN

Austin's a state capital.  State capitals are always more "liberal" than the state, in general.  Not unlike Boston or Sacramento or Nashville.  (yes, I know there are counterexamples:  Tallahassee comes to mind.)  State capitals have several important features in common:  1.  because the workforce depends heavily on government/education and socialized resources, they tend to be big government types.  2.  also because of this effect, state capitals tend to weather economic downturns better than the rest of the state.  3.  because capitals bring together people from diverse and far-away places (both ideologically and geographically), people who live in state capital cities get used to strangers and strange ideas quickly.  And a state capital like Sacramento or Austin would have that phenomenon more than most, since they are the capitals of the most- and second most-populous states, respectively.  They are also, respectively, the state capitals of the 3rd-largest and 2nd-largest states geographically.

[angus]

I stand by what I said.  I freely admit you can find counterexamples.  I also stand by the fact that this phenomenon is not limited to Southern US, but in fact is true worldwide.  Sacramento is a dump.  But the people there are far fonder of big gov't and higher taxes than LA metro.

I didn't mention it before, but I disagree with the statement that the "...most socially liberal towns are in the South..."  I just tried to give a reasonable comment regarding specific cities on that list.  I realize they're not all state capitals.  You have to treat cities in which the largest employer in the city is a University much like a state capital in some regard, though.  And this may help explain the perception.  University folks tend to like big government, and not complain about high taxes, and weather economic downturns (thus escaping the need for the occassional demographic scapegoat). , etc. 

[angus]

okay, bitch-slap me like that.  fine.  Bear in mind that not only didn't I claim to agree with the original statement, I claimed to disagree with it.  I only mentioned some specific facts regarding many of the cities on the original list.  yeah, I'd actually thought about the red stick when I was originally posting that.  Hard to figure baton rouge.  really.  Some can try to say it's like Albany (more "liberal" than the state minus the only big city in the state, blah, blah, blah) but it really doesn't work in baton rouge's case.  And it's particularly difficult considering one of the state's largest student bodies lives in Baton Rouge.  (is tulane larger?)  I really am not sure what to say about baton rouge, and it probably deserves its own thread.  But I have noticed you can look up economic date from state capitals and university cities and find reams of support for what I posted generally.  Yes, like Tallahassee, Baton Rouge is an obvious counterexample.