Why are Southern College Counties so Republican?

[walleye26]

Normally having large colleges in your county makes it quite a liberal place (Missoula, MT, Dane, WI, Monroe, IN, etc) but in the south you don’t see this as much. Places like Payne County OK (OSU), Lee County AL (Auburn), and Lafayette County MS (just to name a few high profile examples, but there are more) Dems can barely manage to crack 33% of the vote here. Granted, I know the south is more conservative, but this still seems quite low. Any information here?

[7,052,770]

In Mississippi, all the Confederate/Old South imagery and nostalgia attracts some people to Ole Miss and repels others to Mississippi State and Southern Miss, and voting patterns follow.

Granted, a lot of people don't care either way, but that effect is there. Also a lot of students at all 3 universities stay registered at home rather than at college.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

I went to a school in the South - not fully representative of the average southern school but still sharing some similarities.

Never underestimate how much greek life and church groups dominate social life at these types of places. These organizations structurally feature culturally conservative centerpieces to reinforce social structure. It's more difficult to have a social life if you don't partake.

E: also college counties (and towns) aren't just students and professors - lots of associated staff, administrators, housekeepers, etc. Further south these people affiliated with the school or providing services are demographically just as likely to be Republicans.

[Fmr. Gov. NickG]

I like in Montgomery county, Virginia, home of Virginia Tech.  It's very much a swing county, voting for Hillary in 2016 by a few hundred votes.

A bit less than half of the permanent population of the county lives in the college town of Blacksburg, and this area is very liberal, though not as overwhelmingly liberal as many northern college towns. 
Five miles in any direction from Blacksburg is all Trump signs and giant crosses.  Though Virginia as a whole has definitely trended blue, the SW quadrant of the state has trended deep red.

 

[Fuzzy Says: "Abolish NPR!"]

This is not true in Florida. 

Alachua County (Gainesville, UF) likely Democratic
Leon County (Tallahassee, FSU, Florida A & M) solid Democratic

Alachua is the only county in FL where the college makes the county.  USF, UCF, and other universities are in major metro areas that I would not call College Towns.

[Progressive Pessimist]

Because it's the South?

[GM Team Member and Senator WB]

Even when I went to MS State (when I was still considering them), as soon as you walk off campus you get the feeling like half the people outside of campus are part of the Klan.

[lfromnj]

Also can't forgot Brazos,Lubbock, and until 2018 Hays County in Texas. I think part of it is just there isn't any motivation for these students to vote.

[walleye26]

Have you met the people who attend state flagships in the South?

To answer your question, no.

[TrendsareUsuallyReal]

Also can't forgot Brazos,Lubbock, and until 2018 Hays County in Texas. I think part of it is just there isn't any motivation for these students to vote.

That’s part of it. I think the prior posters in this thread hit the nail on the head in that the schools are socially structured in a way that attracts more conservative folks, particularly Greek heavy schools like Ole Miss and Alabama. I will note though that almost all of the college counties in these southern states have reacted quite negatively to the Trumpist turn in the party and that’s pretty evident in some of the violent left swings you see in recent elections in these traditionally conservative areas: Hays, TX; Brazos, TX; Tuscaloosa, AL; Lee, AL; Lafayette, MS to name the red ones, not to mention already liberal southern college counties that have only trended further left like Travis, Alachua, Albemarle/Charlottesville, Boone (not really southern I know)

[cvparty]

multiple factors at hand
1) southerners are more conservative (duh)
2) the college population‘s vote isn’t that big to outvote the rest of the county‘s very republican margin
3) the more liberal students probably disproportionately migrate to different (more liberal) parts of the country to attend college

[Sirius_]

In general I'd say that most colleges don't have enough votes to change the results of their counties. The two largest colleges in SC, USC and Clemson, are located in Richland and Pickens counties respectively. Richland is solid Democratic but is the most liberal large city in the state and would be so even without USC. Pickens is solid Republican despite the presence of Clemson as the study body (25,000) is not the majority of the total population (119,000). Combine that with a more republican lean than average being in the south.

[ReaganLimbaugh]

Clarke County, GA home of the University of Georgia is very liberal, has voted that way for a number of decades.  It is the only liberal voting county in NE Georgia.

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Lafayette MS will vote for Hood. Im calling it

[DINGO Joe]

The OP is not  correct.  VA and NC have very liberal universities.  As mentioned , GA and FL are to the left also.  Even in the barbarian states, the college campuses/counties vote to the left of the state.

[pantsaregood]

College towns in North Carolina aren't really Republican.

Western Carolina University (Cullowhee, Jackson County) and UNC Pembroke (Pembroke, Robeson County) are the only two in the state system that look like they could've gone Republican in 2016. That's based on county-level results, so it is also possible they went Democratic.

Charlotte, Raleigh, Durham, Chapel Hill, Greensboro, Winston-Salem, Asheville, Wilmington, and Fayetteville are pretty heavily Democratic. Elizabeth City, Boone, and Greenville, despite being small "college towns" are also Democratic.

[pbrower2a]

Only rarely are the colleges giants in the sense that the big land-grant colleges of the North and West are. (Note that there are exceptions such as the University of Arkansas, the University of North Carolina, and of course the University of Texas -- which is more western than southern. (A joke about UT-Austin is that it is the University of California or Michigan at Austin). People attending colleges in the South are more likely to be Southerners (duh!) and if white are more likely to be from politically-conservative, Bible-thumping families. (Southern blacks are much more liberal in their votes because they have little stake in 'conservative' Southern politics.

Educational achievement is not so admired in the South as in other parts of the US -- probably because of the different ethnic mix. Southern white kids may be more likely to go to college for technical specialties in which liberal arts that foster liberal ideas are not so relevant.

[Tintrlvr]

I agree with a lot that has been said. However, one thing that is being missed here so far is that colleges in the South (other than historically black colleges, of course) are disproportionately white because of the general racial social stratification in the South. So a college county being to the right of the state isn't really surprising when it's also a lot whiter than the state as a whole. And even young white people in the South are solidly Republican overall, just not the 95+% Republican that their parents and grandparents are.

[pantsaregood]

I guess North Carolina and Virginia are not southern states on Atlas?

[Alben Barkley]

Just looking at the SEC schools...

Alachua County, Florida (University of Florida) voted 58-36 D in 2016.

Clarke County, Georgia (University of Georgia) voted 65-28 D.

Fayette County, Kentucky (University of Kentucky) voted 51-41 D.

Boone County, Missouri (University of Missouri) voted 55-41 D.

Richland County, South Carolina (University of South Carolina) voted 64-31 D.

Knox County, Tennessee (University of Tennessee) voted 58-35 R.

Davidson County, Tennessee (Vanderbilt University) voted 60-34 D.

Tuscaloosa County, Alabama (University of Alabama) voted 58-38 R.

Washington County, Arkansas (University of Arkansas) voted 51-41 R.

Lee County, Alabama (Auburn University) voted 58-36 R.

East Baton Rouge Parish, Louisiana (Louisiana State University) voted 52-43 D.

Lafayette County, Mississippi (University of Mississippi) voted 55-41 R.

Oktibbeha County, Mississippi (Mississippi State University) voted 49-47 D.

Brazos County, Texas (Texas A&M) voted 58-34 R.

As you can see, a majority (eight of fourteen) of the counties voted D. So I question your premise.

And again, that’s just SEC schools and doesn’t even go into Virginia or North Carolina schools, many other Florida and Texas schools for example, etc.

Also note that even if the county as a whole voted R, in some (Knox County for example) the college town itself may not make up the majority of the county and may itself be Democratic (both Knoxville and Tuscaloosa have Democratic mayors, for example), and/or the areas immediately surrounding the schools themselves may be Democratic even if the town is not. Often much more heavily Democratic than the county as a whole even if it voted D. This can be seen on the detailed NYTimes map that broke the election down by precinct:

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2018/upshot/election-2016-voting-precinct-maps.html

Also note that even the R-voting counties still are often much less R-leaning than the surrounding counties, suggesting the universities have some D-leaning influence but it may not be large enough to overcome the R lean of the area as a whole.

[Yellowhammer]

multiple factors at hand
1) southerners are more conservative (duh)
2) the college population‘s vote isn’t that big to outvote the rest of the county‘s very republican margin
3) the more liberal students probably disproportionately migrate to different (more liberal) parts of the country to attend college

This doesn't seem to be the case here in Alabama where we have armies of crazy young SJW's from deep blue areas invading the state for that cheap tuition. All the while all they do is complain about how much they hate our state.

The OP is not  correct.  VA and NC have very liberal universities.  As mentioned , GA and FL are to the left also.  Even in the barbarian states, the college campuses/counties vote to the left of the state.

Like California and Illinois

[RussFeingoldWasRobbed]

Lafayette MS will vote for Hood. Im calling it

I will now accept my accolades!

[redeagleofficial]

The colleges have more Christian presence and are centered around football and family.

[Sumner 1868]

There's a widespread misconception that evangelicals are overwhelmingly poor. In reality most have above average incomes and live in upscale suburbs. While they aren't as wealthy as Jews or Hindus, there's a very clear reason they love the televangelist "Prosperity Gospel" so much.

[R.P. McM]

There's a widespread misconception that evangelicals are overwhelmingly poor. In reality most have above average incomes and live in upscale suburbs. While they aren't as wealthy as Jews or Hindus, there's a very clear reason they love the televangelist "Prosperity Gospel" so much.

Education is not a perfect proxy for income, but the relationship is pretty strong. So when I see a graphic like this from a highly respected survey outfit, it makes me deeply skeptical of your hypothesis:  



You mention Jews and Hindus, but you've omitted a few groups: Unitarians, Mainline Protestants, Buddhists, Atheists, Agnostics, Orthodox Christians, Muslims, Mormons, and Catholics. Which is not to say that the average Evangelical occupies a dilapidated shack in the Ozarks. Just that, in terms of religious (and irreligious) sects, Evangelicals are almost certainly at the lower end of the income scale.

RE: televangelism / the Prosperity Gospel — they love it for the same reason they love Trump. Namely, they're world-class suckers.