Is NYC the most geopolitically diverse city in the US?

[craigs]

Originally Posted by edale

IIRC OC's congressional shifts between 2018 and 2022 were mostly due to redistricting more than anything. CA uses a fair, independent commission for drawing district boundaries. The 2022 map was much more advantageous for Rs than Ds.

I think you're right, although it's impossible to prove how OC elections would have gone if 2022 had been run on the 2010 district maps (the newly drawn maps took effect in time for the June 2022 primaries). For example, the county shifted ever-so-slightly from voting narrowly for Newsom in 2018 to voting for his opponent by a 2% margin in 2022.

[FromSD]

Originally Posted by craigs

First, let's be clear that the entirety of coastal California--from Mexico to Oregon--falls within Democratic congressional districts. Californian sand is blue, so to speak.

Second, Orange County, specifically, is neither a longtime Democratic-leaning area nor even a longtime half-and-half area that is suddenly trending Republican. Rather, OC is a longtime Republican stronghold--famously so. The county diverted from its usual GOP course and elected more Democrats than usual in 2018 and 2020. Trump was the reason. However, in 2022, the county went (by a margin of 2%) to the GOP gubernatorial candidate, and two OC House seats flipped back to the Republicans. While both counties may have voted more Republican in 2022 than in 2020, I don't think Nassau County's story is the same as Orange County's return to its longtime Republican norm.

I agree that Orange County is pretty Republican. 2018 was the anomaly with all 5 congressional seats going to the Democrats. Two of those seats switched back to the GOP in 2020, however, not 2022. The 2 new GOP congresswomen got reelected in 2022. So the new congressional maps did not make a difference in the results.

Orange County is no longer the predominantly Anglo county it was in the 1980s, and as its Latino and Asian populations grow it might be easier for Democrats to win elections there. But that depends on Democrats continuing to have appeal to those groups, and there is some evidence that that appeal is beginning to weaken a bit. It's probably too early to say whether that is a long term trend or not.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by FromSD

I agree that Orange County is pretty Republican. 2018 was the anomaly with all 5 congressional seats going to the Democrats. Two of those seats switched back to the GOP in 2020, however, not 2022. The 2 new GOP congresswomen got reelected in 2022. So the new congressional maps did not make a difference in the results.

Orange County is no longer the predominantly Anglo county it was in the 1980s, and as its Latino and Asian populations grow it might be easier for Democrats to win elections there. But that depends on Democrats continuing to have appeal to those groups, and there is some evidence that that appeal is beginning to weaken a bit. It's probably too early to say whether that is a long term trend or not.

Ah, I stand corrected--the Republicans flipped those seats in 2020. My larger point still stands--unlike Nassau County in New York, Orange County is not a longtime Democratic-leaning district that has only recently trended Republican.

[Crawford]

Originally Posted by craigs

Ah, I stand corrected--the Republicans flipped those seats in 2020. My larger point still stands--unlike Nassau County in New York, Orange County is not a longtime Democratic-leaning district that has only recently trended Republican.

Right, but both Orange and Nassau are highly educated, affluent suburban districts that were traditionally R and have been trending D over time. Both have lots of old school country club, pre tea party Republicans. Both, in theory, are kryponite to Trumpism. And both bucked national trends in 2022. That doesn't mean they're the same, or that Newport Beach resembles Great Neck, but it's interesting that they're national outliers.

But again, I think people are overthinking bigger trends based on a single election. A lot of this is local nuance. Redistricting, candidate quality, local time-specific gestalt. NY got hammered on redistricting, as the Dems tried to pull a GOP, and a judge overturned the gerrymandered map weeks before the election. MI got a new bipartisan, fair map, and it made a big difference. No idea what happened in CA but wouldn't be shocked if redistricting had some impact. Maybe the Dems also ran some crappy candidates in Orange, who knows.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Crawford

NY got hammered on redistricting, as the Dems tried to pull a GOP, and a judge overturned the gerrymandered map weeks before the election.

yeah, that does seem to be a big part of it in NYS's case.

IL dems pulled a big redistricting gerymander too, but unlike NYS, they got away with it, making 14 of IL's 17 house district's blue in the 2022 election.

that makes IL's house delgation 82% blue, the bluest house delegation of any large state.

pretty much everywhere in the state where people outnumber corn now has a blue house rep.

but it's a bit of a dangerous game too because many of those fringe districts were won on some razor thin margins. if the national GOP ever manages to get less trumpy, and starts appealing once again to its former suburban base, many of those districts could VERY EASILY flip the other way.


the light blue districts on the map below were specifically drawn to give dems a very narrow edge in all of them, amplifying more urban-oriented voices in suburban Chicagoland, and in downstate urban areas like Rockford, quad cities, Peoria, Champaign, Springfield, the metro east, etc.



Source: wikipedia

[eschaton]

For reasons which are still not 100% clear, New York had by far the largest swing towards the GOP in the country. Like wider even than in Florida, where the GOP crushed in a landslide. If those two states are taken out of account, Dems actually narrowly won the 2022 midterms.

It's pretty clear that differential turnout played a big role in NY. Like in NY-03, which Gorge Santos won, Chuck Schumer actually lost the vote for senate by 4% even though it's a Biden +10 seat. That's not crossover voters, that's Dems staying home. But it's not clear why more Dems stayed at home in NY than virtually anywhere else in the country.

California swung a bit away from the Dems, but IIRC it was only a few percent. Again, it was differential turnout. They actually picked up additional seats in the state legislature though.

[Docere]

It seems like Zeldin's big gains were among Asian voters in NYC (including 37% of the vote in Queens).

Perhaps he did better among non-Orthodox Jews as well.

Not sure how much room for growth there is among Italian Americans and Orthodox Jews as Trump cleaned up among these groups.

[FromSD]

[QUOTE=Docere;9857238]It seems like Zeldin's big gains were among Asian voters in NYC (including 37% of the vote in Queens).

Was New York City's move to deemphasize entrance exams for the city's elite high schools a factor in the reduction of Asian support for the Democratic ticket? Not knowing that much about New York politics, I don't know whether it was that big a deal. And Adams has already reversed that policy change, right?

And since we've been talking about Orange County in this thread on NYC politics, the 2 congressional districts that shifted back to the GOP in 2020 were also the 2 districts with substantial Asian populations. There was a proposition on the 2020 ballot to restore affirmative action for UC and Cal State admissions. It went down to defeat by a fairly hefty margin, including among Asian American voters. I've always wondered whether that proposition might have been one of the things that put the GOP candidates over the top in those 2 Orange County districts. I do know that the GOP has tried to use affirmative action as a wedge issue to drive down Asian voter support for the Democrats. Maybe this time it worked? More likely, though, it was a case of Orange County reverting to the norm after a very good year for the Democrats in 2018.

[craigs]

Originally Posted by Crawford

Right, but both Orange and Nassau are highly educated, affluent suburban districts that were traditionally R and have been trending D over time.

You speak of last year's elections in Nassau and Orange counties as "outliers," but in the case of the longtime Republican stronghold OC, it was actually the 2018 elections that brought an unusual and unexpected outcome. The two subsequent federal and state elections in OC went red, as is the norm for OC. Nassau went red as well, but unlike Orange County, that is not the longstanding norm there.

Originally Posted by FromSD

And since we've been talking about Orange County in this thread on NYC politics, the 2 congressional districts that shifted back to the GOP in 2020 were also the 2 districts with substantial Asian populations. There was a proposition on the 2020 ballot to restore affirmative action for UC and Cal State admissions. It went down to defeat by a fairly hefty margin, including among Asian American voters. I've always wondered whether that proposition might have been one of the things that put the GOP candidates over the top in those 2 Orange County districts. I do know that the GOP has tried to use affirmative action as a wedge issue to drive down Asian voter support for the Democrats. Maybe this time it worked? More likely, though, it was a case of Orange County reverting to the norm after a very good year for the Democrats in 2018.

Agreed. The norm for OC is to elect Republicans, and the 2018 Democratic victories there constitute a very rare upset that was not repeated.

[Docere]

1988 was the last election of GOP suburban dominance. Bush Sr. won pretty much all the affluent suburban counties outside of Boston, DC and the Bay Area.

Although it's been D since 1992, the R vote has been pretty stable since 2004 (45-46%). In most affluent educated inner suburban counties the R vote is down significantly since then.

Clinton-Gore did very well in NYC area, as the educated were trending D and the GOP in that era did not do well in the Northeast, including among Italian Americans and Orthodox Jews, who later underwent realignment.

[Docere]

Part of the D trend in affluent suburban counties is increased diversity, the electorate isn't identical as it was a decade or two ago. So it's remarkable that the R vote has held more or less constant on LI in spite of a more diverse population. Though Orthodox Jews really push the numbers up in Nassau.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by Docere

Part of the D trend in affluent suburban counties is increased diversity, the electorate isn't identical as it was a decade or two ago.

yep.

here are how the 2020 presidential voting patterns in the chicago MSA were generally correlated with the % of NH-white people in a given county.

the lower the proportion of NH-white people, the more heavily the county tended to go for biden, and vice-versa, generally speaking.

Lake and Dupage punching well above the average owes to their very high proportion of the college-educated professional class.

Dekalb overperforms because the county is dominated by its namesake city, which is home to northern illinois university, so it's the college town effect.



County: 2020 pop. (% of MSA) ---- NH-white % (biden/trump margin)


Cook: 5,275,541 (54.8%) ------------- 40.5% (+50.3)

Lake (IN): 498,700 (5.2%) ------------ 50.4% (+15.1)
Kane: 516,522 (5.4%) ----------------- 54.7% (+14.4)
Lake (IL): 714,342 (7.4%) ------------ 57.2% (+24.1)

Will: 696,355 (7.2%) ------------------ 60.1% (+8.4)
Dupage: 932,877 (9.7%) ------------- 63.4% (+18.1)
Kendall: 131,869 (1.4%) -------------- 64.2% (+5.7)

Dekalb: 100,420 (1.0%) -------------- 71.0% (+5.7)
Kenosha: 169,151 (1.8%) ------------ 72.1% (+3.2)
Mchenry: 310,229 (3.2%) ------------ 76.9% (+2.5)
Porter: 173,215 (1.8%) --------------- 79.1% (+6.1)

Grundy: 52,533 (0.5%) --------------- 82.8% (+25.8)
Newton: 13,830 (0.1%) --------------- 87.2% (+52.1)
Jasper: 32,918 (0.3%) ---------------- 88.4% (+49.1)


MSA Total: 9,618,502 ------------- 50.2% (+32.3)


and for the record, those last 3 super red counties on the list above are just cornbelt counties that really have no business whatsoever being in chicago's MSA, save for a handful of crazy super-commuters that push them just above the threshold.

[mrnyc]

^ maybe you could add the populations to that list so we can see what matters and what doesnt? i mean i get 'jasper' is rural, but like how rural? you know.

[Steely Dan]

^ I've edited the list to reflect total population and % of MSA.

Roughly 90% of the MSA's population is contained within just the first 6 counties on the list. Population drops off considerably after that.

And as you can see, those last three counties are barely even a drop of water in the bucket. Together, they don't even constitute 1 full percentage point of the MSA.

[Docere]

Westchester County, 1988 - the last time the Republicans won it.

https://twitter.com/Thorongil16/stat...92402850725888

Among the wealthy communities, heavily Jewish Scarsdale stands out.

Trumpism tanked the GOP in wealthy Westchester. In 2020 even Bronxville went 70-30 D.

[Crawford]

Looking at the 1988 Westchester map, the only sizable blue areas were Jewish or nonwhite. Those big blue splotches at the south end of the county were nonwhite. The blue splotches in the mid-county were Jewish (and some nonwhite in White Plains). There are a few light blue areas that aren't Jewish or nonwhite, in the Rivertowns around Hastings, and a bit in Larchmont (lots of establishment Dems in media, publishing, arts, etc.).

WASP suburbia was solid GOP until the Gingrich/Tea Party era, at least. Places like Bronxville and Rye (and the national equivalents, the Winnetkas and Bloomfields) would have been GOP strongholds. Now they're some of the most reliable Dem voters.

[Docere]

2020 vote in elite Westchester and Fairfield communities:

Scarsdale 79-20 D
Bronxville 70-30 D
Pound Ridge 70-29 D
Rye 68-31 D
Greenwich 62-37 D
Darien 61-38 D
New Canaan 59-41 D

The Connecticut towns went Obama-Romney-Clinton-Biden, as did Bronxville.

Bronxville has voted D 3 times in its history: 2008, 2016, 2020.

https://www.myhometownbronxville.com...ntial-election

[Docere]

Bronxville is part of the Town of Eastchester, which Biden won but more narrowly (54-44). The more Italian section went around 60% R. Bronxville may be the reason Biden won the town.

[Docere]

In the Italian sections of the outer boroughs - Howard Beach, parts of Whitestone, southern Staten Island - Trump got 70%+.

Then there's the Orthodox Jewish sections of Brooklyn where he sometimes even polled in the 90s.

What's the next-largest major city with 70%+ R geography. Outer edges of Phoenix maybe? Italian pockets in South Philly?

[3rd&Brown]

Originally Posted by Docere

In the Italian sections of the outer boroughs - Howard Beach, parts of Whitestone, southern Staten Island - Trump got 70%+.

Then there's the Orthodox Jewish sections of Brooklyn where he sometimes even polled in the 90s.

What's the next-largest major city with 70%+ R geography. Outer edges of Phoenix maybe? Italian pockets in South Philly?

Trump only won a couple of precincts in the entire city of Philadelphia. One of them was Packer Park (far South Philly) and another was the far Northeast part of Philly where a lot of Russians live (Somerton). The more traditional parts of South Philly (that are also Italian) consistently go for Democrats.

Edit. I was a bit wrong. https://wesweaver.carto.com/viz/a6bf...3da3/embed_map

But far South Philly is I'd say a suburbanish enclave of Italians (think more like Queens than Brooklyn), far Northeast is a lot of Russians (and cops), and the red part in the middle along the river is white working class...many Polish immigrants.