Ok, so I was on city-data forums browsing a thread about conservative areas in big US cities and someone showed a graphic of how precincts in New York City voted for President in 2008 and it absolutely shocked me!
http://www.urbanresearch.org/resourc...Obama_2008.pdf
So large swaths of southern Brooklyn and Queens actually went for John McCain and many areas not even by small margins, in some areas less than 33% voted for Obama! I knew about Staten Island and thought maybe some parts of Queens were a bit mixed but I had no idea New York City was this polarized politically neighborhood to neighborhood. The poster claimed there is a contiguous area of 2.1 million people within NYC (25% of the city's population) encompassing Staten Island, southern Brooklyn and Queens where McCain won by one vote, the largest conservative urban area in the country. I guess this also explains how people like Guiliani and Bloomberg get elected mayor, people who have some moderate to liberal views here and there but not people true progressives would call one of their own. These voters might not conservative in the sense that white people in the deep south are but apparently they many of them were conservative enough to vote for the McCain/Palin ticket. Chicago is actually much more uniformly Democratic than NYC, some of the outer areas of the city (by the Airports and Beverly) are close to a 50/50 split in voting patterns but McCain only won a few handfuls of precincts very narrowly, nothing big enough to show up on a map as bright red. I was told many of these areas either tend to be white ethnic Catholic multi-generational New Yorkers, Hasidic Jews and some immigrants from traditional cultures.
It got me thinking further, I know some many here on SSP tout US cities as liberal and secular utopias but I think there is plenty of evidence, empirical and anecdotal, that it is much more nuanced than that. I actually don't think most American cities are all that liberal or secular, on balance center-left for sure but in my view the only people who think cities are ultra liberal are either isolated ultra conservative tea party types that live in rural areas far from big cities or liberal transplants to big cities that only live in the really yuppy and hipster areas and neighborhoods with very large gay populations that don't have much exposure to the multi-generational city resident neighborhoods and ethnic enclaves with traditional cultural values.
Take my word for it, as Democratic as Chicago is lingering beneath the surface in many people in many neighborhoods are some very traditional and even conservative views. The difference between here and the deep south is that here there is a sense of tolerance with a lower class "t" in that it is a "live and let live" attitude but in the more traditional bungalow belt areas there is the unwritten rule of "don't be in my face about it, don't ask don't tell". I have been around people like this all my life, much of my neighbors and family are just like this. What I mean for instance is that I wouldn't recommend gay people holding hands in hoods like Garfield Ridge (where I live), Beverly or Hegewisch, even in Bridgeport that is still a bit of an edgy thing to do.
Why is it like this? Well a lot of it has to do with religion, Catholicism in particular but also with many black protestants as well. Sure Catholics in Chicago don't express their religion as overtly politically as people in the deep south but many have deeply held beliefs and some of them take advantage of the secret ballot and even vote based on such issues. I know Hispanic families that pray before every meal but are also Democratic political activists that have rather liberal views when it comes to immigration and worker's rights. My point is that religion and traditional values still play a big role for many in our most urban big cities and the sooner secular liberals realize this the easier it will be to truly understand the entire city and it's people, not just the small circles they live in. That is not to say you have to be religious or even like religion but just understand when you deride these values you aren't just abstractly dissing people who live in some far away podunk but also many that live a few miles away, a few blocks away and even right next door to you, so be pragmatic and not dogmatic (ironic) about how to respond to them and just hoping that someday people like them will be gone due to generational/societal changes is not good enough (#1. You don't know that for sure and #2 even if it will someday it is important to have an understanding for today not some distant hypothetical and to you utopian future). Isn't part of being a liberal in a multicultural world class city understanding the traditional (including religious) values of many diverse cultures?
In conclusion I just want to bring it back to the discussion about conservative areas in big US cities. This doesn't necessarily mean they vote Republican (although in some areas they apparently do) but also how many of our urban areas are much more nuanced than just the down the line liberal/progressive stereotypes. Given the map above you can't even blame it entirely on the more suburban parts of the city as Brooklyn is more dense than any area in the United States outside of Manhattan, so yes Virginia there are areas with 30K+ per square mile density with mass transit everywhere that voted for McCain. I don't mean to be a smart ass, just a splash of cold water for some of you, it was somewhat even for me.
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