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although age-wise, housing stock-wise, and in some ways Midwestern culture-wise, I feel KC is a bit more like Cleveland than STL.
... but all this is totally subjective, of course.
You’re literally the first person who has ever said anything remotely like this. Very interesting, and I’d love to understand this perspective. If anything KC feels like Columbus. Cleveland is socially and politically MUCH more similar to St. Louis than KC. This isn’t an opinion, it is fact.
There's always "pockets", but in terms of the counties you have to go to the likes of Grundy or McHenry to even get barely Republican and that's like 50 miles outside the city and big swaths of those counties are basically still countryside and even though they part of the MSA hardly recognizable as 'metropolitan' places. And it's not like those are just like home run red areas, they're verging on turning blue as development increases.
This is my go to source as far as comparing the relative liberalism or conservatism of places around the country. The NYT "Extremely Detailed map of the 2020 election." In this link you can also look at the change from 2016:
If you look at the 2020 data, the closet voting precinct to downtown Minneapolis that went for Trump was nearly 20 miles away in what looks to be a section of St. Paul Park to the SE, as well as a precinct 20 miles just to the north of Spring Lake Park. And those were only be 2% points for Trump.
Conversely you have places on the South Side of Chicago only 5-6 miles south of the Loop like parts of Bridgeport and Canaryville that went over 5%, even in over 10% for Trump in 2020! You also even have areas on the far North and Northwest Sides of the city that went even higher for Trump, such as West Rogers Park (home of Orthodox Jewish communities) that went as much as nearly 40% points for Trump. Norridge IL, only 15 miles NW of the Loop went 20% points for Trump, and all the areas of the far NW side surrounding Norridge also went for Trump (though by smaller margins). Parts of Niles as well, and these are supposed to be diverse areas.
In fact, if you look at the Southwest side/Southwest suburbs, its a solid area of Trump victory margins from Bedford Park IL (15 miles SW of the loop) all the way to the exurbs/rural IL, including just about ALL of Orland/Tinley Park, Lemont, Homer Glen, all the Palos suburbs, Burr Ridge, much of Hickory Hills, Crestwood, Worth, etc.
I grew up in Buffalo Grove, which I would honestly I would say is fairly progressive for an outlying suburb (its 25% Jewish (reform/secular) though not quite as progressive as east like Deerfield, Highland Park, and Glencoe, but adjacent Prospect Hts is an island where much of the town went 5+% for Trump in 2020. Not a surprise considering Charlie Kirk of Turning Point grew up there. (He grew up in the next school district over and could walk to the subdivision from the house I grew up in, where my Dad still lives).
If you zoom in on Minneapolis you don't see 10+ margins for Trump until you get as far as out as places named Victoria, Prior Lake, Hastings, etc.
It appears that its actually Minneapolis-St. Paul that doesn't see significant Trump victories until you get to the outlying exurbs/rural areas. Not Chicago. It looks like there are significantly more built up urban/suburban areas that went for Trump.
What's interesting is that those aforementioned areas of Chicago looks like to be a tad more blue or a tad less red in 2016, while areas close to central Minneapolis were a tad MORE red in 2016 or a tad MORE blue, but if we're looking at trends, clearly there were people in Chicago that became more receptive to Trumps message that weren't previously, where the opposite seems to be true in Minneapolis. Chicago has more areas that went from Blue to Red, despite Trump winning. That is saying a lot. Its an indicator of a rustbelt mentality that is closer in values and attitudes to union former Democrats that can be found in urban areas of Ohio and Michigan that were traditionally bellwether places.
I am saying Minneapolis is better than Chicago? Of course not. Chicago is way bigger and more international, and much more of a tourist destination than Minneapolis. But there are more areas of established urban and suburban areas of Chicagoland that have people that seemed to have found Trumps message more appealing than Biden.
Detroit and Cleveland are only 'liberal' in the sense that their urban built up core has a mix of minorities who always vote Democratic and the typical urban liberal white cadre of the likes of younger corporate functionaries, medical professionals, educators, municipal employees, 'starving artist' types and the like.
Macomb county easily went for Trump in 2016 and 2020 and that's a core county of Metro Detroit. Outer tier counties like Livingston, Lapeer and St.Clair are Republican strongholds.
In NE Ohio, suburban counties like Lake and Lorain went for Trump and even in Cuyahoga county suburbs like Parma or Brook Park have significant Republican voter pools.
Those metro areas are much bluer than the country around them but that's just the generic current day pattern in this country and can be observed pretty much everywhere. So while they're liberal-leaning, they're really not especially so. In the NE corridor and in the big West Coast metros even suburbia tends to be pretty much solidly blue (and I don't mean that in the sense that there are no Republicans, there's plenty of them, more people voted for Trump in L.A. and Orange county than in some entire Southern states, it's just that there's enough Democrats all over the map to drown their voices out).
This is often reinforced by the extremely high COL in the core areas which forces even people who generally like urban living and support metropolitan values to move out of the city into the hinterland. That's of course a contrast to the classic "I wanna raise my kids in peace and quiet away from the city's troubles." suburban movement which often generated (and to some extent still does) Republican voters. I feel like outside of the coastal areas, Chicago is probably the closest in terms of replicating that coastal "blue suburbanization" trend.
They way you describe Detroit and Cleveland in your first paragraphs is the reason why just about all US cities are liberal. That not only liberal, those demographics practically define most categories of liberal.
In fact If you look at this map (which I included in my previous response):
And zoom in to the southern Great Lakes area where you can see Chicago, Detroit, and Cleveland, and knowing where the city limits begin and end, its pretty clear, if you judge map alone, Detroit is more liberal than Chicago. There's literally not a single precinct in Detroit proper where they didn't go for Hillary in 2016 by any less than 80% of the vote.
Am I saying Detroit is better than Chicago? Of course not! Chicago is a world class tourist destination, more international, more opportunities, more everything. But the greater diversity of people in Chicago, ALSO includes people who are right leaning enough on some issues enough to skew election results. I mean if you think about it, any white person living in Detroit proper is clearly going to be someone that is comfortable living around Black people, because there's hardly anywhere in Detroit proper, where Black don't make up less than 50%. Whereas in Chicago, a white person who just isn't comfortable living around any significant number of Black people can still absolutely live in many upscale neighborhoods in Chicago's urban core just fine.
Chicago doesn't have a core county that went for Trump the way you do in Metro Detroit, but you do have a fairly large swath of SW Chicagoland that culturally is a lot like Macomb County MI (blue collared, will vote Democrat if it means union benefits, but get too woke, speak too much to people of color, and they will vote Republican). If the area between I-55 and I-57 in Chicagoland were its own County it would absolutely go for Trump, as you can see on the map.
Anyways, if you look at the map, and zoom in on the West Coast, and the NW corridor, I would absolutely agree with you when it comes to the West Coast. If you look at LA County, there is SCARCELY a red precinct to be found anywhere outside the inland high desert and remote rural communities up in the San Gabriel Mountains, a couple very small pockets of old money in Beverly Hills, the Palos Verdes area (and a few random precincts where there are literally just a few votes cast (maybe industrial area precincts where there are literally just a few residents, and then out around San Dimas and Glendora).
However I might disagree with you on the NE corridor. Half of Staten Island, and even a few parts of Brooklyn are very red. Almost all of Suffolk County, Long Island (and even a good chunk of Nassau) are varying sheds of red, And despite Jersey being a blue state, much of the Jersey Shore appears varying shades of red.
I think this is because in the NE corridor, the young, educated progressive crowd is attracted to living in the urban cores (Manhattan, Brooklyn, Hudson County, NJ, whereas in say California the appeal is more "California" more broadly and so you have people who move to experience beach communities, even if they can barely afford it with a roommate, etc.
Just my observations and interpretations from looking at these maps.
You’re literally the first person who has ever said anything remotely like this. Very interesting, and I’d love to understand this perspective. If anything KC feels like Columbus. Cleveland is socially and politically MUCH more similar to St. Louis than KC. This isn’t an opinion, it is fact.
I would agree with you, as I think most people would, but it's still a judgment call, and as such is opinion, like the comment to which you responded.
OK, fine. Brown U did a housing pattern study. And because, it is Brown, I respect it. But any study can be misleading, especially in a liberal/conservative dichotomy, as even you note that having places like SLC and San Antonio as the 'least segregated' is highly misleading. Does housing/neighborhood segregation, alone, connote conservativism, or, per the dictates of this thread: a lack of liberalism? Obviously not, because New York, in my book, overall is one of the most 'liberal' cities in America. Portland, OK, perhaps; but to me, Portland, as a coastal city, seems pretty White dominated -- but perhaps that's just an image. Yet, it seems, that Portland, like another non-coastal, popularly deemed more 'liberal' city, Minneapolis (but don't say St. Paul), that also has a kind of largely White/lily White image, seems to have some below-the-surface racial, ... er, issues (can you say: George Floyd?)
[rest snipped]
I assume that you're familiar with the history of Oregon. (For those not familiar with it, the original state constitution in 1859 included a clause forbidding Black settlement in the state.)
As for Minneapolis, you have George Floyd on the one hand and Prince and Keith Ellison on the other. I don't think I need to explain Prince to you; Ellison, who represented Minneapolis and some of its suburbs from 2007 to 2019 and is now Minnesota's Attorney General, was the first Muslim elected to the U.S. Congress — and an ADOS (American Descendant of Slaves) rather than an immigrant like his successor, Ilhan Omar, the second Muslim (along with Rashida Tlaib; since both of them took office in the same Congress, the two are technically tied) elected to Congress and a Somali-American. (African immigrants like Omar are the reason the acronym "ADOS" is gradually spreading as an alternative to "African American." Of course, there's also "Black," which runs the gamut, but I wanted to be specific here.)
I think Minneapolis, pace George Floyd, has fewer, um, issues than Portland.
Quote:
Originally Posted by TheProf
Yes, St. Louis has an exceptionally strong and diverse network of suburbs, including urban-walkable ones like U. City (very Cleveland Heights-ish) and Clayton (to which Cleveland has no match in terms of a suburban CBD; Clayton has friggin' skyscrapers! I hotel'd there, once). I have strong praise for STL and, in many ways, it feels kinda like a Cleveland, esp its scale, high-culture and amenities. Politically, I see differences, but I see them as slight (as in the region is just slightly more conservative, and btw, I don't mean wacko-conservative -- hardly). I prefer STL far more than KC, although age-wise, housing stock-wise, and in some ways Midwestern culture-wise, I feel KC is a bit more like Cleveland than STL.
... but all this is totally subjective, of course.
Age-wise, St. Louis (founded 1764) is more like Cleveland (founded 1796) than Kansas City (settled 1838, incorporated 1850) is. I would say that in most other respects, Cleveland more closely resembles St. Louis than KC as well — the latter has a distinct Western/farm flavor the other two cities lack. And despite what someone said upthread about St. Louis' Southernness, I think I hear more backcountry "Southern lite" accents in parts of the Kansas City area than I do in Metro St. Louis. St. Louis is also an industrial city, and the South has only one of those (Birmingham), while agricultural metropolises are fairly common across the South, and KC, even though it has industry, too, is definitely one of those.
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