Liberal/Conservative towns on the Island (Huntington, Levittown: live, garden, yard)

[skippingtickets]

Anyone care to fill me in on the more liberal/more conservative communities?

[AlexisT]

Well, define what you mean by liberal and conservative, for a start. "Conservative" on Long Island is relative.

[skippingtickets]

Towns that lean left or right-wing. I don't know much about LI political views, so it's hard for me to quanitfy.

[nancy thereader]

I would say that Stony Brook is pretty Liberal. Rocky Point et. al. probably Conservative.

You can check out which town voted for Bush and which voted for Kerry on the internet somewhere. THey ar always published after each election in Newsday.

[Wes927]

North Merrick has lots of Irish Church-going Catholics.

Pro-life bumper stickers on cars and some Virgin Marys in the front yard.

[Smash255]

Conservative on LI is generally relative, I don't think you will find any real southern or socially conservative areas on LI.

As far as Stony Brook, I graduated from there in 04, I can attest to how liberal Stony Brook is as I was one of many liberals at Stony Brook.

As far as Nassau County goes, I would say the most liberal areas are around Great Neck, Kings Point and Plainview. The more conservative areas I would say are Garden City, Stewart Manor and Manhasset.

Those I would say stand out the most. Other liberal areas include Syosset, jericho, Woodbury, Roslyn much of northwest Nassau is pretty liberal, southern portions of Merrick and Bellmore are pretty liberal as well.

Other conservative areas of LI (well conservative by LI standrads anyway) are gennerally in the SE portion of Nassau. Seaford, Bethpage, Wantagh, Massapequa are by LI standrads cpmservative, Franklin Square is as well.

[llama8]

I know that Newsday had a map pretty recently that had each town either red or blue to represent their voting record. You may be able to find it on Newsday.com

I know that where I live, Levittown usually seems to vote Republican.

[AlexisT]

Huntington village is liberal (gay pride parade), but not necessarily the rest of the town.

LI used to be pretty reliably Republican (major machine in Nassau County), but as the national party has moved socially rightwards, that trend has shifted. Southern-fried evangelism doesn't fly on LI. (I didn't know what a Protestant was until I was 9. I thought there were 2 religions: Jewish and Catholic.) The party also suffered from the effects of machine politics and corruption.

Also, some of those church going, pro-life Catholics are historic Democrat voters. (Ethnic and union votes.) There must be plenty of Republicans left in eastern Nassau though because Pete King has managed to hold on to his seat.

Nassau County's old DA, Denis Dillon, was a big pro-lifer.

[Smash255]

Originally Posted by AlexisT

Huntington village is liberal (gay pride parade), but not necessarily the rest of the town.

LI used to be pretty reliably Republican (major machine in Nassau County), but as the national party has moved socially rightwards, that trend has shifted. Southern-fried evangelism doesn't fly on LI. (I didn't know what a Protestant was until I was 9. I thought there were 2 religions: Jewish and Catholic.) The party also suffered from the effects of machine politics and corruption.

Also, some of those church going, pro-life Catholics are historic Democrat voters. (Ethnic and union votes.) There must be plenty of Republicans left in eastern Nassau though because Pete King has managed to hold on to his seat.

Nassau County's old DA, Denis Dillon, was a big pro-lifer.

Without getting this too much of an off topic, but one opf the reasons King has been able to hold the seat is his incumbency and lack of strong opponents. Only mejias run in 06 was a real serious challenger, and King always has had strong $$ advantages (he outspent Mejias more than 2-1). Incumbent minded Gerry mandering also has helped King (as well as Israel, but it has helped King a bit more since his district is more competitive. The last re-districting moved a good chunk of the heaviest Dem areas in eastern Nassau from King's district to israel's (almost all of Plainview, good chunk of Syosset, jericho, Woodbury in exchange for more GOP areas on the immediate south shore in western Suffolk.

[AlexisT]

Ah, I was out of the country for the past 2 elections (left right before '04) so I missed the campaign. (my experience of the election was filling out my FVAP ballot and mailing it in!)