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Does Austin really champion gentrification? Probably Houston is gentrifying more than Austin is - simply because Houston has more areas to gentrify.
I think with AAs, Austin is simply not on their radar like an Atlanta or even Dallas would be. Austin's nightlife for example does not play hip hop or r&b for example. The percentage of other AAs is a lot smaller than Dallas or Houston. But I never heard an AA refer to Austin as conservative. Maybe they do and I never heard of it but I doubt an AA will refer to Houston or Dallas as liberal if they don't refer to Austin as such.
As a point of clarity, I didnt say AA's refer to Austin as conservative, just not liberal.
Does Austin really champion gentrification? Probably Houston is gentrifying more than Austin is - simply because Houston has more areas to gentrify.
I think with AAs, Austin is simply not on their radar like an Atlanta or even Dallas would be. Austin's nightlife for example does not play hip hop or r&b for example. The percentage of other AAs is a lot smaller than Dallas or Houston. But I never heard an AA refer to Austin as conservative. Maybe they do and I never heard of it but I doubt an AA will refer to Houston or Dallas as liberal if they don't refer to Austin as such.
That's interesting, where I live even the places that cater to suburban white kids play hiphop
I'm just counting Atlanta as I would count any city. Taking Miami as an example - no one would consider PBC part of Miami either, but technically it's the northern part of the MSA. It also went decidedly for Clinton, so adding it to Miami-Dade and Broward and you'd get something like 1.5 million voters for Clinton and 0.8 million for Trump. And Miami is not all that liberal, we could do the same for the Bay and get even more dramatic results.
My point is, Atlanta's numbers are only liberal for the Southern metros.
Well, I live in the Miami Metro and it's an outlier when compared to almost all other metros in the nation because it can't expand in almost every direction. To its west is wetlands, to its east is ocean, and to its south are The Keys. The only place that the metro can grow is northward on a comparatively small sliver of land. That sort of physical environment doesn't lend itself to the sort of rural-conservative / urban-liberal narrative.
As for greater Miami not being "all that liberal", that confounds me. Other than its slowly dying-off old Cuban guard population, a large majority consistently votes blue. For the three large South Florida counties, Miami-Dade was +29.6, Broward was +34.1, and Palm Beach was +15.3, all for Hillary when compared to Trump. My suspicion is that the 4.5 difference between Miami-Dade and Broward can be tied to Miami's elderly Cuban-American community.
Regarding your highlighted statement above, blue core & red suburbs/exurbs is not a southern thing alone. Just look at many metro voting patterns in Missouri, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, and even upstate NY, etc.
Does Austin really champion gentrification? Probably Houston is gentrifying more than Austin is - simply because Houston has more areas to gentrify.
I think with AAs, Austin is simply not on their radar like an Atlanta or even Dallas would be. Austin's nightlife for example does not play hip hop or r&b for example. The percentage of other AAs is a lot smaller than Dallas or Houston. But I never heard an AA refer to Austin as conservative. Maybe they do and I never heard of it but I doubt an AA will refer to Houston or Dallas as liberal if they don't refer to Austin as such.
I'm hoping to attend the next Davis family reunion this summer.
And I'm hoping it will be held in Austin again, as it has been for the past two years running.
One, it will give me the opportunity to meet most of that branch of my family (only a small fragment of the Davis clan migrated to Kansas City and Omaha).
And two, it will give me a chance to see Austin and learn what my relatives think about it.
Yeah, I saw the South Beach on your profile so I used Miami as an example. I also lived in Miami - in fact I still have property there. Miami for me is a more moderate area. In 2016, the area was faced with voting for an extremist and a moderate so a 65-35 split is not indicative it's liberal whatsoever.
I also don't think Miami's geography is why it's more liberal than Atlanta, I just think it's more liberal because Atlanta is more influenced by the deep south, despite being a progressive light in that area.
Take the Bay Area metro if you don't like the Miami example -
Alameda was 80-15 for Clinton.
Contra Costa was 70-25 for Clinton.
Marin was 80-15 for Clinton.
Napa was 65-30 for Clinton {this is as about conservative as it gets in the Bay - the same spread as for Broward County}
San Francisco county was 85-10 for Clinton.
San Mateo was 76-18 for Clinton.
Solano was 62-32 for Clinton {see my comments on Napa}.
Sonoma was 71-23 for Clinton.
Not only did the Bay Area go for Clinton, but in significant margins. Some of these areas are very suburban and others are even rural. Nothing to do with population density.
The Bay Area is truly a liberal area, Miami is truly a moderate area, and Atlanta leans conservative is how I view it. Some conservatives would vote for Clinton because Trump was just crazy, of low morals, etc.
The San Francisco Bay Area is essentially the most liberal metro area in the nation, and far outside the American political mainstream. Metro Atlanta is much more representative of the nation, especially when the considerable share of the country outside the major cities is included.
It's true that Democratic support in metro Atlanta can be attributed more to nonwhite voters and less to white liberal voters than is true of Seattle, Minneapolis, Boston, etc. But likewise in greater Miami, a significant share of the Republican voters and elected officials are of Hispanic background (often Cuban), whereas many of the Democratic voters and politicians are non-Hispanic white (often Jewish) as well as black. So there are exceptions to the general patterns across the country.
Yeah, I saw the South Beach on your profile so I used Miami as an example. I also lived in Miami - in fact I still have property there. Miami for me is a more moderate area. In 2016, the area was faced with voting for an extremist and a moderate so a 65-35 split is not indicative it's liberal whatsoever.
I also don't think Miami's geography is why it's more liberal than Atlanta, I just think it's more liberal because Atlanta is more influenced by the deep south, despite being a progressive light in that area.
Take the Bay Area metro if you don't like the Miami example -
Alameda was 80-15 for Clinton.
Contra Costa was 70-25 for Clinton.
Marin was 80-15 for Clinton.
Napa was 65-30 for Clinton {this is as about conservative as it gets in the Bay - the same spread as for Broward County}
San Francisco county was 85-10 for Clinton.
San Mateo was 76-18 for Clinton.
Solano was 62-32 for Clinton {see my comments on Napa}.
Sonoma was 71-23 for Clinton.
Not only did the Bay Area go for Clinton, but in significant margins. Some of these areas are very suburban and others are even rural. Nothing to do with population density.
The Bay Area is truly a liberal area, Miami is truly a moderate area, and Atlanta leans conservative is how I view it. Some conservatives would vote for Clinton because Trump was just crazy, of low morals, etc.
Yeah, I know the Bay Area; I grew up there. It's an outlier and not typical.
Then you go to southern California and you have Orange County and the entire Inland Empire which all went for Hillary by a narrower margin than Palm Beach County.
Look at NYC. Even one of its boroughs went for Trump (no surprise to me), and you don't have to go too far out of NYC, considering its size, to find red counties.
Ill start with this premise: this is a much more complex topic than it is being presented as.
When looking at voting records, we have to understand there are two types of people that consistently vote blue: 1) liberal whites, 2) minority voting blocks. The later are liberal on economic and social justice issues but are often conservative on LGBT rights and the environment. The former are many times the inverse.
That established, I would argue that Dallas/Fort Worth, Phoenix, and Houston are our most conservative metro areas with Atlanta being number 4 (when looking at the top 20). The reason I would argue that Atlanta is more liberal than the other three has nothing to do with how many people voted for Clinton over Trump, it has to do with the fact that Atlanta is much more balanced between the two liberal voting blocks (liberal white and minorities) than the other three.
Now we have to breakdown the top three.
DFW is the most polar of the top three conservative ones. There is a much more stark contrast between Dallas County which is bright blue even outside the city of Dallas itself. Fort Worth, Southeastern Tarrant County and Southern Collin County, are moderate. Then whole rest of North Texas which is bright red. That said, DFW is not the most unbalanced when it comes to types of liberal voters. There are still good amounts of liberal white voters and minority voting blocks. DFW has a pretty large religious base that skews heavily right but also an increasing number of transplants (especially in Southern Collin County) which moderate things out.
Houston is the most predictable of the various groups. Houston has, by a large margin, the highest per capita of white Republican voters of any major metro area. Liberal whites are in shorter supply in Houston than even DFW. Even in Harris County only 23% of whites vote blue. Collin County (which is considered a conservative county outside Dallas) has a higher per capita of white liberals than that! What Houston does have to a much higher degree than DFW and Phoenix are large numbers of minority voting blocks. Greater Houston is only 36% white. Because of that, the you will have more Democrat voters in Houston as opposed to Phoenix of DFW, but less white Democrat voters. Thats why Houston is an exceptionally progressive city on things like racial/ethnic equality but Houston is more conservative than Dallas or Phoenix on issues like LGBT rights and the environment.
Phoenix is the most libertarian in policy of the three. Its also the least religious. Things like LGBT rights and a womans right to abortion arent as big of a deal there. However, its also the least racially progressive and has the most hard line stance on immigrants that may or may not be undocumented. Phoenix is also, unquestionably, the least diverse of the three. That said, Phoenix definitely has more liberal white voters than Houston and a slightly higher concentration than Dallas too. Phoenix is the easiest to study because it is the most white of the three.
So that leaves the question, can we really determine which of these cities is most conservative? Not really in my opinion. We can tell which ones are most Republican, but liberal whites and minority voting blocks have completely different definitions on what the terms "conservative" and "liberal" mean.
Great breakdown.
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