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No, he said "from Paoli to Penn Hills." It's also a stupid, tired generalization. In 2012, Barack Obama won a higher percentage of the white vote in the most conservative Pennsylvania county (Bedford County) than he did in the state of Alabama at large. There's even a difference between conservatives in both states. Alabama is Mike Huckabee, and Pennsylvania is Ron Paul. Just take a look at the 2008 Republican primary results. Pennsylvania was one of only two states east of the Mississippi River (Maine) to give Ron Paul double-digits, whereas he barely moved the needle in Alabama.
By the way, the answer to the question posed in the title of this topic is resource extraction. You can overlay maps of all the oil, gas and coal fields in Pennsylvania onto a map of the partisan voting shift by county since 2000, and notice a near-perfect relationship between hydrocarbons in the ground and a shift toward Republicans. It's also worth noting that, while resource extraction is the bedrock of the rural Pennsylvania economy, agriculture is the bedrock of the rural Illinois economy, and though both industries have shifted toward Republicans in recent years, agriculture is still more Democrat than resource extraction.
If anything, watch the political climate in rural Pennsylvania come to resemble Montana, Wyoming and west Texas more than any other state it's ever been compared to.
For what it's worth, I've seen more Confederate flags in rural Illinois than I have in rural Pennsylvania.
Agreed, it's really not like Alabama. Aside from the fact that there are cities which resemble Northern ones, the conservatives in PA seem more libertarian as opposed to the Roy Moore types in the Deep South.
I imagine this is mostly due to the fact that Chicago and it's suburban counties are a much larger share of the state's total population. Over 8 million of Illinois residents live in the Chicago MSA. It's only a little over 4 million when it comes to PA residents being in the Philly MSA. Adding Pittsburgh will narrow that gap a little. But Pittsburgh's MSA is a lot less diverse than Philly's or Chicago's.
Correct answer. Cook County alone makes up 40% of IL's population. IL is also a more diverse state than PA. It's 61% NHW compared to 76.1%. Again, this is due to the fact that Chicago is a lot larger than Philadelphia.
Chicago is much bigger than Philly. Yet the respective states they are in have nearly equal population.
This is why I added Pittsburgh's Metro Area to Philadelphia's in an effort to bring the state's big city metro population to within about 1 million of Illinois's. The problem with this is that Pittsburgh's Metro Area of 2.3 million is nowhere near as liberal or democratic as Philadelphia's Metro Area of 6.2 million, in either the city or metro area. Pittsburgh's pretty darn liberal in the city, but most of it's suburbs might as well be in Kentucky, while Philadelphia's and Chicago's suburbs are probably politically quite similar.
Correct answer. Cook County alone makes up 40% of IL's population. IL is also a more diverse state than PA. It's 61% NHW compared to 76.1%. Again, this is due to the fact that Chicago is a lot larger than Philadelphia.
Wow yeah. See, Philadelphia County makes up only 13% of PA's population. This is partly due to pittsburgh, but also because Philadelphia is a consolidated city/county. Unlike the vast majority of big cities that reached their size through sometimes dozens of annexations over many years, Philadelphia has only changed in land area once, and only once since it was founded 350 years ago. This singular change in landmass occurred in 1854 when Philadelphia went from 2 square miles to its present 134 square miles.
Outside of Chicagoland, there are also liberal or Democratic (the two aren't exactly synonymous) enclaves found in the form of Champaign-Urbana, Rockford, Springfield, and maybe Bloomington-Normal and Quad Cities areas as well. These places may be small on their own, but they do have some impact on the state leaning even more to the left, and combined have a population of 750k-1.2 million. There is also Metro East (Illinois' side of St. Louis) that has 700k people and considering there is a pretty sizable Black population (St. Clair County is 30% Black of 260k), I believe they lean towards the left as well. I think the only city of some significance that is Republican(mayor is Republican) is Peoria, but from what I've read it's sort of a swing area. Dupage County (Chicago area) used to be solidly red, but in recent times(since 2016 during Hilary run I think) they have been become purple if not blue.
I used to live in Middle Illinois, and traveled north as far as Kankakee and the whole length of the state on the eastern side. Bear in mind this was the middle 70's and I was right out of college.
I was coming from the Deep South where races have always been mixed. And for the most part, they got along.
I was appalled that Illinois outside of Chicago was all white--with a few Hispanics working on farms. Kankakee had some blacks as did Danville, IL. But that was about it for much of the rest of the state all the way to Cairo.
It's been quite sometime since I lived there, but I often wonder what the racial makeup of Illinois is today. The couple of times I've been through there in recent years, the cities didn't seem to have changed much. I never cared that some southerners have been called rednecks when we really are not in the class with much of Illinois counties south of Chicago.
I was appalled that Illinois outside of Chicago was all white--with a few Hispanics working on farms. Kankakee had some blacks as did Danville, IL. But that was about it for much of the rest of the state all the way to Cairo.
This point isn't really true, especially compared to PA. Almost all the smaller metro areas in IL outside of Chicagoland have higher % African Americans than their PA counterparts:
Wow yeah. See, Philadelphia County makes up only 13% of PA's population. This is partly due to pittsburgh, but also because Philadelphia is a consolidated city/county. Unlike the vast majority of big cities that reached their size through sometimes dozens of annexations over many years, Philadelphia has only changed in land area once, and only once since it was founded 350 years ago. This singular change in landmass occurred in 1854 when Philadelphia went from 2 square miles to its present 134 square miles.
A good chunk of the Philly metro is over the river in South Jersey and a bit in Delaware. It dilutes the political oomph of Philadelphia. If you annexed those pieces, Pennsylvania would be deep blue.
This is why I added Pittsburgh's Metro Area to Philadelphia's in an effort to bring the state's big city metro population to within about 1 million of Illinois's. The problem with this is that Pittsburgh's Metro Area of 2.3 million is nowhere near as liberal or democratic as Philadelphia's Metro Area of 6.2 million, in either the city or metro area. Pittsburgh's pretty darn liberal in the city, but most of it's suburbs might as well be in Kentucky, while Philadelphia's and Chicago's suburbs are probably politically quite similar.
The problem is that adding Pittsburgh's metro population to the 5 PA counties in the Philly metro doesn't even get you to 50% of the statewide population. You're right in that Pittsburgh's collar counties are more red-leaning, but even if they weren't, Philly + Pittsburgh is not as large as the 8 million+ that reside in the IL counties of the Chicago MSA. You can't even get to 2/3rds by adding some of the smaller metros such as Erie, Harrisburg and Scranton.
Even though Illinois has fewer 100,000+ MSAs than Pennsylvania, Chicago eats up much more space in its respective state than Philadelphia and other smaller metros. Philly would need at least another 2.5 million residents to have the same impact on state electoral politics as Chicago.
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