Bham a lot more liberal than Huntsville - surprised? (Birmingham: low crime, vs)

[HSVbulldawg]

In 2005 Bay Area Center for Voting Research rated how liberal or conservative cities were by studying voting patterns (did not read any more about methodology).

Birmingham was 19 out of 237 cities with #1 being the most liberal city. Huntsville was ranked 138. Montgomery was 154. Mobile was 167.

Complete List:
America's most liberal cities in 2005 (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/widgets/infographics/mostliberal.asp - broken link)

An Article with top and bottom 25 cities:
Study Ranks Americas Most Liberal and Conservative Cities

Is Huntsville's ranking surprising to you or is it about what you would expect?

[mm42]

This has more to do with how the city limits are drawn than anything with the cities themselves, I suspect. Atlanta shows up as liberal for the same reason, because the city limits do not include the Atlanta suburbs like Alpharetta and Cobb County, some of the most conservative places on earth.

[deesonic]

Surprised? Yes, that Huntsville wasn't lower. But I would argue that voting patterns are not indicative of how a city falls on a political spectrum. Well, maybe Democrat vs Republican, but not necessarily liberal vs conservative since this state has Democrats that are more socially "conservative" than your typical west coast Governator-style Republicans. So the study may be interesting, but misleading at best I'd say.

[southernnaturelover]

I think that list is the cities which voted mostly democrat, that doesn't necessarily mean liberal. Also, Birmingham has ALOT more black people than Huntsville, and black people vote democrat in higher numbers. That's pretty obvious when you see Detroit and Gary at the top of the list. Put an issue like gay marriage up for vote in those cities and see how fast it passes.

[marmac]

Yes, race does have a lot to do with it as the vast majority of blacks vote Democrat.

Maybe that explains why Oakland California was ranked more liberal than even San Francisco across the bay.

[Huntsville_secede]

Originally Posted by HSVbulldawg

In 2005 Bay Area Center for Voting Research rated how liberal or conservative cities were by studying voting patterns (did not read any more about methodology).

Birmingham was 19 out of 237 cities with #1 being the most liberal city. Huntsville was ranked 138. Montgomery was 154. Mobile was 167.

Complete List:
America's most liberal cities in 2005 (http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/widgets/infographics/mostliberal.asp - broken link)

An Article with top and bottom 25 cities:
Study Ranks Americas Most Liberal and Conservative Cities

Is Huntsville's ranking surprising to you or is it about what you would expect?

This study is misleading because it isn't done by metro area. Livonia, MI for instance is a suburb of Detroit (which is listed as #1 while livonia is in the 160's). Most inner cities are going to be highly liberal because of the high percentage of black population that resides in most inner cities.

[HB2HSV]

Agree with most posters' assessments above. For example, I've just moved from Huntington Beach, CA that was voted as #25 most conservative city. Near by cities, e.g., Garden Grove, Orange, Simi Valley etc., were also among the most conservative cities.

The common traits among these cities that I know of are: Mostly republicans and relatively low population of blacks. You can't say that they're white dominat, as Garden Grove is predominately asian (who tend to vote heavily republican) and hispanics. A part of Orange is also predominately hispanics. Simi Valley & HB are predominately white.

Another interesting correlation is also that both HB & Simi Valley have VERY LOW CRIME RATE. In fact, Simi Valley was voted as #1 safest city in America (for population over 100K) several years in a row. This was due to a VERY STRONG POLICE PRESENCE. If this makes it one of most conservative city, I wouldn't mind at all.