Is PA now more like WV and OH than northeast states? (Philadelphia: suburbs, racist)

[eschaton]

Originally Posted by jtab4994

The D's used to be the party of the "working man", but this time around all of the Fortune 100 CEO's went for the Democratic traditionalist while the working class went for the Republican populist.

Actually not true...
http://www.gannett-cdn.com/usatoday/...raphics/income

Compared to 2012 voters with less than $50,000 per year in household income did shift more towards the Republicans, and voters with more than $50,000 per year shifted to the Democrats. But education level was more predictive of vote than income.

[BajanYankee]

Clinton won union households and members albeit by smaller margins than Obama in 2012.

Per AFL-CIO exit poll:

- Union *households* voted Clinton 51-43 (Trump +3 over Romney)

- Union *members* went 56-37 (+4 over Romney)

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/...on-households/

Union membership, as we know, has been on the decline for a while. And there's one major political party that's largely responsible for that (hint: not the Democratic Party).

[swilliamsny]

I still have to laugh at anyone who trusts polls. Even exit polls - and that's the only 'statistic' that measures how people voted. Despite what the polls tell you about how many Hispanics voted for Hillary or Trump, of the twenty-ish Hispanic people I know personally, only TWO of them voted for Hillary. I don't think you can conclude too much about any state due to this election cycle, let alone PA.

[toobusytoday]

Originally Posted by MMS02760

I am starting to think that PA is not really like the other Northeast states such as all of New England, NY, NJ, DE, and MD. While it shares some traits with these neighboring NE states, it in some respects is closer in character to adjoining West Virginia and OH.

Last chance to make this a sorta PA centric thread! There's ^ the OP. ;-)

[BajanYankee]

It's interesting that turnout was down in Ohio this year but up considerably in Pennsylvania.

Ohio

2012: 5,379,090
2016: 5,325,395

Pennsylvania

2012: 5,596,499
2016: 5,970,107

[BajanYankee]

Hillary Clinton won less total votes from Philadelphia and its suburbs than Obama did. She won 1,232,268 from the 5 counties in total, which gave her a lead of 580,033 votes over Donald Trump in the Philadelphia MSA. In 2012, Obama won 1,286,823 votes from Philadelphia and its collar counties, giving him a 640,654 vote lead over Romney.

[BajanYankee]

Also interesting to look at total turnout in a few select counties over the past three election cycles.

Westmoreland

2016: 181,740
2012: 168,709
2008: 165,790

Philadelphia

2016: 680,227
2012: 653,598
2008: 688,190

Luzerne

2016: 132,731
2012: 123,741
2008: 132,415

Allegheny

2016: 643,173
2012: 614,671
2008: 638,272

Centre

2016: 75,394
2012: 68,801
2008: 73,684

Montgomery

2016: 427,489
2012: 401,787
2008: 412,523

[BajanYankee]

Turnout rate by county.

Montgomery - 77.6%
Westmoreland - 74.5%
Allegheny - 73.4%
Centre - 68.7%
Luzerne - 68.2%
Philadelphia - 66.2%

[MarketStEl]

To bring this back to the OP's observation:

Pennsylvania has long had a split personality; I wouldn't say it's different now compared to the way it was in 1983, when I took up residence in Philadelphia.

James Carville's famous remark - his actual statement was "From Paoli to Squirrel Hill it's all Alabama in between" - is an exaggeration of that split character.

(For those following this who may not be intimately familiar with the geography of metropolitan Pennsylvania, Paoli marks the traditional western end of Philadelphia's "Main Line" suburbs, and Squirrel Hill is the first community you pass through (or, in the case of the Penn-Lincoln Parkway East, under) after leaving the city of Pittsburgh itself headed east.)

But I knew that I was no longer on the East Coast when, after helping a friend move from Philadelphia to the Pittsburgh suburb of Green Tree, I was walking from his new apartment to a nearby Starbucks, and as I passed the local park and school, the guy mowing the lawn called out to me with a "Hello."

That's something a Midwesterner might do. I should know, for I'm a Central Plains native. It's not the standard for encounters between random strangers on the urban East Coast.

And by the way, Delaware and Maryland may be part of the Northeast Corridor, but culturally, neither state is fully Northeastern either. Maryland's border with both Delaware and Pennsylvania is the Mason-Dixon Line, the survey line marking the boundary between William Penn's and Lord Calvert's territory that became shorthand for the boundary between "North" and "South," and both Delaware and Maryland were slave states prior to the Civil War. Only Delaware's northern tip, the part through which both I-95 and the railroad pass, is fully "Northeastern," though Washingtonians and Philadelphians colonize Rehoboth Beach every summer, and the further away you roam from the highway and railroad in Maryland, the less Northeastern and urban the state becomes; cross the Chesapeake and you enter another world entirely, as you also do as you go through the state's western panhandle. (Recall that when he became governor of Maryland, Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer made no friends on that side of the Bay when he greeted a delegate from it in Annapolis with, "How's that ****house of an Eastern Shore?")

Southeastern Pennsylvania is definitely part of the Northeast. Most of the counties that have the Delaware River as one border are as well, thanks in part to an influx of New Yorkers seeking homes they could afford. I'd also throw the Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania into the Northeast too; they have some similarities with upstate New York, and the railroad that called Scranton home was a major commuter route into New York City via its busy terminal in Hoboken (and still is). I'd also suggest that the culture of Northeast Pennsylvania coal country isn't quite the same as that of Pennsylvania's other coal mining regions (and the mining of anthracite - the hard coal that kept the gown of the Lackawanna's mascot, Phoebe Snow, white - died before bituminous coal mining did).

Central Pennsylvania - Reading, Lancaster, York and the Susquehanna valley - is a borderland of sorts. Its southern fringes have become an exurb of Baltimore, but it's not really Appalachia either.

The "Alabama in between" part of Pennsylvania is entirely in Appalachia (though we use the word "Alleghenies" to refer to the segment of that mountain chain that lies within the state). That's the area that has a lot in common with West Virginia and parts of Ohio. You might note that Appalachia proper has almost no large cities; the terrain is hostile to them. The exception to this rule is Pittsburgh, and politically and culturally, it's likewise an exception to the Appalachian rule.

Anyone care to refine or dispute this assessment?

[CookieSkoon]

Originally Posted by MarketStEl

To bring this back to the OP's observation:

Pennsylvania has long had a split personality; I wouldn't say it's different now compared to the way it was in 1983, when I took up residence in Philadelphia.

James Carville's famous remark - his actual statement was "From Paoli to Squirrel Hill it's all Alabama in between" - is an exaggeration of that split character.

(For those following this who may not be intimately familiar with the geography of metropolitan Pennsylvania, Paoli marks the traditional western end of Philadelphia's "Main Line" suburbs, and Squirrel Hill is the first community you pass through (or, in the case of the Penn-Lincoln Parkway East, under) after leaving the city of Pittsburgh itself headed east.)

But I knew that I was no longer on the East Coast when, after helping a friend move from Philadelphia to the Pittsburgh suburb of Green Tree, I was walking from his new apartment to a nearby Starbucks, and as I passed the local park and school, the guy mowing the lawn called out to me with a "Hello."

That's something a Midwesterner might do. I should know, for I'm a Central Plains native. It's not the standard for encounters between random strangers on the urban East Coast.

And by the way, Delaware and Maryland may be part of the Northeast Corridor, but culturally, neither state is fully Northeastern either. Maryland's border with both Delaware and Pennsylvania is the Mason-Dixon Line, the survey line marking the boundary between William Penn's and Lord Calvert's territory that became shorthand for the boundary between "North" and "South," and both Delaware and Maryland were slave states prior to the Civil War. Only Delaware's northern tip, the part through which both I-95 and the railroad pass, is fully "Northeastern," though Washingtonians and Philadelphians colonize Rehoboth Beach every summer, and the further away you roam from the highway and railroad in Maryland, the less Northeastern and urban the state becomes; cross the Chesapeake and you enter another world entirely, as you also do as you go through the state's western panhandle. (Recall that when he became governor of Maryland, Baltimore Mayor William Donald Schaefer made no friends on that side of the Bay when he greeted a delegate from it in Annapolis with, "How's that ****house of an Eastern Shore?")

Southeastern Pennsylvania is definitely part of the Northeast. Most of the counties that have the Delaware River as one border are as well, thanks in part to an influx of New Yorkers seeking homes they could afford. I'd also throw the Lehigh Valley and Northeast Pennsylvania into the Northeast too; they have some similarities with upstate New York, and the railroad that called Scranton home was a major commuter route into New York City via its busy terminal in Hoboken (and still is). I'd also suggest that the culture of Northeast Pennsylvania coal country isn't quite the same as that of Pennsylvania's other coal mining regions (and the mining of anthracite - the hard coal that kept the gown of the Lackawanna's mascot, Phoebe Snow, white - died before bituminous coal mining did).

Central Pennsylvania - Reading, Lancaster, York and the Susquehanna valley - is a borderland of sorts. Its southern fringes have become an exurb of Baltimore, but it's not really Appalachia either.

The "Alabama in between" part of Pennsylvania is entirely in Appalachia (though we use the word "Alleghenies" to refer to the segment of that mountain chain that lies within the state). That's the area that has a lot in common with West Virginia and parts of Ohio. You might note that Appalachia proper has almost no large cities; the terrain is hostile to them. The exception to this rule is Pittsburgh, and politically and culturally, it's likewise an exception to the Appalachian rule.

Anyone care to refine or dispute this assessment?

I'd still disagree that Delaware isn't entirely northeastern, honestly. Western Maryland isn't that different from the NY/PA twin tiers and I don't think Appalachia is as monolithic as people make it out to be.

It's not the topic of this thread but I stand pretty hard in favor of calling MD and DE northern states, at the very least in modern times. Having spent an enormous portion of my life in both upstate NY/northern PA and southern rural Louisiana right across from Mississippi, I can say with certainty that Maryland and Delaware are a lot more akin to NY and PA over Louisiana/Mississippi.

Then again, I don't know how you're defining northeastern. Coastal megalopolis only or the whole bag mountains and all? It's a lot more country up here than people want to accept. People are especially misinformed about NY state in terms of culture and politics, having a tendency to lump it all into NYC's characteristics and even sometimes confusing it to be part of New England.