Political Lean of the Area (Vancouver, Olympia: neighborhood, subdivisions, live)

[Telesurfer]

With all the weirdness that keeps flooding the news about these Proud Boys and their riots, even though they're usually contained to a small area, what's the area's political lean like and issues of racism?

I heard that the PNW in general is either left or right, without much moderates in the middle, is this true?

Portland itself seems to be predominantly very Blue. What about areas of Camas and Washougal? Do things turn Red as soon as you go more East?

[DevanXL]

Vancouver is left leaning but still fairly moderate. Camas is the opposite, with more of a conservative lean. Washougal is conservative but that might change as it grows. The rest of the county is pretty conservative.

[texasdiver]

The 2020 election probably gives you as good of a proxy of political lean as anything. Clark County as a whole voted for Biden over Trump by 5% (51% to 46%). But local candidates tilted more Republican than the national ticket. In other words, Clark County is more likely to vote Republican for local and state candidates than for polarizing national candidates like Trump. The Republican party is also more organized and active in Clark County. Democrats seem to be growing faster with all the recent migration to the area, but haven't caught up in terms of local party organization. So, for example, local candidate Jaime Herrera Beutler significantly out-performed Trump. Which might also have been due to anemic opposition. And her district also stretches up past Longview into Cowlitz County so covers a larger redder area than just Vancouver or Clark County.

This is what the political map looked like in 2020. It more or less mirrors the rest of the Portland metro area. The further you get from the center, the redder it gets. So Vancouver is more or less like other Portland suburbs that are similarly situated on the periphery like Tigard or Clackamas. Most of the developed areas of Vancouver and Camas are blue. Growing areas with lots of new subdivisions like Ridgefield and Battle Ground are also turning more blue as more people move in. You can see that by contrasting to 2016 when there was no blue in Ridgefield. But just like the rest of the country, as you move out to the more rural areas it gets redder and redder. If you follow the links below at the end of this post you can drill down to specific precincts and see the vote percentages for any neighborhood in the region.



Sources

2020 election map: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...ction-map.html
2016 election map: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...inct-maps.html

[Telesurfer]

Great info, it's a pretty evenly distributed blast radius around the center of Portland for Blue. Unfortunately the 2016 map is behind a Paywall, would have been interesting to juxtapose the two and see the delta.

You're right though, areas that have population growth eventually turn more Blue. Washougal still seems quite red, I wonder how that will change in the coming years.

Just mostly want to avoid any racism or any other possible weirdness in the Red areas

[texasdiver]

Originally Posted by Telesurfer

Great info, it's a pretty evenly distributed blast radius around the center of Portland for Blue. Unfortunately the 2016 map is behind a Paywall, would have been interesting to juxtapose the two and see the delta.

You're right though, areas that have population growth eventually turn more Blue. Washougal still seems quite red, I wonder how that will change in the coming years.

Just mostly want to avoid any racism or any other possible weirdness in the Red areas

Right-click and open in an incognito window if you are using chrome. Or open in a different browser app that you haven't used before for the NYT so it won't have the NYT cookies stored, like MS Edge. NYT just tracks cookies on your computer to manage their paywall so it is easily bypassed. You can also go into your Chrome settings and delete the NYT cookies which will give you a reset on their counter.

[texasdiver]

This is the 2016 election map for Vancouver and surrounds. The election results were almost perfectly split in Clark County, so the county shifted 5% more blue between 2016 and 2020. Whether that represents a permanent shift, or is reflective of unique circumstances like the pandemic, and different candidates (Clinton vs Biden) is difficult to say. Probably a little of both. But you can definitely see more blue around Ridgefield and Battle Ground in 2020, especially those areas that have seen high growth of suburbs and subdivisions, and logically more people moving in from elsewhere (mostly Oregon and California and closer-in parts of Vancouver). The dark red spots are also turning less dark red so it isn't just a red/blue flip in certain areas. The whole region looks to be slowly shifting.

The 2016 presidential election was about as close to a tie as you can get. They were separated by just 316 votes out of over 200,000 cast.

Clinton 92,757 votes or 46.34%
Trump 92,441 votes or 46.18%

In that election, Gary Johnson (Libertarian Party) also got 10,076 votes or 5.03% while in 2020 there was very little vote for 3rd party candidates. If those would have been largely Republican votes, then the shift blue was even more dramatic than 5%.

[trailtramp]

Love to see the shift in Clark County metro area to blue. Family is in Vancouver area and wanting to move back, but the other half who is deeper blue than me thinks we would be more comfortable in Olympia. I agree and love Oly, but Vancouver is just so ripe and the proximity to Portland and PDX so appealing, has become hard to make any final decision. Glad we have a 2 year window!