Liberal Southern Cities

[Choirboy622]

That's exactly why I didn't use the number of churches as one of the categories. It's just not fair. I can think of several Protestant Christians that call themselves liberals. Also, I remember that my Biology teacher, who doesn't believe in a personal god, is a self-proclaimed conservative. So giving the amount of religious people isn't a very precise count of conservatives.

Anyway, I thank all of you for the pointers. I'm seriously considering including cities in the 100,000 to 199,999 range on the list if I get some more free time soon.

I wish someone would rank the Northern cities, or at least the ones in the Midwest according to their liberal and gay indices!

[Topher1]

Great effort to quantify a city's liberalism. However, I do think there is at least one fatal flaw in the data used.

The "gay index" stat from epodunk appears to concentrate solely on a core city. However, the political stats are taken from the entire county that the city belongs in. It's accepted knowledge that suburbs tend to vote far more Republican than inner-cities. So for cities with larger counties, the political data is skewed due to the inclusion of more suburban areas.

I'll use Orlando as an example, since this is what first caught my attention. It was stated earlier in this thread that "Orlando" went 50/50 in the last election. When I verified this on epodunk, I noticed that there were 193,217 Kerry votes and 192,390 Bush votes (385,607 total). Thinking that was a lot of votes for a city of only 200,000 people, I realized that the site was using the stats for ALL of Orange County (1 million people). The point being, that since the actual CITY of Orlando is (like most major southern cities) largely poorer and minority residents (as well as rapidly growing yuppie and gay populations), that if only the city were included, the Kerry margin would have shown a significant increase. Since 800,000 suburban residents were also included, this clearly leveled out the vote.

Orlando is obviously not the only city on the list with this flaw (Miami, Tampa, etc). On the other end of the spectrum are cities with small (or non-existant) counties. Washington DC and Baltimore both are essentially city-counties, so these are the most accurate data sets concerning a CITY's political affiliation. Atlanta's core counties are also relatively small, so its data is also relatively untainted.

I'd love to see this done accurately at a city level, though I don't know how easy that political data would be to access. Using the information available on these sources, I think it's impossible to make a fair data set based on my reasons above.

[Claws]

Yeah, I realized that. But, like you said, I really didn't know where to find that data, so county statistics were the next best thing. If anyone can direct me to a site that has this crucial information, let me know.

[simms3]

Austin and New Orleans are definitely the most liberal, in the Atlanta area, almost everyone is conservative, this is the deep south where your def. republican unless u are a blue dog democrat, from the north, or other circumstances.

[Claws]

Well, of course almost every Southern city's surrounding counties are going to be conservative; I was ranking the cities themselves.

[Scraper Enthusiast]

Who cares about being liberal. I'm a conservative, myself, and there is NOTHING appealing with anything most liberals believe in.

Since when did liberal come to mean that you accept a man having sex with another man, or a woman having "sex" with another woman?

[Claws]

I don't think you should put down someone else's beliefs like that.

In creating this list, I wasn't saying I was a proponent of liberalism, conservatism, or any political ideology. I just find statistics interesting, and it's generally the liberal cities that enjoy the most success.

[Rural King]

Who cares about being liberal. I'm a conservative, myself, and there is NOTHING appealing with anything most liberals believe in.

Since when did liberal come to mean that you accept a man having sex with another man, or a woman having "sex" with another woman?

I don't think you should put down someone else's beliefs like that.

In creating this list, I wasn't saying I was a proponent of liberalism, conservatism, or any political ideology. I just find statistics interesting, and it's generally the liberal cities that enjoy the most success.

Lets watch what we say and stay on topic. I'm going to watch this thread now, so everybody run a tight ship.

[Greenville]

One problem with this method is that people assume that Democrat = liberal and Republican = conservative. Yes, that is true a lot of times but not necessarily. It is possible to be Democrat and conservative, or Republican and liberal (although the latter doesn't seem to happen very often).

I am also having trouble equating "liberalness" to the number of gay relationships. You could look at it that way, but you could also look at support for the arts, the number of alternative schools, environmental measures, etc. that a community has.

Please don't interpret my comments as being critical of the original post. I think you compiled a very interesting list and did the best with the information to which you had access. Good job.

[Rural King]

^ Very true. How a area votes presidentially or its number of gay couples are not purely indicative of liberal inclination. Are they potential factors sure, but the realm that defines political inclination is a much wider myriad of factors and issues.

[Charleston native]

I don't think you should put down someone else's beliefs like that.

In creating this list, I wasn't saying I was a proponent of liberalism, conservatism, or any political ideology. I just find statistics interesting, and it's generally the liberal cities that enjoy the most success.

Hmmm...I don't know about that. Jacksonville is pretty conservative along with Charlotte. I have to include my hometown, even though its a little more liberal. All of these cities are showing great success and are continuing to grow.

[Claws]

Well, I guess I just meant that those cities usually get better reputations... I don't know. But a city certainly doesn't have to be liberal to be successful. Jacksonville got the Superbowl!

And I know my list is kind of limited. I'm thinking about making a new one with such factors as funding for libraries, the arts, etc.

[ironchapman]

One problem with this method is that people assume that Democrat = liberal and Republican = conservative. Yes, that is true a lot of times but not necessarily. It is possible to be Democrat and conservative, or Republican and liberal (although the latter doesn't seem to happen very often).

I am also having trouble equating "liberalness" to the number of gay relationships. You could look at it that way, but you could also look at support for the arts, the number of alternative schools, environmental measures, etc. that a community has.

Ever heard of Zell Miller?

Of course, there are some Republicans like myself who enjoy some of these "liberal" things like the arts.

[Boisefan]

I don't think you should put down someone else's beliefs like that.

In creating this list, I wasn't saying I was a proponent of liberalism, conservatism, or any political ideology. I just find statistics interesting, and it's generally the liberal cities that enjoy the most success.

Boise is a conservative city, the vote went somewhere about 60% to 40% Bush, and it enjoys tons of sucess, it is the home to Albertsons(maybe not for long), Washington Group International, one of the big 5 groups that built the Hoover Dam, and is actively rebuilding Iraq as we speak, Micron, one of the worlds largest producer of Computer Chips, and rapidly expanding, the site where HP made its first laser printer, and Boise State, the largest University in Idaho, which also is rapidly expanding.

On the other side is Pocatello, which is a pretty liberal city which is loosing People from it, but may come back to success.

[EastSideResider]

Hmmm...I don't know about that. Jacksonville is pretty conservative along with Charlotte. I have to include my hometown, even though its a little more liberal. All of these cities are showing great success and are continuing to grow.

I know we've been discussing that if you voted for bush you aren't necessarily conservative and if you vote for Kerry you aren't necessarily liberal (even though that usually is the case), but if it matters, Charlotte voted for Kerry.....

[wfdude]

Who cares about being liberal. I'm a conservative, myself, and there is NOTHING appealing with anything most liberals believe in.

Since when did liberal come to mean that you accept a man having sex with another man, or a woman having "sex" with another woman?

Excuse me, but there is a bit more to being gay / lesbian than a mere sexual act. Generally, and I think most would agree, liberals tend to accept and promote diversity and protect minorities, including those who have different sexual orientations.

[TennBear]

Boise is a conservative city, the vote went somewhere about 60% to 40% Bush,

I'll bet during the '50's when Boise was around 50K that the "Boys from Boise" really knocked people for a loop there.

[Rural King]

This thread got a tad off track and on to religion. I cleaned up the thread a tad to get it back on course.

If anybody has any issues with me cleaning up the thread to get it back on track PM me and we can discuss it. Thanks.

[happydravya]

I agree that it would be very useful to have a list such as this based on "metros" instead of just core cities. I'd like to see how Tampa Bay fares against Orlando, for example.