do you think that politics is more lifestyle related than it was

45-50 years ago? I read a book called "The Big Sort" and it was one of the most interesting political books I have ever read (coming from someone who has also read "What's the Matter with Kansas"). Voting for a political party is more of an affirmation of what lifestyle you read. People like to live around with people who share the same values as they do. He explains that people don't move to a place based on its politics. But what they don't realize is that oftentimes, there views are intertwined with your politics.

Case in point, he made a point on how Portland (Oregon) has an economy based off of beer, bikes, books, and birkenstocks. Now lets say that a young man from the Oklahoma Panhandle decides to move to Portland because he likes how it is bike friendly and the excellent library system it has. He doesn't move to Portland because it is a heavily democratic area, he moves there because he likes the culture it has to offer. But even though birkenstocks, bikes, and books shouldn't have anything to do with politics, it does. He subconsciously moves there to get away from the conservative, rural culture of his area to the liberal, urban culture of Portland. Chances are he is a lonely liberal trying to move away.

The author mentions how in the 50-50 election of 1976, only 26% of americans lived in a heavily republican or heavily democratic county (defined as a county Ford or Carter won by 20 or more points). In 2004, in a 50-50 election, 48% did.

but, Portland and the surrounding area is much more than beer, bikes, books and birkenstocks. I happen to live in this area. But, I've also lived in Nevada, Idaho, Montana, Texas and California. Conservatives can live anywhere, just as progressives can live anywhere. Stick with your beliefs and you can find your own niche where ever you go. I've found progressives in every state I've lived in. If I can find progressives in Idaho and Texas, a poor old lonely boy can find conservatives in California and Oregon.

In my estimation, the chances are more likely that the person in question is just looking for something different.

with the huge wage disparities. And in 1976 there were no monster home gated communities which concentrate higher income brackets.

Oh bullshit. They were there in 1976. Where do you get this stuff from?

Monster homes were not around in the 70's and gated communities were mainly retirement villages in the 70s.


snip

The ascendancy of the megahouse reflects a nationwide trend, one that began in California in the late 1980's and spread in the last decade. United States census information shows that the average size of a new single-family house sold in 1999 was almost 10 percent larger than it was a decade earlier, while the average yard size was 13 percent smaller. As a result, from Pasadena, Calif., to Newton, Mass., zoning laws have been amended with the aim of controlling housing bloat through complex restrictions, including floor-area ratios, demolition limits and upper-story setbacks.


http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?hl=en&q=cache:Gfn0l1Nau6MJ:http://www.pace.edu/emplibrary/McMansions.doc+who+started+oversize+monster+homes&ct=clnk


snip

These so-called Gated Communities originally started as the gating off of retirement homes in the Southern USA in the early 1970s. Less than thirty years later, the practice had spread across the country as well as demographics and Blakely and Snyder estimated that more than 3 million US households were part of a GC (Blakely & Snyder, 1997: 7). However, by the start of the new millennium, this number was believed to have more than doubled to 7 million (Sanchez et al., 2005).

http://www.ucl.ac.uk/network-for-student-activism/w/Gated_Communities_-_deconstructing_the_architecture_of_fear

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I was a realtor during much of the 1980s.

BTW, the decline in middle class incomes, in inflation adjusted dollars, explains a lot.

I'm often amazed that many solid middle class types carry water and everything else for the interests of the very rich. They listen to Limbaugh, Levin, Beck and believe every trivial talking point they hear. Many are brainwashed but they are also schizophrenic and scared. They are afraid of losing what they have, I guess. The right have been getting far meaner.

I think a couple post on D.U.. They like to use swear words a lot, I've noticed. ;)

And, to pick another example, couldn't the frontier character of Alaska appeal to hippies and libertarians alike? I'd have to give this some more thought, but initially I think no.

In 1987 I moved to Madison, Wisconsin without having a job. In 1990, I moved to Richland Center, Wisconsin without having a job. In 1998 I moved to Mason City, Iowa without having a job. Where I lived now was a 30 minute commute from my previous job, but I live where I live because of cheap real estate more than because of my job, but I didn't even look for real estate in Kansas City, preferring to live in a smaller town.

for example, every ethnic group that isn't white gives a majority of their votes or more to Democrats, while the majority of white voters vote for Republicans.

why? it's pretty clear to a lot of people that Republicans have been running against people that don't look like them for a couple decades and you can't blame people for voting against people that threaten them --and their very existence.

and no, one's ethnic group or orientation is not a lifestyle "choice".

We were on the East coast then and wanted to move to a liberal place on the west coast, and my semi-home state of California was getting too crowded and expensive. In addition to that and the factors listed, proximity to ocean, mountains and forests also played a role, as did affordability.

Surely by 'beer, bikes, books and birkenstocks' you also mean Intel. Nike. I know "portlandia" makes for occasionally funny tv, but there really is more going on here than microbrews and shell art.

I agree that people tend to cluster in areas of political affinity; but the same forward-thinking, creative openmindedness that gives us Northern California also gave us Silicon Valley. If you live where people 'do what they've always done' and look to the local megachurch for answers on everything from gay marriage to science, you're going to get some intellectual stagnation as well.

from the city. Not exactly what can be call creative open mindedness.

But, whatever. It's more openminded than Oklahoma.

When those old acid heads and I were still in high school, the dads in our neighborhood worked at NASA, Moffet Field or in some related support industry. There was a layoff there maybe in early 65 and our whole subdivision didn't sleep for weeks.

And it's not clear it was more open minded than Oklahoma. It was segregated. The realtors were instructed not to sell to "colored" families. I don't think I even saw a black person in Sunnyvale until the early 70s. My mother was practically attacked on our block because someone started a rumor she was going to sell a house to a black couple.

still, if you're talking about innovation and paradigm-shifting, world-changing ideas (and I would include NASA and Ames in that, too), are more of them coming out of Sunnyvale? Or Muskogee?

... I mean, Come on.

of the defense industry and white flight out of the city.

One thing that contributed to what it became was the military bringing in talented and trained (still mostly white) people from all over the country, heck, all over the world and throwing them together. My father in law worked on the paint for the Apollo program. He was a pilot and an engineer originally from Brazil.

That's the difference between the Santa Clara county and Orange country or OKC. A number of those servicemen brought their Japanese and Korean wives along with them. Then, there was the Chicano movement which was big here in the early 70s, the Southeast Asian refugees a little later and a few straggling black folks made their way down from the up around the ports where their parents had come to work during WW2 in that big migration.

But the underlying military culture probably went very easily into the conservative, corporate culture that has flourished here cheek by jowl with technology.

but there is a strong progressive, liberal, professional, creative element down there as well.

of the valley are conservative, the state college tends to break out of that more. De Anza Jr College used to be more left than it is now -- the re-entry program for women when it started was run by a pipe smoking black lesbian, lol, who probably shocked the hell out of corporate donors. It was a great school and even if you were low income, you could go there, do two good years and have a good shot at transferring to Berkeley like I did. Don't know about now.

Another thing that helped shaped this area was the school district. It was well funded and staffed. We had art teachers and language teachers and full time nurses and counselors, real PE. In the sixties, the valley boomed and people were proud to pay for the schools. "Cupertino schools" was an item to include in your real estate listing near the top. By the mid-70s, that was falling apart and of course, Raygun killed it.

one, because the Democrat was a southerner, meaning Carter did well in the south. Two because of the impeachment and pardon, many voted against Ford. It would probably be better to look at 1968, which was close to 50-50 as well.

Look at 1976 by state even. Carter won Texas and Missouri, but lost California and Washington.

Okay, I gotta back up on that. Wallace took 13% and a bunch of southern states in 1968. So perhaps 1960 would work better. It looks quite a bit like today, in terms of states, except that Kennedy won Texas and lost California, but the locals might have something to do with that. Nixon carrying California and Johnson carrying Texas. Kennedy got slaughtered in SD and Oklahoma, unlike Carter who was very close in those normally solid red states. Kinda surprising though that Kennedy got beaten badly in Maine, New Hampshire and Vermont. Was there some resentment of Massachusetts in those days?

It's also possible that Bush became a more polarizing figure. Especially with the rise of the internet and selective media. People can easily find articles and writers who will trash the other team.