wha tis the majority opinion here:
did vermont become more democratic because...
a.) the gop keeps moving to the right, which has turned off the more liberal 'yankee republicans'
b.) the influx of more liberal people from places like nyc. (i do recall some kind of article about 'taking over vermont'...i think it appeared in playboy in the 60s?)
c.) all of the above.
a) is actually a slight misinterpretation of what I meant, though it's a perfectly understandable misundersanding...
It's not so much that the GOP has moved to the right, more that the left-right paradigm has changed (is now more defined much more in social than in economic terms, for example) and this has cast the Liberal Republicans of old into the Democratic party. The opposite has happened to many Democrats in other parts of the country.
But while there is of course immigration into Vermont and Maine from New York and Southern New England, it is much less pronounced than in New Hampshire, and this fact is the main reason behind New Hampshire's more conservative recent record. I stand by that statement.
I think you're exactly right about the majority of escapees from MA, CT, RI, and NY being conservative relative to those who remain. This relates to my point about Nevada and Arizona - I don't think Democrats should get their hopes up too much there because most of the immigrants to those states from California and the East will tend to be Republicans. Escaping bad government and a bad community by changing states or just moving to the Suburbs is a very right-wing thing to do.
, opebo,
jein.
For one thing, that's only one factor of Suburb growth.
Companies too flee to the suburbs to pay less taxes and to further wreck the places they leave behind. Then workers move out to spend less time and pay less on transport. Hardly a right-wing thing.
For another thing, many people behave like right-wingers on issues that effect themselves but consider themselves, and vote as, liberals.
Thirdly, rich moderate Suburbans had a perfectly right-wing, egoistical reason to vote Democratic in the last election, which may help explain why so many of them did: GUN CONTROL. (Gore and Bush broke even among the suburban 60% of America, a remarkable achievement for a Democrat compared with their record in the 80s and 90s. Meanwhile Dems lost big time in the countryside, at least partly on the same issue.)
