I didn't realize that Houston's downtown voted GOP. Why is that? Also what is the area west of Rice/Downtown like? It seems quite Republican, and I know it's Houston, but what makes this urban area Republican?
Actually a broad explanation of the trends would be great!
Tomball and Cypress are fundie exurbs with lots of minivan-driving True Believers.
Not all of us out in the Tomball area are fundies, and although minivans outnumber hybrids, there are many more pickups than either.
There is an extremely high proportion of Anglos compared to much of Harris County, and although it doesn't appear to be that upper middle-class compared to many neighborhoods a short distance down the SH-249 or SH-290, you have a large number of middle-class younger married couples with kids wanting to be in one or another of the higher performing school districts, willing to pay a bit more for their housing.
The "White Flight havens" on Houston's periphery have always creeped me out. I tend to think if you want to have 90%+ of your neighbors be non-Hispanic whites, you need to find somewhere other than Houston to live (Utah or Minnesota, perhaps). I'm occasionally in Cypress visiting family friends who are a Santorum-Palin GOP's wet dream: wife never attended college, they go to an evangelical church twice a week, husband collects bumper stickers that are the Right's equivalent of snark ("Somewhere in Kenya, a village is missing its idiot"). And the cookie cutter houses around the cul de sac are full of cookie cutter neighbors; an F-150 and an Expedition in every driveway (preferably with a Browning deer or Semper Fi sticker) and Fox News on every plasma TV.
Sounds like the white suburbs of most cities. Maybe not San Francisco's, but not limited to the South/sunbelt either. Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Indianapolis. Even New York has those crazy Peter King Long Islanders. And the converse is true too. If you want to be a token white liberal in Memphis, you'll feel right at home amongst like minded people in Midtown. I've made my peace with local residential segregation. I don't want to live near "those people" any more than they want to live near me
