Alpine County, CA

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Also half the population is Mormon. The ski resort factor trumps all I suppose.

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Also half the population is Mormon. The ski resort factor trumps all I suppose.

Whether this is actually true is debatable. The religious survey has other errors and is based apparently on the county where one attends religious services rather than where one lives. I'd like to hear from someone local that there are a ton of Mormons in Alpine County before believing.

Ok, maybe if I go to Kirkwood sometime, I will ask one of the people working there if a lot of mormons live around there. They might look at me weird though.

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Typical ski resort.  Most ski resorts tend to be quite liberal compared to surrounding areas.  Places like Blaine County in Idaho and Teton County in Wyoming have swung quite heavily towards the Democrats.  Likewise Pitkin county in Colorado went over 2/3 for Obama and it is a fairly white county.  Summit county in Utah, which has a lot of ski resorts but has a high Mormon population by contrast didn't totally follow this as swung massively towards Obama in 2008, but then in 2012 swung right back, although it would be interesting to see a precinct breakdown and see how much of that came from towns not connected to ski resorts.

But why are the ski resorts so liberal? Latino room-maids and kitchen-aids? Lots of aged hippies that have moved in to sell self-photographed postcards? Or locals getting concerned about climate change possibly eroding their income base (and increasing the risk of landslides sweeping away their homes)?

Because America is not Europe. Economic issues aren't the only thing in play. In addition many of the people living there would be service workers doing ski and snowboard lessons and other such jobs. Obviously they don't get paid a lot.

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The typical ski coach is some guy which grew in a city and loved ski and so moved in a ski resort and got a job to fund his passion.

And even more importantly here, the city the ski or snowboard instructor (snowboarding is more popular than skiing these days) would have came from would be the Bay Area. Making them even more likely to be Democrat and hold very socially liberal views.