There's a huge difference between D/R+15 vs D/R+90

[ProgressiveModerate]

This thread might seem a bit silly, but I think it's something a lot of people forget in analysis. It feels like once a community regularly starts voting for one side by more than about 15-20 points it becomes a "stronghold" for said party. And I think that's fair in the sense that that community should reliably net said party votes in basically any election.

However, I feel like we often need to distinguish between communities that just reliably vote for one side vs strongholds that net tons of votes. Given turnout dynamics and all else are equal, a D+90 community will net Democrats SIX times as many votes as a D+15 community which is a very significant difference.

These differences matter. Rust belt rurals only being R+30 compared to white southern rurals often being R+70 or more is a huge reason the rest belt states are competative for Ds while southern states are not.

Also with cities; almost every major city/metro area leans D at this point, but there's huge differences between metros like Madison and Boston which have very lopsided margins for Ds cancelling out tons of redder rurals throughout the state, vs metros like Jacksonville and Tulsa which don't even outvote their own Republican suburbs.

Also, just because one area votes solidly for one party doesn't mean it's maxed out for that party, which I think is another misconception I also see "well WI rurals are already red so they can't get any redder/NOVA is already safe blue so it can't get bluer". Nowhere is truly maxed out until you start getting to +90 levels in this era of partisanship

[ProgressiveModerate]

New York certainly would be more competitive if NYC was only D+15.

Exactly. NYC being the nation's biggest city isn't what inherently makes NY so blue; one could argue FL and TX are just as urban, but metros in those states are generally much more conservative.

[ProgressiveModerate]

New York certainly would be more competitive if NYC was only D+15.

Exactly. NYC being the nation's biggest city isn't what inherently makes NY so blue; one could argue FL and TX are just as urban, but metros in those states are generally much more conservative.

There must be some self-selection factors involved. One can say the self-selection factors in New York's case are among the most heavily pro-Dem of any big metro in the US.

Def. I think largely white liberal areas in places like NYC, Seattle, Portland, Bay Area, ect tend to be the most extreme political sorts in the Country; the culture of those areas is literally just "progressive".

Many heavily black communities are politically the most lopsided in the Country, but I think that's more racial sorting moreso than political sorting.