Suburban counties that are bluer than their core anchors?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Durham is bluer than Wake, though tbf it’s debatable if Durham is really a suburb of Raleigh or its own thing.

Simillar thing with Wayne and Washentaw counties in MI

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think generally speaking, there are really only 3 reasons suburbs would be more D than the immediate downtown:

1. Some sort of college creating a liberal sphere of influence
2. Suburbs being more diverse, specifically heavily Black or Hispanic
3. Favorable County borders that happen to not pick up on redder leaning exurbs and rurals while the County containing the main part of the city does.

[ProgressiveModerate]

I think generally speaking, there are really only 3 reasons suburbs would be more D than the immediate downtown:

1. Some sort of college creating a liberal sphere of influence
2. Suburbs being more diverse, specifically heavily Black or Hispanic
3. Favorable County borders that happen to not pick up on redder leaning exurbs and rurals while the County containing the main part of the city does.

Democrats have this weird coalition in urban areas now where their strongest support comes from the wealthiest and poorest neighborhoods, while most working or middle class white and asian neighborhoods are more R.

Generally though, the shift seems to be Democrats core bases in cities moving away from black and hispanic communities and towards educated, upper-middle class (or outright wealthy), mostly white liberals.

I think generally, the idea of "white liberals" is overrated, and a better term would be the "professional class", since there are a large number of non-white people who I think fit into this cultural idea of what one thinks of when they think of "white liberal".



Be patient and wait until the rich elites are all Dem (Park Slope), and the sans culotte Pub (Staten Island). 

In that regard, Hoboken is by far the richest city in Hudson County, and it would not surprise me if in a few years it is the most Dem. At it is, rather down market Secaucus and Bayonne are the most Pub.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Here is Hudson County, NJ. Hoboken in 2020 was a close runner up second most Dem City in the county after JC. The swings from Trump 2016 to Trump 2016, were big in Hispanic precincts, and solid in the Asian (Indian mostly, both upper middle class and working class - Chinese are thin on the ground - they are not Wall Street finance types like the Indians), while the whites, of all classes from lower middle class on up, except in the very richest precincts (NE Hoboken), that I think did have an Asian influx, and in this case Chinese, not Indian), swung Dem, including my precinct.

https://davesredistricting.org/join/2205dc50-70bb-4912-bcef-915fc5ca67e5

It is interesting to me that the most gentrified parts of both JC and Hoboken swung right in 2020 - albiet narrowly. Feel like there's this notion that gentrification generally means an influx of more left-leaning or progressive professional class folks, and while that seems to be true in places like Madison or Austin, ig not in JC and Hoboken.

[ProgressiveModerate]

Anyway here's a legitimate answer: Until the 2020 Election Osceola County FL voted Democratic at a higher percentage than Orange. And this is of course cause Orange has many more moving parts and demographic cleavages than Osceola, and getting them all to move in one direction is harder than in Osceola where a majority of voters are Hispanic and most of those Puerto Rican. And it was more Democratic cause of those internal migrants buying up comparatively cheap homes during the housing crisis. Of course in 2020 this reversed for the same reasons above: both experienced the same trends in voter behavior, but Orange has other non-Hispanic groups that behaved differently.

I wonder if the St Cloud area (the whitest are most R part of Osceola County) could become heavily minority, and make Osceola vote to the left of Orange again.

Long term though, I see more upside for Dems in Orange than Osceola just due to shifting coalitions.