is there such thing as WASP flight?

[All Along The Watchtower]

Ethnic whites just aren't much of a concept in CA, and haven't been for most of my life, except for the Jews to some extent. Asians move in and middle to upper income WASPS (yes that was the WASP belt in LA County) moved out or died in the San Gabriel Valley. Hispanics moved in, and lower income whites moved out. SoCal trends to the Dems are about two thirds anyway due to these kind of changes, and at most one third due to middle and higher income whites becoming more Dem (except for Jews, who are trending a bit to the GOP).  The trend to the Dems among whites in Nocal (outside the Central Valley and the empty zones) is more pronounced. The greens and the new agers and the counter-culturists moved in, and up there the more prosaic whites either moved out of the state (if lower income), or died over time.

CA is an unusual state.

How did Pasadena vote back in the day? Or even Burbank and Glendale for that matter. Although in most of the San Gabriel Valley demographic changes are causing the change in voting patterns (West Covina or Walnut come to mind), isn't the Democratic trend in Pasadena due to Whites voting more Democrat. I guess I understand Burbank and Glendale due to their proximity to LA, but what about Pasadena? I guess it is a pretty happening place though......anyways I don't really buy the WASP's moving out and ethnic whites moving in argument. More just a change in values among the upper income whites.

They all voted Pub, although Pasadena was a mixed bag, given the wide range of income levels in the town. Glendale is Armenian now, and Burbank and Pasadena mixed with everything (including more Jews who no longer stick to their westside neighborhoods and parts of the San Fernando Valley as much), but Pasadena is no longer considered a home of the WASP elite of the type who manage the Rose Parade and whose daughters go to debutante balls and participate in the Junior League (the bulk of the folks in those imposing immaculately landscaped - homes in the chic neighborhoods of LA I suspect have the most lavish and sophisticated landscaping in the world - Spanish and Craftsman homes next to S. Pasadena and San Marino of course work in the entertainment industry now), and the folks in Burbank no longer work in the aviation industry, but rather in the entertainment industry.

Anyway, for these towns, certainly a part of it is the changing attitudes of higher income whites in hostile reaction to the "Santorum" wing of the GOP (well Burbank was never that high income, except for a couple of census tracts next to Griffith Park with an equestrian theme), but part of it too is the type of white has changed, and is more professional, and/or entertainment industry related, and less at the top of the heap in insurance, oil (there used to be an oil industry in LA, and still was at the corporate level in LA when I was a young man), investment banking, aviation/aerospace and defense. The rest of the WASP belt in the San Gabriel Valley except against the mountains when you get as far east as Glendora, has gone heavily Asian - S. Pasadena, Arcadia, San Gabriel,  and so forth, as you know.

Interesting. Up here in the Bay Area, the WASPy areas of San Francisco like Pacific Heights and of the SF Peninsula like Hillsborough, Emerald Lake Hills, Atherton, etc. have also moved away from the Republican Party-but some of these areas have also become more Asian in demographic (though still majority white).

I'm guessing that the younger generations of the WASP gentry are much more culturally progressive than their parents and grandparents and have been turned off by the anti-intellectual, anti-"elitist" rhetoric of the modern GOP. Additionally, Democrats like Obama would appeal to affluent urban sophisticates anyway.