Hudson County NJ PVI Shifts 2004-2012

[Benj]

That D+10 on Secaucus is surprising.  I'm used to thinking of that town as significantly more suburban and R-friendly than anywhere else in the county, and having basically an entirely different culture due to the concentration of automobile-oriented commercial and industrial stuff along 3 and by all the outlets.  (Well, I suppose Kearny is suburban, too.)

I wonder if that giant townhouse development by Secaucus Junction actually moved the needle a couple points all by itself.

Secaucus has become significantly more Hispanic in recent years as well.

[Benj]

(2-Party PVI)
Bayonne: 2004 D+8, 2008 D+5, 2012 D+15
East Newark 2004 D+24, 2008 D+24, 2012 D+31!
Guttenberg: 2004 D+19, 2008 D+19, 2012 D+27
Harrison 2004 D+17, 2008 D+16, 2012 D+28!
Hoboken 2004 D+17, 2008 D+18, 2012 D+15
Jersey City 2004 D+28, 2008 D+29, 2012 D+35
Kearny 2004 D+9, 2008 D+8, 2012 D+18
North Bergen 2004 D+17, 2008 D+17, 2012 D+27
Secaucus 2004 D+2, 2008 EVEN, 2012 D+10
Union City: 2004 D+18, 2008 D+22, 2012 D+30
West New York: 2004 D+14, 2008 D+17, 2012 D+26

This is interesting as Hoboken has become more affluent while most of the towns have gone the other way. Demographic change, the Hurricane and almost no Romney Democrats probably account for some of the swing.

  yeah.  Union city is heavily Hispanic.  But secaucus surprises me.  Also note hoboken getting lower + d average gradually.

Well, Hoboken is getting richer and richer. It used to be a minority heavy place. Now, only rich people can afford the stellar view of New York City, and it's basically another arm of the city. And while these folks aren't very Republican, they're slightly more Republican than the old line minorities they're replacing.

Let's also say that urban New Jersey was heavily impacted by Hurricane Sandy. Obama came to the rescue, and it looked like the GOP (save for Christie) was disingenuine when it came to helping the state out.

Hoboken was never minority-heavy. Like some parts of brownstone Brooklyn (Carroll Gardens, Cobble Hill), it skipped directly from long-time elderly first- and second-generation European immigrants to young gentrifiers. I actually do think it's genuinely surprising that Hoboken is becoming less Democrat, as elderly Italians, Irish, Greeks, Poles, etc. are not a particularly Democratic demographic in the NYC metro any more. Then again, Hoboken is pretty much done with its gentrification (at least in existing housing--there are plenty of empty lots and underused industrial spaces to convert), so those people may have mostly moved out or died in the 1990s and early 2000s.

The effect may be more short-term, i.e., the out-of-college and artsy demographic that predominated in the 1990s and early 2000s is being replaced by 30-something wealthy yuppies, who are slightly less Democratic than the gentrification pioneers though still Democratic overall.

The particularly odd thing is that Hoboken is less Democratic than, say, Battery Park City. But maybe the sort of people who move to Hoboken are more tax-conscious (avoiding NYC income tax) and thus somewhat more likely to be Republicans. I can also imagine the sort of people who put a premium merely on living in Manhattan may be more likely to be Democrats than people who are otherwise demographically identical but fine with living in a similarly urban part of NJ.

[Benj]

Maybe Hoboken is the next Nutley where its was a Dem town but now Nutley is trending Republican at least it was from the 2008 stats.

Hoboken was more Dem than Kearney in 2004 but now its reversed.

Hoboken and Nutley have absolutely nothing in common. I don't believe Nutley was ever particularly Democratic, either, though it has not moved towards the Democrats like its neighbors as it has remained heavily ethnic white (Italian, Polish, etc.) while the Hispanic population has exploded in neighboring towns.

[Benj]

The particularly odd thing is that Hoboken is less Democratic than, say, Battery Park City. But maybe the sort of people who move to Hoboken are more tax-conscious (avoiding NYC income tax) and thus somewhat more likely to be Republicans. I can also imagine the sort of people who put a premium merely on living in Manhattan may be more likely to be Democrats than people who are otherwise demographically identical but fine with living in a similarly urban part of NJ.

...and the people who're otherwise mostly identical but put a premium on notionally being suburbanites and not living in Manhattan are probably going to be actually R-leaning. *Possibly* not for President, though.

I don't think anyone in Hoboken thinks they live in the suburbs or puts a premium on not living in Manhattan. The main motivation for moving to Hoboken is dense urban living at a slightly lower price.

[Benj]

The particularly odd thing is that Hoboken is less Democratic than, say, Battery Park City. But maybe the sort of people who move to Hoboken are more tax-conscious (avoiding NYC income tax) and thus somewhat more likely to be Republicans. I can also imagine the sort of people who put a premium merely on living in Manhattan may be more likely to be Democrats than people who are otherwise demographically identical but fine with living in a similarly urban part of NJ.

...and the people who're otherwise mostly identical but put a premium on notionally being suburbanites and not living in Manhattan are probably going to be actually R-leaning. *Possibly* not for President, though.

I don't think anyone in Hoboken thinks they live in the suburbs or puts a premium on not living in Manhattan.

This.  Hoboken is for yuppies who would like to live in the Upper East Side but can't afford it.

Wacky theory: maybe Hoboken is the one town where Sandy actually hurt Obama, because the response of PATH to the storm was bungled, and they didn't have service for weeks afterward.

Not the UES. No one wants to live on the UES except fussy old ladies. But definitely people who would live on the UWS or in Gramercy or the Village or Tribeca if they could afford it. Or Battery Park City, probably the most comparable neighborhood in a lot of ways, at least to the new condos and rental buildings in Hoboken.

We didn't have PATH service here in Jersey City by Election Day, either. (Actually, the Journal Square-33rd St line reopened on Election Day IIRC, but that's only a small part of the system.) It is true that everything was a royal mess in both JC and Hoboken then. I doubt the Port Authority's incompetence played into the election results much, though, and people weren't really angry until later in November.

[Benj]

(The UES, along with Chinatown, is where more of the Republicans in Manhattan are, btw.)

Yeah, because of the gazillionaires who live there. There aren't any gazillionaires in Hoboken, just a bunch of millionaires-if-you-ignore-the-mortgage.