NoVA vs Montgomery County, MD (user search)
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  NoVA vs Montgomery County, MD (search mode)
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Author Topic: NoVA vs Montgomery County, MD  (Read 5571 times)
Kitteh
drj101
Sr. Member
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Posts: 3,436
United States


« on: November 12, 2012, 07:38:51 PM »

It's a mix of things, as others have said.

A lot of it is the military-industrial complex in Virginia vs more tech and healthcare based economy in Maryland. The federal government probably supports (directly or indirectly) at least as high if not a higher percentage of people in NoVA, but there is a huge difference. Not only do those industries attract different types of people, the military industry has a much higher percentage of employees who work for private companies that contract with and depend on the government (the "industrial" part of military-industrial complex") vs actual public workers. So these workers generally have an incentive to support cutting government spending in other areas to pay for defense spending and vote for the party that promises that. Whereas public employees are more likely to oppose spending cuts in general.

Some of it has to do with the fact that the suburbs in Maryland have invested more in public transit and are much "closer" to DC and more attractive to people who want a house with a yard but still want to be able to walk places. A house that's ten miles from DC in Maryland and a house that's ten miles from DC in Virginia are going to look very different.

Some of it is MontCo receiving more and more poor residents who were gentrified out of DC. That's a huge and underrated part of why the Maryland suburbs, Montgomery and Charles counties in particular, have drifted to the left, while its less of a thing in NoVA for a variety of reasons, including the Maryland suburbs having more of an established "black culture" than the until recently pearly white NoVA suburbs and Maryland having better services and support for lower income people than Virginia.

Some of it is that MontCo includes areas closer in to DC that are more similar to Arlington than Fairfax (everything from the DC border to about Bethesda is more like Arlington than Fairfax county). If you split inner MontCo and outer MontCo into two counties, the differences between outer MontCo and Fairfax would not look so huge. 

Some of it is also self-selection people seeking a more liberal climate moving to MD vs people seeking lower taxes moving to VA. So the differences become self-reinforcing; people who would rather have higher taxes and more funding for transport and schools move to the areas with higher taxes and more funding for transport and schools and subsequently vote for higher taxes and more funding for transport and schools, and vice versa for people who want the opposite.
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