Ski Resort Counties

[An American Tail: Fubart Goes West]

There’s been a lot of low level discussion over the years about counties dominated by ski resorts leaning Dem, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen a complete list of them. The following is definitely incomplete (especially in regards to Colorado). Please feel free to add to the list.

Alpine County, CA
Mono County, CA
Blaine County, ID
Teton County, ID
Teton County, WY
Summit County, UT
San Miguel County, CO
Pitkin County, CO

I think that Nevada County, CA might not quite count because Grass Valley and Nevada City form a much bigger percentage of the population than the Truckee area.

Any other thoughts on these Dem havens and what causes them to be so Dem-friendly?

[It’s so Joever]

The people in these counties deeply care about environmental issues, including/especially the wealthy home owners.
Notice how at the same time WV swung against the Dems because they wanted to destroy the Earth, these places swung for the Dems because they kinda don’t want to destroy the Earth.

It’s especially easy to want to conserve when much of your lifestyle/town depends on it.
The wealthy home owners here also don’t mind the Dems raising taxes if it means they get to prevent their ski slopes from degrading. I would argue climate change is the number 1 reason the GOP won’t win these places back.

Interestingly enough, I have a theory that a bunch of WV counties will soon become tourist centers and will act like the ski counties out here in the 2040s.

[Coastal Elitist]

Nevada County should count and so should Inyo

[YL]

To what extent is this an American phenomenon?  I.e., is there any similar tendency for ski resort areas to vote more to the left (or for social liberalism or perhaps Greens) than their surroundings in other countries which have them?

From what I can see, the Bavarian Alps, for example, don't look obviously politically different from the rest of non-Munich Bavaria; does anything show up if you look at the fine detail around Garmisch-Partenkirchen, say?  In Switzerland, the Bernese Oberland shows pretty high SVP votes in most municipalities, which doesn't suggest much of an effect there, though perhaps I'm missing something.

We don't really have ski resorts in the UK, pace Aviemore, and the way our results are declared means we often don't have the fine detail anyway.  You might look at areas where outdoor recreation more generally is important (e.g. climbing, hiking): in and around the Lake District, the Lib Dems of course are strong in Westmorland & Lonsdale (but how much of that is to do with a personal vote for Farron and an effective local party?) and Labour seem to do quite well in Keswick in local elections by the standards of towns of its size, so perhaps there is something?

[100% pro-life no matter what]

The people in these counties deeply care about environmental issues, including/especially the wealthy home owners.
Notice how at the same time WV swung against the Dems because they wanted to destroy the Earth, these places swung for the Dems because they kinda don’t want to destroy the Earth.

It’s especially easy to want to conserve when much of your lifestyle/town depends on it.
The wealthy home owners here also don’t mind the Dems raising taxes if it means they get to prevent their ski slopes from degrading. I would argue climate change is the number 1 reason the GOP won’t win these places back.

Interestingly enough, I have a theory that a bunch of WV counties will soon become tourist centers and will act like the ski counties out here in the 2040s.

By this theory, wouldn't a county like Sevier, TN, that is heavily influenced by the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge mountain tourism destination be a little less Republican?  Now, it's not really known for skiing since it's in the South (though, there is actually one place above Gatlinburg that does offer skiing on artificial snow in the winter), but it's still a mountain town reliant on tourism.  I guess a decent number of people live in Sevierville (rather than Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge), but DRA shows that Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge themselves are much more Republican.  Of course, Pigeon Forge especially feels more like Myrtle Beach that just happens to be in the mountains, so that's part of it (even though Gatlinburg tries to give off a sophisticated vibe).  Wouldn't a hypothetical West Virginia tourism spot wind up more like that than the ski slopes of Colorado?

[It’s so Joever]

The people in these counties deeply care about environmental issues, including/especially the wealthy home owners.
Notice how at the same time WV swung against the Dems because they wanted to destroy the Earth, these places swung for the Dems because they kinda don’t want to destroy the Earth.

It’s especially easy to want to conserve when much of your lifestyle/town depends on it.
The wealthy home owners here also don’t mind the Dems raising taxes if it means they get to prevent their ski slopes from degrading. I would argue climate change is the number 1 reason the GOP won’t win these places back.

Interestingly enough, I have a theory that a bunch of WV counties will soon become tourist centers and will act like the ski counties out here in the 2040s.

By this theory, wouldn't a county like Sevier, TN, that is heavily influenced by the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge mountain tourism destination be a little less Republican?  Now, it's not really known for skiing since it's in the South (though, there is actually one place above Gatlinburg that does offer skiing on artificial snow in the winter), but it's still a mountain town reliant on tourism.  I guess a decent number of people live in Sevierville (rather than Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge), but DRA shows that Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge themselves are much more Republican.  Of course, Pigeon Forge especially feels more like Myrtle Beach that just happens to be in the mountains, so that's part of it (even though Gatlinburg tries to give off a sophisticated vibe).  Wouldn't a hypothetical West Virginia tourism spot wind up more like that than the ski slopes of Colorado?

Good point it’s hard to know exactly, but I do think that WV will become a tourist hotspot and a hipster/wine-liberal rush will happen.
Also I think the prominence on the national stage makes a difference.
Colorado is pretty known nationally as a place to ski.
No offense, but I was honestly not aware Sevier County was a tourist destination.
I guess it depends on the type of people who move there.

[Hope For A New Era]

It's not just ski resort counties, but "resort" counties in general. Any county that attracts people, and that is "connected to the wider world," either geographically, economically, through military, or otherwise, is D or moving toward D.

See also: Talbot MD, Florida Panhandle, etc

[Former President tack50]

To what extent is this an American phenomenon?  I.e., is there any similar tendency for ski resort areas to vote more to the left (or for social liberalism or perhaps Greens) than their surroundings in other countries which have them?

Trying to go with a Spanish example, there are 3 relatively major skiing areas, though tbh 2 of them have very special characteristics that make their politics quite unique aside from skiing:

In here I will also distinguish the ski towns themselves from areas which are "commutable" to the ski area (30-60min away by car)

Sierra Nevada
The town of Monachil is where the main ski resort is located and it voted for the right by 5 points. This seems like little; but is actually rather on par to how rural eastern Andalucia votes (more conservative than western Andalucia).

I will note that only 50 minutes by car and 41km away you have the town of Granada itself. Granada is actually a rather large town (232000 people), so while it must have a heavy influence from the ski industry, it is far from overwhelming. Indeed, Granada is also well known for being the closest thing Spain has to a "college town". However for a large amount of reasons, Granada is still quite conservative.

Indeed Granada city voted for the right by 13 points. Though Andalucia in general has very different rural vs urban patterns to the US.

Val d'Aran (Baqueira-Beret)
The second area is the Aran Valley, located in Catalonia's northwestern tip. This is an area of rural Catalonia that has its own culture and language and doesn't really identify as Catalan. Therefore it has extremely unique politics.

In terms of unionism vs independence, it sticks out massively as the only rural part of Catalonia where unionism wins. In fact the border between the Aran Valley and its neighbours is extremely easy to see. In a way it is to Catalonia what the Orkney & Shetland islands were to Scotland.

As for left vs right that takes a backseat in Catalonia so you can't draw many conclusions from there, though it seems the left recently took over their regional council.

The closest major cities are Toulouse and Lleida, both of which are over 170km and 2 hours away, so not commutable.

Aragon Pyrinees
The only ski area that has no weird parochial factors on top of being a ski area, so probably the most comparable.

And indeed looking at a map of left vs right, you tend to see that the Aragon Pyrinees do indeed vote slightly more to the left of the areas that are less dominated by the Pyrinees.

Looking at the 2 villages where the main ski resorts are located (Ainsa and Panticosa), they vote extremely heavily for the left (in the order of 64-36); but these 2 villages have very low populations

It might be better to look at the much bigger town of Jaca (population 13000), where ski is probably its biggest industry. And while it did vote for the left, it did vote well to the right of the neighbouring rurals, voting for it only by 3 points, so probably less conclusive than you'd think.

I will also note that the pattern of rural Aragon turning more conservative as you head south applies well after you get outside the ski areas and the mountains. So it might have less to do with skiing than you'd think


My conclusion: I think that Spain's ski areas do vote to the left of their surrounding areas, especially if we stick to the ski towns themselves (with populations under 1000) as opposed to the neighbouring bigger towns.

However 2 of the 3 main ski areas in Spain have weird parochial factors on top of skiing, which makes it very hard to draw clean conclusions. Granada is a major metropolitan area in itself and well within reach of Sierra Nevada. And the Val d'Aran has very little in common with the rest of Catalonia and is a very special case.

[Crumpets]

One very anecdotal observation, but if you look at the precincts around the Summit at Snoqualmie and Alpental along the King/Kittitas County border in Washington, the precincts that are most Democratic are the ones that are dominated by seasonal residents and second homes, while the precincts that are most Republican are the ones with more year-round residents. That's the only ski resort I know well enough to be able to check that pattern, but if anyone knows any others very well, it might be interesting to see if it's part of a pattern.

[parochial boy]

From what I can see, the Bavarian Alps, for example, don't look obviously politically different from the rest of non-Munich Bavaria; does anything show up if you look at the fine detail around Garmisch-Partenkirchen, say?  In Switzerland, the Bernese Oberland shows pretty high SVP votes in most municipalities, which doesn't suggest much of an effect there, though perhaps I'm missing something.

The Berner Oberland has a high SVP vote because it is rural, Protestant and religious - which goes for both ski resort municipalities like Gsteig or Grindelwald as well as generic less touristy ones in, say the Simmental or the north bank of lakes Thun and Brienz.

Overall, there generally isn't much difference in the way ski resorts vote to the way their surrounding areas have always traditionally voted. So for instance, Bagnes (Verbier), Crans-Montana or Zermatt don't stick out compared to their neighbours, and are as PDC/CVP as the rest of the catholic Valais. Same with Davos, which votes much the same as you'd expect from any mountainous area in the protestant part of the Grisons. St Moritz sticks out as being unusually PLR/FDP, but it is a millionaires playground more than just about anywhere else - so is pretty unusual by those accounts.

Overall, there is a tendancy for ski resorts to attract the wealthy and the elderly - but this is usually in the form of second home ownership - so the Swiss nationals would vote in their hometowns and the masses of Russian billionaires and the like obviously don't have the right to vote. Same with the resort employees, who are often either locals, and vote as such, or (mostly foreign) seasonal workers who don't vote - so the impact on local voting patterns is pretty minimal.

French ski resorts have a tendancy to be unusually strong for the right, especially LREM and Les Républicains, and this is even compared to the surrounding regions which are already pretty strong for those two parties. As with the Swiss ones, they tend to attract wealth retirees, who tend to vote for the right; but with fewer foreigners and more people setting up residence.

nb - there are some areas in the French alps, and to a lesser extent in Switzerland, that are strong for the left, and especially the Greens. But this has less to do with skiing and more to do with hippie, back to nature "néo-ruraux" movements

[Tender Branson]

Contrary to the US, the overwhelming majority of Austrian ski resorts are voting strongly conservative, but not all.

Nearby Kaprun is an SPÖ-stronghold, but still, 95% of the other ski resorts are more or less ÖVP. Some with 40-50%, others with 70%.

And there are ca. 500-1.000 ski resorts in Austria (basically every other western, alpine town has one).

There isn't really any difference between western, rural ski resorts and rural non ski-resort towns though. It's generally the case that those rural towns vote heavily ÖVP, ski resort or not.

[𝕭𝖆𝖕𝖙𝖎𝖘𝖙𝖆 𝕸𝖎𝖓𝖔𝖑𝖆]

To what extent is this an American phenomenon?  I.e., is there any similar tendency for ski resort areas to vote more to the left (or for social liberalism or perhaps Greens) than their surroundings in other countries which have them?

I'll give Italy:

I checked a variety of places famous for ski resorts, like Sestriere and nearby municipalities in western Piedmont, Frabosa Soprana and Frabosa Sottana (Prato Nevoso) in southern Piedmont, Valtournenche (Breuil-Cervinia) in the Aosta Valley, San Martino di Castrozza in Trentino, Pietracamela (Gran Sasso) in Abruzzo, Abetone in Tuscany... and they mostly seem to be various shades of pretty right-wing, exactly like pretty much all other rural and mountainous municipalities in the North/Centre are.
Even the slightly larger, and extremely famous, "Queen of the Dolomites" Cortina d'Ampezzo (host of the 1956 Winter Olympics btw) is super right-wing.
As for larger centres which should be influenced by this industry, L'Aquila is unremarkable, while Trento is pretty left-leaning, but I doubt it's related, and it seems to have to do with the public sector being very strong or something like that.

[King of Kensington]

In Canada, Whistler and Banff are left of center communities and strong areas of support for the Green Party.

[Tender Branson]

What about Japan, NZ or Chile ?

[Born to Slay. Forced to Work.]

The people in these counties deeply care about environmental issues, including/especially the wealthy home owners.
Notice how at the same time WV swung against the Dems because they wanted to destroy the Earth, these places swung for the Dems because they kinda don’t want to destroy the Earth.

It’s especially easy to want to conserve when much of your lifestyle/town depends on it.
The wealthy home owners here also don’t mind the Dems raising taxes if it means they get to prevent their ski slopes from degrading. I would argue climate change is the number 1 reason the GOP won’t win these places back.

Interestingly enough, I have a theory that a bunch of WV counties will soon become tourist centers and will act like the ski counties out here in the 2040s.

By this theory, wouldn't a county like Sevier, TN, that is heavily influenced by the Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge mountain tourism destination be a little less Republican?  Now, it's not really known for skiing since it's in the South (though, there is actually one place above Gatlinburg that does offer skiing on artificial snow in the winter), but it's still a mountain town reliant on tourism.  I guess a decent number of people live in Sevierville (rather than Gatlinburg/Pigeon Forge), but DRA shows that Gatlinburg and Pigeon Forge themselves are much more Republican.  Of course, Pigeon Forge especially feels more like Myrtle Beach that just happens to be in the mountains, so that's part of it (even though Gatlinburg tries to give off a sophisticated vibe).  Wouldn't a hypothetical West Virginia tourism spot wind up more like that than the ski slopes of Colorado?

I think you got the nail on the head with the MB comparison. Horry is one of the most republican county in the state (possibly the whole east coast) because it attracts “republican tourist”. That’s the difference between Sevier, Horry, etc. then these “ski resort counties”. You can see this a little in South Carolina as Horry is growing and staying republican while Charleston is growing and turning blue due to attracting “democratic” tourists

[walleye26]

I didn’t see Taos, NM on the list.
I know it’s not a ski resort area, but Grand County, UT (Moab) is more Dem friendly because it’s near Arches.

[TML]

In Montana, the municipalities of Whitefish and Big Sky are D-leaning due to the presence of ski resorts in these areas, although these two places are not the primary drivers of the overall partisan leans of their respective counties.

[Cokeland Saxton]

Summit County, CO

[The Right Honourable Martin Brian Mulroney PC CC GOQ]

In Canada, Whistler and Banff are left of center communities and strong areas of support for the Green Party.

Whistler and Banff are the big ones, I decided to look at Mont-Tremblant, a favourite for Montreal and Ottawa residents alike. Federally the town itself went for the Bloc, the Laurentians are a pretty nationalist region. But the resort areas went heavily Liberal even in 2019 when the Liberals were weak in rural Quebec. Provincially it was a mix of Liberal/PQ/CAQ, but since the riding that contains it was a solid CAQ/PQ race, with the Liberals coming 4th place overall, one can conclude this is a fairly Liberal-leaning area. Greens were a non-factor, federally or provincially.

So this doesn't really suggest an environmentalist or left lean, but it does suggest a fair number of transplants from Montreal living and working there and backing the Liberals. Similar dynamic as American and anglo-Canadian ski towns, it just plays out differently within Quebec's weird political divide.

[VPH]

In Canada, Whistler and Banff are left of center communities and strong areas of support for the Green Party.

Whistler and Banff are the big ones, I decided to look at Mont-Tremblant, a favourite for Montreal and Ottawa residents alike. Federally the town itself went for the Bloc, the Laurentians are a pretty nationalist region. But the resort areas went heavily Liberal even in 2019 when the Liberals were weak in rural Quebec. Provincially it was a mix of Liberal/PQ/CAQ, but since the riding that contains it was a solid CAQ/PQ race, with the Liberals coming 4th place overall, one can conclude this is a fairly Liberal-leaning area. Greens were a non-factor, federally or provincially.

So this doesn't really suggest an environmentalist or left lean, but it does suggest a fair number of transplants from Montreal living and working there and backing the Liberals. Similar dynamic as American and anglo-Canadian ski towns, it just plays out differently within Quebec's weird political divide.

Quebec's weird divides might also explain why Green politics haven't been as ascendant in the province as they have elsewhere.

[muon2]

I think the effect is driven by how much of the visiting population takes up residency there are brings their political leanings. I'll use Vail in Eagle CO because I've visited there a lot this last decade and have looked at the data and talked to residents. Vail has a relatively small intrinsic population and a larger population from outside. The intrinsic population matches the rural counties that lack the big ski areas, and many have actually moved to neighboring counties as the property became unaffordable. Some of the outsiders take up residence and vote in ways that match how they would otherwise. It's not just the wealthy who have residences there. There's also a significant population (often younger) that is willing to work through the year to enjoy winter on the mountain.

As a counterpoint consider NH, where I just spent a week in the ski area of Loon Mountain in Grafton county. Yes Grafton was the most Dem county in the state, but if you look at the result by town you'll see that ski towns were a relatively minor contribution. Most of the Dem vote in Grafton is from the area around Hanover, home to Dartmouth College. Then consider the other big vacation area in NH - Lake Winnepesaukee. Most of the vacation area is in Belknap county which was the most pro-Trump county in the state. The resident population is still mostly from the area and not recent transplants, so that probably drives the vote there.

[King of Kensington]

Whistler BC

Liberals 2,608 40.7%
Greens 1,863 29.1%
Conservatives 1,051 16.4%
NDP 732 11.4%

Banff AB

Conservatives 1,103 31.2%
NDP 986 27.9%
Liberals 932 26.4%
Greens 435 12.3%

[mileslunn]

In Europe ski resorts tend to lean right but perhaps due to class based politics still stronger as well as right is not nearly as reactionary as in US.  Back in 80s, ski resorts I believe voted GOP.  Also top marginal rates are much higher in Europe and kick in at much lower levels thus most living there are likely in top bracket while in US only a minority are.  In Canada as mentioned ski resorts lean left, this is especially noticeable with Banff and Jasper which are in Alberta that outside Edmonton is staunchly conservative.  One exception is Blue Mountain, Ontario usually votes Tory, but less so than other parts of the riding and Liberals occasionally win it even though almost never win riding.

Interestingly enough though Whistler until most recent election would vote BC Liberal provincially even if it shunned federal Tories so it could also be the style of conservatism too.  In Europe, left is more socialistic as opposed to liberal much like NDP in BC while right in much of Europe is more your classical liberal variety as opposed to cultural conservative (they have those parties in Europe too, but not sure they do well in ski resorts) and BC Liberals are that while federal Tories somewhat more like GOP.

[Brittain33]

Routt County, Colorado (Biden +27) is home to Steamboat Springs and borders Rio Blanco County which was Trump +77.