Wokest place in every state

[Torie]

VT: Brattleboro

Ranks behind Middlebury, Montpelier, the White River Junction area, and pretty much all of Chittenden County IMO. Brattleboro is just a bit too weird.

Is the Birkenstock Belt the same as the Wokester Belt in non urban areas?

[bgwah]

Evergreen State College in Olympia is the correct answer for WA.

[Beet]

Maryland: suburban Silver Springs/Rockville

I think Silver Spring and Rockville are a little too classically upscale.

Since when has Silver Spring been classically upscale?

It's less so than its surroundings, but it's still Montgomery County.

It's Bethesda. Even more upscale and Jewish.

[Interlocutor is just not there yet]

I just assume "woke" to be a more extreme version of liberal.

As far as California is concerned, count me in on the Arcata/Eureka bandwagon. The only thing San Francisco has over the two cities is sheer number. But having spent time in Humboldt County, San Francisco seems rather lax in comparison.

[ctherainbow]

Close enough to Philly, but do tell!

Uh-oh, don’t say that around anyone from Philly or Swarthmore!   

It’s an extraordinarily liberal college town, with some precincts regularly going over 90% Democratic.  If you were to draw an image of what you think a “woke hipster Northeast college town” would look like, it would be Swarthmore.

[Roll Roons]

Close enough to Philly, but do tell!

Uh-oh, don’t say that around anyone from Philly or Swarthmore!   

It’s an extraordinarily liberal college town, with some precincts regularly going over 90% Democratic.  If you were to draw an image of what you think a “woke hipster Northeast college town” would look like, it would be Swarthmore.

Crazy that their State Rep was a Republican until pretty recently. Joe Hackett must have really been something.

[BuckeyeNut]

Ohio - Columbus

Yeah, no. Athens, Oberlin, and Yellow Springs are all much more “woke.”

[Kevin]

Some thoughts:

CA: Berkeley
CO: Boulder
IL: Evanston
IA: Iowa City
KS: Lawrence
MD: Takoma Park
MA: Cambridge
MI: Ann Arbor
NJ: Princeton
NY: Williamsburg in Brooklyn
OR: Portland
TX: Austin
VT: Brattleboro
VA: Arlington
WA: Seattle
WI: Madison

How accurate is this? And what would it be for other states?

I'd say pretty accurate. Although for VA, Charlottesville, Alexandria, Falls Church, and parts of Richmond give Arlington a run for its money.

Ditto Royal Oak and Ferndale for Ann Arbor in Michigan. Though midtown Detroit, East Lansing, and some Grand Rapids/Kalamazoo neighborhoods can be legit contenders too for most woke.

For Maryland, I believe Mount Rainer in neighboring Prince Georges County is more woke than Takoma Park.

[VAR]

VA: Arlington

I disagree. The type of young people Arlington attracts is frat bros. This is especially the case in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor (sans Rosslyn because it's more business-oriented.) I'd argue that Alexandria is more stereotypically "woke" than any place in Arlington.

My answer for Virginia would be Charlottesville. Ofc the area near the University of Richmond - a liberal arts college - is a strong contender.

[Kevin]

VA: Arlington

I disagree. The type of young people Arlington attracts is frat bros. This is especially the case in the Rosslyn-Ballston corridor (sans Rosslyn because it's more business-oriented.) I'd argue that Alexandria is more stereotypically "woke" than any place in Arlington.

My answer for Virginia would be Charlottesville. Ofc the area near the University of Richmond - a liberal arts college - is a strong contender.

Falls Church and even Reston could be contenders for "most woke" too.

[LabourJersey]

I'm shocked no one suggested Montclair for the most woke town in New Jersey.

Princeton has a large woke contingent, I guess, but I think it's definitely a little too old money and too parochial to be "woke." And Jersey City is too finance-focused to be truly woke (though Montclair does have plenty of Wall St. commuters).

And I agree with VAR that Alexandria is more woke than Arlington.

And the most woke part of Maryland is probably Takoma Park, in my opinion anyway

[EastwoodS]

Mitch McConnells part of town used to have gorgeous Greek revival mansions and romantic era houses block after block, for a brief period of time 1990s-to very recently it was going through a bit of a revival from where it had been going down hill in the 60s and 70s but now it seems like most of those absolutely gorgeous homes are now just boarding homes and split up apartments for art majors on a budget. How sad.

[Dr. MB]

Oregon's obviously Portland but more specifically this area of Portland. It's where basically all the protests over the summer took place, it's got the once-mostly black neighborhoods which have all been gentrified, it's got the blocks where 75% of houses have one of those In Our America or We Believe signs. The further out you get from this area the less of that stuff you'll see.

[VAR]

-snip-

Just out of curiosity, how did these two areas vote in the 2016 U.S. Senate race?

[Adam Griffin]

-snip-

Just out of curiosity, how did these two areas vote in the 2016 U.S. Senate race?

A lot differently:



From Barksdale +21 to Biden +46 in the Athens community (25-point difference)

From Barksdale +38 to Biden +68 in the ATL community (30-point difference)

[MarkD]

Missouri: Columbia for sure
Utah: Hard to say. Pretty much anywhere east of State Street and north of I-80 in Salt Lake City could probably work. I have never seen so many political signs in my life as I did driving on 1500 East in SLC in October 2020. It was wall-to-wall Biden signs on almost every house, along with lots of other liberal signs (BLM, "in this house we believe..." and so on).

The Central West End in St. Louis has to be in the running for Missouri. When I attempted a calculation of the White vote by precinct, it was the largest blob where Whites were above 80% Clinton.

Wouldn't it make more sense to treat University City as the wokest place in Missouri? Much of the white population is Jewish, and the city is a great demonstration of a place where blacks and Jews get along with each other quite well.

[Tintrlvr]

Some thoughts:

CA: Berkeley
CO: Boulder
IL: Evanston
IA: Iowa City
KS: Lawrence
MD: Takoma Park
MA: Cambridge
MI: Ann Arbor
NJ: Princeton
NY: Williamsburg in Brooklyn
OR: Portland
TX: Austin
VT: Brattleboro
VA: Arlington
WA: Seattle
WI: Madison

How accurate is this? And what would it be for other states?

Williamsburg contains quite a lot of *extremely* Trump precincts in South Williamsburg (some over 90% Trump) so that won't the answer for New York. The answer for New York is probably something like the West Village in Manhattan or Prospect Heights in Brooklyn.

I think my vote would go to Bushwick.

Not nearly enough white people in Bushwick to top this list. We'll see with the 2020 Census figures, but it will still be at least majority Hispanic.

Park Slope is the obvious answer in NYC that no one seems to have mentioned yet and was definitely the right answer a decade ago. Other surrounding neighborhoods are similar and a little younger and are becoming whiter and might have surpassed it: Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, Clinton Hill.

Though some college town Upstate could potentially beat them.

[Tintrlvr]

Ohio - Columbus

Yeah, no. Athens, Oberlin, and Yellow Springs are all much more “woke.”

I'd add Gambier to this list of tiny liberal Ohio college towns, too. (Laughing at this age distribution: "73.1% of the population was aged from 18 to 24" -- that's way higher than in Oberlin or Yellow Springs.)

[GregTheGreat657]

AZ: Tucson
NC: Asheville
OR: Portland
MN: Minneapolis

[free my dawg]

NH has to be Hanover

[Crumpets]

If we can go to sub-city level, I would say Washington State is easily The Evergreen State College. It's every right-winger's idea of what the left is like distilled and isolated from the rest of society.

For example: