The UK with Dems/GOP

[JimJamUK]

The Jewish American population is, compared with basically every other major country, the most left wing, socially liberal and dovish on Israel. On that basis Labour would do quite a bit better with the Jewish American electorate than they do with British Jews, but it would still only be relative. Their strongest Jewish support would be with not-wealthy socially liberal non-Orthodox Jews i.e. basically parts of New York (obvs not Borough Park!) along with the background Jewish population of many urban areas. However, the very wealthy suburban Jewish population would vote Conservative at or above the rate they currently vote Democrat.

[JimJamUK]

Tbh thinking about it it's exceedingly unlikely that Vermont would even be Labour. Sure, they'd win Burlington but get nowhere elsewhere, even in Hipster-leaning Windham County opposition to the Tories would come from the Lib Dems or the Greens .

People forget that the absolute immoveable base of the Tory party (as has been for as long as living memory) is aesthetically pleasing, fairly affluent/lacking in deprivation rural (note rural instead of remote) small towns and villages. Vermont, and New England in general, has this in spades. To American readers I can't stress enough how badly Labour does in these type of places, even when it is doing well nationally the party is basically non-existent. So I'm pretty sure that the Tories would win Vermont comfortably (at least as well as Phil Scott did, probably better in the rural areas) with the Lib Dems in second, with the Greens maybe getting 10% in a good year for them and Labour absolutely nowhere.

Vermont's just an incredibly weird, 'only in America', sort of place that makes comparative politics very difficult. It is obviously a fairly rural state (at the very least it ain't metropolitan) and has a rural agricultural/tourist industry that all suggest safe Conservative. However, its also very socially liberal and votes a hell of a lot more Democratic that its demographics/neighbouring states would suggest. Vermont also has some industrial history in its small cities so that would be a potential Labour base (these sorts of places can have erratic local politics and how they vote nationally varies greatly between each place). My best/least worst comparison to Vermont would be places like Stroud or the Peak District where Labour are competitive in places that they aren't elsewhere or to be expected on pure demographics. Therefore, I think Vermont could be competitive between Labour and the Conservatives, though I concede its the sort of place that the Lib Dems could do well and the Greens above average.

[Leading Political Consultant Ma Anand Sheela]

My best/least worst comparison to Vermont would be places like Stroud or the Peak District where Labour are competitive in places that they aren't elsewhere or to be expected on pure demographics. Therefore, I think Vermont could be competitive between Labour and the Conservatives, though I concede its the sort of place that the Lib Dems could do well and the Greens above average.

AIUI, the Labour strength in Stroud since the 90s has been partly down to the personal popularity of the slightly odd David Drew. Before he came around, it had been perpetually out of reach for Labour, and the Liberals even took over second place in the 80s. It's not really clear, at least not to me, how much of it will stick with Labour once he's no longer the eternal candidate. The Greens are already sniffing around the place. All that said, I suppose the reasons for social democratic (as opposed to Democratic) electoral strength in the real Vermont are not that different.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

Tbh thinking about it it's exceedingly unlikely that Vermont would even be Labour. Sure, they'd win Burlington but get nowhere elsewhere, even in Hipster-leaning Windham County opposition to the Tories would come from the Lib Dems or the Greens .

People forget that the absolute immoveable base of the Tory party (as has been for as long as living memory) is aesthetically pleasing, fairly affluent/lacking in deprivation rural (note rural instead of remote) small towns and villages. Vermont, and New England in general, has this in spades. To American readers I can't stress enough how badly Labour does in these type of places, even when it is doing well nationally the party is basically non-existent. So I'm pretty sure that the Tories would win Vermont comfortably (at least as well as Phil Scott did, probably better in the rural areas) with the Lib Dems in second, with the Greens maybe getting 10% in a good year for them and Labour absolutely nowhere.

Vermont's just an incredibly weird, 'only in America', sort of place that makes comparative politics very difficult. It is obviously a fairly rural state (at the very least it ain't metropolitan) and has a rural agricultural/tourist industry that all suggest safe Conservative. However, its also very socially liberal and votes a hell of a lot more Democratic that its demographics/neighbouring states would suggest. Vermont also has some industrial history in its small cities so that would be a potential Labour base (these sorts of places can have erratic local politics and how they vote nationally varies greatly between each place). My best/least worst comparison to Vermont would be places like Stroud or the Peak District where Labour are competitive in places that they aren't elsewhere or to be expected on pure demographics. Therefore, I think Vermont could be competitive between Labour and the Conservatives, though I concede its the sort of place that the Lib Dems could do well and the Greens above average.

Wouldn't the best parallels be one of those liberal Celtic constituencies like Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross or  Orkney and Shetland ?

Also I do think it's a rather underrated recent development that unlike in the UK where touristiy areas align conservative, Democrats dominate most touristy areas with republican support having collapsed in a lot of them in the Trump era.

[ملكة كرينجيتوك]

An area that really does need highlighting, though, would be East Asian ethnicities. In Britain these are low turnout groups but those who do vote are overwhelmingly (probably in the 90% territory in a good election) Conservative.

Wikipedia suggests this group is at least 70% ethnic Chinese (possibly even 80% judging from how much of the SE Asia-origin population is from Malaysia or Singapore). Unlike in the rest of the Anglosphere, a supermajority of British Asians are of subcontinental heritage.

I could be wrong on this, but I don't think the post-mid 20th century US GOP or Canadian Tories have ever won more than 80% of any major East or Southeast Asian group. Great thread by the way!

[Wiswylfen]

I thought of the reverse scenario also being explored in this thread myself the other day; wondered if the ancestrally Democratic parts of the Upper South like Middle Tennessee might provide an equivalent to the holdout liberalism of the Celtic fringe.

[Secretary of State Liberal Hack]

An area that really does need highlighting, though, would be East Asian ethnicities. In Britain these are low turnout groups but those who do vote are overwhelmingly (probably in the 90% territory in a good election) Conservative.

Wikipedia suggests this group is at least 70% ethnic Chinese (possibly even 80% judging from how much of the SE Asia-origin population is from Malaysia or Singapore). Unlike in the rest of the Anglosphere, a supermajority of British Asians are of subcontinental heritage.

I could be wrong on this, but I don't think the post-mid 20th century US GOP or Canadian Tories have ever won more than 80% of any major East or Southeast Asian group. Great thread by the way!

From Anecdotal evidence Singaporeans who studied in the UK and voted( a very small proportion) tend to be mostly tories with a strong LibDem presence*(many of them mentioned voting for clegg and feeling betrayed) with an incredibly marginal labour presence.


*given that the majority of them tend to come from upper-middle-class families, civil service scholarship holders as well as the actual Singaporean elite this shouldn't be suprising.

[Tintrlvr]

Part 3:



There are several constituencies on here which probably would have been Labour voting most of the time--thinking MI-01, OH-06, maybe WI-07--but which fell because of the right's overperformance last election. MI-09 is probably a classic swing district, and IL-17, IN-02, and IN-07 are winnable as well.

There were a few judgements calls as well. Both Indianapolis and Columbus are hard to compare to cities in the UK--they're both expanding, "new growth" cities with smaller histories of industry. I decided to split the difference and give Columbus to the Lib Dems and Indy to the Cons, since the latter is a lot less professional/managerial. (You can probably tell that I'm relying a lot on voting patterns from before our current alignment.)

Another call I made was to have Labour drastically underperform the Democrats in a lot of the rural agricultural Midwest. Democratic strength in places like Iowa or Western Wisconsin is fairly recent and is the outcome of the ag crisis and a higher degree of secularism. Similarly agricultural areas in the UK vote much more decisively to the right, iirc.

Chicago was an interesting area to do--you can really see the north-south class divide which is invisible in current election maps.

I would guess the Lib Dems would have been competitive in Iowa in the recent past - though possibly not now. The farmer-Democratic votes in the Upper Midwest feel about as close as the US gets to the "Celtic fringe", except maybe Maine. Lib Dems probably would have won a majority of the seats in Iowa during the Farm Crisis era, e.g.

[King of Kensington]

Some figures on British Jews.

Synagogue membership:

Central Orthodox  24%
Strictly Orthodox (Haredi)  13%
Reform  11%
Liberal  5%
Masorti (Conservative)  2%
Sephardi  2%
No affiliation  44%

Identity:

Secular  34%
Ultra-Orthodox   18%
Modern Orthodox  14%
Reform  14%
Traditional  10%
Liberal  6%
Conservative  2%
Sephardi  2%

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Jews#Religion

[morgieb]

Tbh thinking about it it's exceedingly unlikely that Vermont would even be Labour. Sure, they'd win Burlington but get nowhere elsewhere, even in Hipster-leaning Windham County opposition to the Tories would come from the Lib Dems or the Greens .

People forget that the absolute immoveable base of the Tory party (as has been for as long as living memory) is aesthetically pleasing, fairly affluent/lacking in deprivation rural (note rural instead of remote) small towns and villages. Vermont, and New England in general, has this in spades. To American readers I can't stress enough how badly Labour does in these type of places, even when it is doing well nationally the party is basically non-existent. So I'm pretty sure that the Tories would win Vermont comfortably (at least as well as Phil Scott did, probably better in the rural areas) with the Lib Dems in second, with the Greens maybe getting 10% in a good year for them and Labour absolutely nowhere.

Vermont's just an incredibly weird, 'only in America', sort of place that makes comparative politics very difficult. It is obviously a fairly rural state (at the very least it ain't metropolitan) and has a rural agricultural/tourist industry that all suggest safe Conservative. However, its also very socially liberal and votes a hell of a lot more Democratic that its demographics/neighbouring states would suggest. Vermont also has some industrial history in its small cities so that would be a potential Labour base (these sorts of places can have erratic local politics and how they vote nationally varies greatly between each place). My best/least worst comparison to Vermont would be places like Stroud or the Peak District where Labour are competitive in places that they aren't elsewhere or to be expected on pure demographics. Therefore, I think Vermont could be competitive between Labour and the Conservatives, though I concede its the sort of place that the Lib Dems could do well and the Greens above average.

Vermont vaguely reminds me of some of the Celtic fringe areas with very long standing Lib Dem support. I could see it kind of like Portsmouth South, having been Lib Dem for years, flipping in 2015 to the Tories in a crisis year and then being a surprise Labour flip in 2017. Or even somewhere like Orkney & Shetland, staying Lib Dem in perpetuity without care for trends elsewhere.

I can imagine the Driftless being as close to a base region for the Lib Dems as one can get prior to 2015, then being generally Tory since then with a Lib Dem base that's bigger than you expect.

I thought of the reverse scenario also being explored in this thread myself the other day; wondered if the ancestrally Democratic parts of the Upper South like Middle Tennessee might provide an equivalent to the holdout liberalism of the Celtic fringe.

Yes, those are areas which I always find difficult with exercises like these (same applies for rural Arkansas). Too rural to vote Labour, arguably too poor to vote Conservative. I think they'd be a good fit for Conservative now, but in Tony Blair's time? Much more ambiguous. Could really do anything and might come down to how Southern traditions would've blossomed in this hypothetical scenario.

[icc]

I thought of the reverse scenario also being explored in this thread myself the other day; wondered if the ancestrally Democratic parts of the Upper South like Middle Tennessee might provide an equivalent to the holdout liberalism of the Celtic fringe.

Yes, those are areas which I always find difficult with exercises like these (same applies for rural Arkansas). Too rural to vote Labour, arguably too poor to vote Conservative. I think they'd be a good fit for Conservative now, but in Tony Blair's time? Much more ambiguous. Could really do anything and might come down to how Southern traditions would've blossomed in this hypothetical scenario.

Poor rural areas in the UK (excepting those with with an industrial presence) have tended to default to the Conservatives, albeit not always happily.

They're the sort of areas that have often flirted with the Liberals (much of the West Country, Herefordshire, etc.) but places without a Liberal presence generally defaulted to the Conservatives in a straight blue v red fight. It is notable, for instance, that the collapse of the Liberals in rural Lincolnshire did not lead to Labour winning any seats.

[EastAnglianLefty]

My best/least worst comparison to Vermont would be places like Stroud or the Peak District where Labour are competitive in places that they aren't elsewhere or to be expected on pure demographics. Therefore, I think Vermont could be competitive between Labour and the Conservatives, though I concede its the sort of place that the Lib Dems could do well and the Greens above average.

AIUI, the Labour strength in Stroud since the 90s has been partly down to the personal popularity of the slightly odd David Drew. Before he came around, it had been perpetually out of reach for Labour, and the Liberals even took over second place in the 80s. It's not really clear, at least not to me, how much of it will stick with Labour once he's no longer the eternal candidate. The Greens are already sniffing around the place. All that said, I suppose the reasons for social democratic (as opposed to Democratic) electoral strength in the real Vermont are not that different.

Stroud and the surrounding villages are quite industrial and as such have always had a decent Labour base. Drew is certainly effective at squeezing the hippy vote and does have a personal vote, but I don't think there's very much reason to believe it isn't winnable without him.

[Wiswylfen]

I thought of the reverse scenario also being explored in this thread myself the other day; wondered if the ancestrally Democratic parts of the Upper South like Middle Tennessee might provide an equivalent to the holdout liberalism of the Celtic fringe.

Yes, those are areas which I always find difficult with exercises like these (same applies for rural Arkansas). Too rural to vote Labour, arguably too poor to vote Conservative. I think they'd be a good fit for Conservative now, but in Tony Blair's time? Much more ambiguous. Could really do anything and might come down to how Southern traditions would've blossomed in this hypothetical scenario.

Poor rural areas in the UK (excepting those with with an industrial presence) have tended to default to the Conservatives, albeit not always happily.

They're the sort of areas that have often flirted with the Liberals (much of the West Country, Herefordshire, etc.) but places without a Liberal presence generally defaulted to the Conservatives in a straight blue v red fight. It is notable, for instance, that the collapse of the Liberals in rural Lincolnshire did not lead to Labour winning any seats.

Thing is though, there aren't really poor rural areas in the UK in the same way as America. South Holland isn't Mole Valley but it's still far from anything in America.

[JimJamUK]

AIUI, the Labour strength in Stroud since the 90s has been partly down to the personal popularity of the slightly odd David Drew. Before he came around, it had been perpetually out of reach for Labour, and the Liberals even took over second place in the 80s. It's not really clear, at least not to me, how much of it will stick with Labour once he's no longer the eternal candidate. The Greens are already sniffing around the place. All that said, I suppose the reasons for social democratic (as opposed to Democratic) electoral strength in the real Vermont are not that different.

Stroud is actually competitive at council elections as well, and that’s with a large Green vote as well which is largely (though by no means completely) left leaning. Drew probably has a decent personal vote (though 9 times out of 10 personal votes are overestimated in the UK) and helped make Labour the main challengers, but Labour would be the main challengers these days anyways given the post-2010 Lib Dem collapse, and the Greens don’t get anywhere come general elections despite their council support.

Regardless, I do think Vermont would be competitive for Labour, albeit the sort of district where their competitiveness is rather recent and support quite flaky.

[JimJamUK]

Wouldn't the best parallels be one of those liberal Celtic constituencies like Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross or  Orkney and Shetland ?

I don’t think so. The Liberal/Liberal Democrat support in the Celtic fringe is/was not down to disproportionate support for modern cultural liberalism (if anything, these places largely have above average leave support and small c conservatism). Rather, they tended to vote Liberal due to a mixture of reasons including feeling peripheral to the rest of the UK, support for the Liberal devolution/localist ethos, non-English language usage, strong local Liberal organisation, and the inability to fit into either of the major 2 parties (Labour too urban/industrial, Conservatives too elitist, establishment, Church of England). To a large extent these days it’s simply that they are the incumbent/main challengers, and it’s not impossible their vote could fall quite a bit further as it has already done in much of Cornwall, Ceredigion etc).

Basically, the vote in these areas was Liberal, not liberal.

[JimJamUK]

Worth remembering that UKIP also did very well in poor rural areas, appealing to the sort of strong cultural conservatives who naturally vote Conservative despite not necessarily being their biggest supporters (particularly if the party goes more Cameroonian). A lot of these people voted Lib Dem previously of course.

The American equivalent of Lincolnshire, Norfolk etc seems like the (white) South. Perhaps some Labour strength many moons ago but now just a slightly schizophrenic Conservative vote. Conversely, non-metropolitan New England seems closer to say Lancashire. A lot of areas that are fairly rural and agricultural, but also some industrial heritage that makes Labour competitive in the same way Democrats historically were. You also have some areas like the Canadian border where the dominant immigrant group was receptive to left wing politics and if anything would probably be a better fit for Labour than they are the Democrats.

[beesley]

I wish I had seen this thread sooner! I broadly agree with much of the analysis of my British counterparts.

[CumbrianLefty]

My best/least worst comparison to Vermont would be places like Stroud or the Peak District where Labour are competitive in places that they aren't elsewhere or to be expected on pure demographics. Therefore, I think Vermont could be competitive between Labour and the Conservatives, though I concede its the sort of place that the Lib Dems could do well and the Greens above average.

AIUI, the Labour strength in Stroud since the 90s has been partly down to the personal popularity of the slightly odd David Drew. Before he came around, it had been perpetually out of reach for Labour, and the Liberals even took over second place in the 80s. It's not really clear, at least not to me, how much of it will stick with Labour once he's no longer the eternal candidate. The Greens are already sniffing around the place. All that said, I suppose the reasons for social democratic (as opposed to Democratic) electoral strength in the real Vermont are not that different.

Drew was and is popular, but this may be a case of correlation not wholly equalling causation.

[King of Kensington]

People forget that the absolute immoveable base of the Tory party (as has been for as long as living memory) is aesthetically pleasing, fairly affluent/lacking in deprivation rural (note rural instead of remote) small towns and villages. Vermont, and New England in general, has this in spades.

That's a good way of looking at it.  And Republicans used to do well among rural New Englanders.  In England it's a demographic the Tories could ill afford to lose.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Stroud and the surrounding villages are quite industrial and as such have always had a decent Labour base.

Similarly, High Peak is a (post)industrial constituency, with the vast majority of the population living in former mill towns on the furthest fringe of the Manchester conurbation. Manchester City Council also built a lot of 'overspill' estates in Glossop under the Town Development Act in the 50s and 60s. Limestone quarrying was historically a major employer in the one urban centre (Buxton) where this pattern does not hold.

[King of Kensington]

Jews in this scenario would be a solid Democratic group, especially considering that there is not a significant Orthodox Jewish population in the UK. This makes Hendon, Finchley, Barnet, Bury, and East Renfrewshire some of the more (historically) solid Democratic urban-suburban areas.

British Jewry is more Orthodox and traditional than American Jewry, including a sizeable nominal Orthodox population. Most who belong to synagogues belong to Orthodox synagogues.  Reform Judaism is weak in the UK. 

Right. I believe I meant Hasidism, which I think is much less prevalent in London (outside of Hackney) than in the greater NYC area.

I suspect the proportions in NYC and London are similar.  And London is about 70% of British Jewry.  The proportion of ultra-Orthodox is 3 times higher for British (mostly London) Jewry compared to American Jewry.  Manchester is the second largest Jewish community in the UK, and there's a significant ultra-Orthodox population in Salford.

[morgieb]

It's a little bit disappointing that this exercise is based on 2019, since it seems like the size of that result is obscuring patterns that might otherwise be interesting. The Liberal Democrats seem like mostly an afterthought so far; the enormous size of American districts would certainly hurt them, but it seems like they should be a factor in the sort of places that might be too rich to vote Labour (Westchester County, Connecticut, the northern suburbs of Chicago, maybe the rich parts of Southern cities).

I feel that this exercise could be even more interesting before the Lib Dems imploded/patterns became very predictable - the map in say 2005 or 2010 would look rather fun.

[vileplume]

Stroud and the surrounding villages are quite industrial and as such have always had a decent Labour base.

Similarly, High Peak is a (post)industrial constituency, with the vast majority of the population living in former mill towns on the furthest fringe of the Manchester conurbation. Manchester City Council also built a lot of 'overspill' estates in Glossop under the Town Development Act in the 50s and 60s. Limestone quarrying was historically a major employer in the one urban centre (Buxton) where this pattern does not hold.

Yeah High Peak is deceptively rural. The rural areas in the east of the constituency are basically empty of population. If you removed just 2 wards, Hope Valley and Limestone Peak, with a combined electorate of ~5,000, the geographic size of the High Peak constituency would be nearly cut in half.

100% agree about Stroud, the reason why Labour is competitive there is that a lot of the small towns are grim/ex-industrial, e.g. Cam, Dursley (yes this is the town that gave the Dursleys from Harry Potter their name), Nailsworth etc. If the rural areas of High Peak were like the rural areas of the neighbouring Cotswolds, Labour would not be competitive.

 

[vileplume]

Regarding Vermont, I very much doubt they'd be competitive, unless there are loads of small grim ex-industrial towns dotted over the rural areas of the state that I am not aware of. Small rural comfortably off villages with no industrial history are literally no-go zones for Labour, they can't even get close to winning council seats in these type of areas, let alone a constituency. So even if Vermont has more ex-industrial areas than I previously thought, I still struggle to see where Labour would get the votes from  to outvote the rural areas.

Vermont could be Lib Dem though, it seems like the type of place where they might do well. Though as others have said this is very dependent on historical local strength, which is impossible to predict.

[Sol]

Here is a (very!) rough pass at the western U.S.:




A few necessary caveats:
-California means that one really needs a mental model for Asian-American voting patterns, especially for ethnic groups which are less common in the UK. Since it sounds like Chinese-British people are fairly Tory, I modeled them accordingly. For Japanese and Korean-Americans, I also had them going to conservatives, since IIRC those groups tend to be higher income. Other East Asian immigrant groups often skew a bit more working class, so I have them going to Labour. Apologies if this is grimly ignorant.
-I don't have a great sense of the distribution of a lot of Asian-American ethnic groups in west coast cities, especially in the Bay Area. I may be consequently overestimating the conservatives.
-I colored the wrong Colorado district Lib Dem--I meant to color CO-02 yellow and CO-07 blue.

Other notes:
-The West Coast seems like the sort of place where Lib Dems would be especially strong. I gave them several seats in the Bay and Pramila Jayapal's district (lol) (which would normally go Labour). There are a lot of "very bougie but extremely socially liberal/culturally Democratic" places on the west coast--Boulder, much of the richer parts of the bay, Hollywood--and it's hard to see a better party for those places.
-The Bay Area has several seats--thinking especially of CA-05 and CA-11--which are very socioeconomically heterogeneous. Since this was a Conservative year, I had Napa outvote Vallejo and the Tri-Valley outvote Richmond, but obviously most years it would be different.
-Los Angeles is notably more Left-leaning than San Francisco
-In better years, Alaska, AZ-01, AZ-02, NM-02, CA-12, CA-25, CA-36 and Montana would be winnable for Labour, in addition to the ones already mentioned.