The UK with Dems/GOP

[vileplume]

In any case, at the risk of seeming dumb, I made the northeast corridor with UK-style parties. Might do the rest of the country in a bit.



This is a bit generous to the Tories--it's assuming a 2019 style right-wing overperformance. A lot of these would be more favorable to Labour normally (thinking of PA-13, NY-24, VA-08 maybe) and then a lot more would be quintessential marginals (MA-04, MA-09, NJ-12, NJ-01, all the Torie SEPA districts, maybe NH-01 and NY-10). District lines and the VRA also have a certain effect--New Jersey would probably have a few more Labour seats with compact districts, while Maryland's gerrymander of Montgomery County actually works as a Tory gerrymander, since the parts of Montgomery County near DC have a slight Labour lean while most of the outer DC area and the panhandle (save Cumberland and Garrett County) are hyper-Tory.

I should also probably say that I don't have an especially deep knowledge of U.K. politics so probably a lot of this is wrong. Also there were certain areas I was unsure about--Long Island in particular, which I ended up using Essex as a parallel for--so I'd welcome corrections. I also just realized that I completely forgot about the Lib Dems (lol) so I'd welcome suggestions about where they might win--my intuition at first blush is MA-05, NY-10, NJ-05, NJ-12, and VA-11, but that seems a little too favorable to Labour.

If anything, this is far too generous to Labour based off 2019. Those red rural districts in PA and WV are exactly the type they would have lost that year (the “white working class” constituencies Labour retained in 2019 were mostly deprived urban ones, which the US largely lacks). On the other hand though, I think you have probably been a bit too favourable to the Tories in suburban/urban districts - the Arlington/inner suburban Fairfax districts, for instance, seem somewhat analogous to areas like Wandsworth where the Tories have really slid over the last two elections. Basically, I think you have overestimated the inversion of “US-style” patterns here.

Even in 2019 Labour didn't lose the most abjectly poor parts of 'traditionally working class' Britain (although their position did weaken considerably). The places in the red wall that fell were generally the areas with high homeownership, lower poverty and an elderly age profile. I'm not an expert on West Virginia but if one of the districts is considerably less poor than the state then that one would have fallen, but in general even in 2019 the Tories still fell short in areas as deprived as West Virginia is.

On the other hand the Tories would easily be winning districts like ME-02, NH-02 (the college towns would easily get outvoted) and CT-02. These are the type of districts which would have long been Tory as they aren't poverty stricken and aren't anchored on major urban centres. They *may* have gone Labour in the Blair landslides but in general they are the type of area that Labour would have been dead and buried in since roughly the time Harold Wilson was PM.

I agree the two NOVA districts should be Labour though, the Tories do horribly with government workers even affluent ones. They probably would still hold VA-10 though.

[vileplume]

Even in 2019 Labour didn't lose the most abjectly poor parts of 'traditionally working class' Britain (although their position did weaken considerably). The places in the red wall that fell were generally the areas with high homeownership, lower poverty and an elderly age profile. I'm not an expert on West Virginia but if one of the districts is considerably less poor than the state then that one would have fallen, but in general even in 2019 the Tories still fell short in areas as deprived as West Virginia is.

WV-2 is very likely the most likely bit of West Virginia to fall--it has Putnam County and a lot of the not-traditionally industrial parts of eastern WV, plus the DC exurbs near Harpers Ferry which seem like a Tory sort of place. There's a good argument too for flipping PA-17 and PA-14 too then in that case, as well as maybe VA-09 and maybe PA-12?

On the other hand the Tories would easily be winning districts like ME-02, NH-02 (the college towns would easily get outvoted) and CT-02. These are the type of districts which would have long been Tory as they aren't poverty stricken and aren't anchored on major urban centres. They *may* have gone Labour in the Blair landslides but in general they are the type of area that Labour would have been dead and buried in since roughly the time Harold Wilson was PM.

I agree the two NOVA districts should be Labour though, the Tories do horribly with government workers even affluent ones. They probably would still hold VA-10 though.

I kind of have to beg to difffer here. ME-2 in particular is a pretty poor area--lowest median household income in New England, and more in line with the WV districts discussed above--and historically a major center of industry. I suppose there's an argument for it having flipped in 2019 but a place like that doesn't seem like somewhere where Labour would have been "dead and buried."

NH-02 is a bit more mixed, but has some similar areas (thinking of Coos County) and the ex-industrial but suburban weird place of Nashua which doesn't honestly make much sense in the American context either. I don't know much about CT-02 to be honest, but it voting Conservative would make some sense.

Wrt: Virginia, that's a hard area. A big thing which made me put those inner suburban districts in the Con column was that a lot of the suburban employment in NOVA is in industries which lean more right-wing, at least in the American context--a lot of corporate headquarters, military contractors, engineering, in addition to your typical government employees. Are there equivalent dynamics in parts of London?

Re. ME-02 I was under the impression that although isn't high income, it's also the type of place where the cost of living is low with little extreme poverty and wealth inequality? These type of areas (if not-urban) are typically solidly Tory and have been since the collapse of the agricultural unions unless there is a cultural alienation at play (which I guess there could be in the French areas). Apologies if this characterisation of the area is incorrect though.

Re.NOVA, yes those industries are good for the Tories and I don't doubt they'd do better than the GOP in the region. However I was under the impression (again, correct me if I'm wrong) that whilst high-income Fairfax/Alexandria/Arlington is full of young professionals with good salaries but also large monthly outgoings (children, rent, mortgage, healthcare, transport, inflated consumer goods prices etc.) so they are nowhere near as wealthy as they look on paper. This along with a generally very socially liberal worldview would make them unlikely to support the Tories. If the area was all entirely like Great Falls, yes, the Tories would curb stomp Labour, but from what I've read it's nowhere near as uniformly wealthy as that.

[vileplume]

The embarrassment of revealed ignorance continues, with a pass at the South (excluding the southern states which are a part of the Northeast corridor, like Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware).



There were also some very difficult elements here. In particular, there are several parts of Southern states, particularly in Alabama, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, which had and still have to some extent an industrial economy, one which developed in the early and mid 20th due to the South's ununionized and cheap labor. These places mostly vote Republican these days--the industrial labor isn't and never really has been unionized to the same extent as the North, except in Alabama iirc. I most went with giving these areas to the Conservatives, with exception of urban centers and areas with a union tradition.

The other big question is racial polarization, and that was a bit easier because I just decided that it would basically pattern in the same way as the Democrats and Republicans do irl. That said, I did decide that Cubans would likely be Tory-leaning in a stronger way than irl, with a more overtly socialist Labour and a less overtly racist Conservative party.

Again, this is a rough election year for Labour (or should it be Labor?). In a better year they'd have MO-05, MO-08, KY-01, KY-02 and AL-05, with a decent shot at winning classic marginals NC-02, NC-08, NC-09, and mayyybe TX-14.

It's funny how in a lot of places these actually look a lot more like real results--that may actually be a Texas congressional map from the earlier part of last decade, and Georgia is of course identical to the map from 2015 to 2019. Really shows how much more the GOP has held up rich southern urban areas until the recent past.

The South is the massive problem area for this exercise as if you picked up the Tory Party and dumped them into America with a near-unchanged platform, they'd do horribly with Southern Evangelicals many of whom probably go third party. I'm sure if forced to choose the greater part would pick the Tories over Labour (particularly the rich suburban every-Sunday churchgoing types) but the very poor evangelicals in the backwaters would more not vote, back some Farage-esque third party or if very poor maybe even back Labour as the Tories aren't giving them as much of the cultural incentive to override their economic interests. Labour would do much better than in this map for these reasons, probably with a hard right insurgent party winning seats too.

[vileplume]

Though the poorest voters still *tend* to vote Labour in the UK, and Democrat in the US.

Income still matters, certainly much more than ever more amorphous concepts of "class".

I would say wealth as opposed to income as there are of relatively high earners (young renter in London/other big cities) who due to high cost of living is pretty cash poor by the end of the month. The elderly homeowner with a decent pension from some midlands town with an industrial heritage is much more financially secure than the young urban professional from the previous sentence despite on paper having a lower income.

Looking solely at income of an area won't really tell you much at all. You also control for cost of living factors, home ownership rates, poverty rates, wealth inequality etc. to draw accurate conclusions from the data.

Ash Sarkar was absolutely correct when she said (and I paraphrase) that Labour hasn't lost the working class, it's just the nature of who the working class is has fundamentally changed. The modern working class is not the mineworker and the steelworker, it's the call centre worker, the single mother working 3 jobs, the retail worker, the barista, the struggling young graduate doing a-not-great paying office job, the recent immigrant working minimum wage jobs that much of the rest of society won't do, much of the renter class etc. These people disproportionally live in big cities.

A lot of the sons and daughters of the aforementioned mineworkers and steelworkers on the other hand, who disproportionately live in provincial towns and villages, are homeowning pensioners and aren't working class anymore other than in the cultural sense of the word. Considering this, it's hardly surprising these people would go over to the Tories (their 'natural' home) when the cultural link with Labour was severed.

I don't know if the same sociological trends are as prevalent in the US but they will exist, at least to an extent.

[vileplume]

The embarrassment of revealed ignorance continues, with a pass at the South (excluding the southern states which are a part of the Northeast corridor, like Maryland, Virginia, and Delaware).



There were also some very difficult elements here. In particular, there are several parts of Southern states, particularly in Alabama, the Carolinas, and Tennessee, which had and still have to some extent an industrial economy, one which developed in the early and mid 20th due to the South's ununionized and cheap labor. These places mostly vote Republican these days--the industrial labor isn't and never really has been unionized to the same extent as the North, except in Alabama iirc. I most went with giving these areas to the Conservatives, with exception of urban centers and areas with a union tradition.

The other big question is racial polarization, and that was a bit easier because I just decided that it would basically pattern in the same way as the Democrats and Republicans do irl. That said, I did decide that Cubans would likely be Tory-leaning in a stronger way than irl, with a more overtly socialist Labour and a less overtly racist Conservative party.

Again, this is a rough election year for Labour (or should it be Labor?). In a better year they'd have MO-05, MO-08, KY-01, KY-02 and AL-05, with a decent shot at winning classic marginals NC-02, NC-08, NC-09, and mayyybe TX-14.

It's funny how in a lot of places these actually look a lot more like real results--that may actually be a Texas congressional map from the earlier part of last decade, and Georgia is of course identical to the map from 2015 to 2019. Really shows how much more the GOP has held up rich southern urban areas until the recent past.

The South is the massive problem area for this exercise as if you picked up the Tory Party and dumped them into America with a near-unchanged platform, they'd do horribly with Southern Evangelicals many of whom probably go third party. I'm sure if forced to choose the greater part would pick the Tories over Labour (particularly the rich suburban every-Sunday churchgoing types) but the very poor evangelicals in the backwaters would more not vote, back some Farage-esque third party or if very poor maybe even back Labour as the Tories aren't giving them as much of the cultural incentive to override their economic interests. Labour would do much better than in this map for these reasons, probably with a hard right insurgent party winning seats too.

I mean, the whole point of this exercise is that that's not what one does--rather it's about coming up with the closest fit for the parties involved's coalitions and stretching that in a case where that's not obvious. I obviously would have given UKIP some seats if I was modeling earlier elections, but I wasn't.

Precise realism isn't the goal--the point here is just a thought experiment.

I understand that, but if the Tories are doing worse than the GOP with poor white evangelicals than the GOP does (they'd win the rich ones) then it's inevitable that Labour would be competitive in many GOP held districts with high African American populations across the South. Examples of districts that would vote Labour or at least be competitive would be GA-01 and GA-12 (only Trump+12/Trump+13). Poor rural black voters (as well as those in Savanna and Augusta) would vote heavily as a block for Labour and if poor white evangelicals don't keep up near-GOP/North Korea-esque margins for the Tories (which is very unlikely) the districts go red.

The Tories would do significantly better than the GOP with a certain type of African American voter, the not-very liberal at all businessman/businesswoman, who would be found in places like the suburbs of Atlanta not in rural heavily African American towns. Rural heavily Black areas (of which there isn't a good comparison for in the UK) for historical reasons would be rock solid for the mainstream left whatever label they go by.

[vileplume]

In any case, at the risk of seeming dumb, I made the northeast corridor with UK-style parties. Might do the rest of the country in a bit.

I think this might actually work better for 2017 than 2019. A lot of reasonably working class post-industrial seats you have red would have flipped Conservative in 2019 (and would be pretty marginal before). As has been mentioned, Labour do crap in non-industrial rural areas so while there are post-industrial parts of Maine, New Hampshire and West Virginia that are strongly Labour, there are also parts that are near monolithically Conservative and would balance out the Labour vote to a large extent. Therefore, in 2019 the Conservatives would have flipped the central West Virginia district and potentially the northern one as well. The size of US congressional districts and states means that there would be many fewer safe seats in general.

On specific seats, Labour wouldn’t win the Staten Island based one, but they may win a couple more in New Jersey (modestly well off racial minorities and Catholics would mostly vote Labour, it’s the properly well off white suburbs/exurbs where they bomb). Labour wouldn’t win the central Pennsylvania district, but they might win the west central one (lots of coal mining history). The Portland district would probably vote Labour (and heading in the opposite direction to northern Maine) while Vermont wouldn’t necessarily be that safe for Labour. Unlike some other posters I actually agree on metro DC. Labour would do well on the Maryland side largely due to black voters and some working/reasonably middle class support, but do terribly on the Virginia side due to a combination of insane wealth, fewer racial minorities (and much of the non-white vote here is Asian which tends to be more class based), and employment being more defence/private sector based rather than civil service bureaucrats.

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.

[vileplume]

On Ohio 14, the suburbs nearest Cleveland are largely very well off but more importantly the district has a relatively large Jewish and Amish population, both of which would be very Conservative leaning. Therefore, the Labour voting industrial areas on Lake Erie would have been outvoted in 2019, though perhaps not in some previous elections.

It's hard to imagine the Amish swinging an election. I think that the general presumption among Americans would be that Amish do not vote at all (certainly this was my presumption until I looked into it); this is not necessarily true, but Amish turnout is low and Amish are not generally an electorally important demographic. A number I just found for Amish turnout in the 2004 presidential election is 13%, which apparently has not been exceeded since. I am also unsure that the Amish would be a comfortable fit with the Conservative Party.

On that note, I think a useful dimension of this exercise would be to look at how religious affiliation would affect voting patterns. I think it's fair to say that the historic Tory base would be mainline Protestants and the historic Labour base would be Catholics. Southern Baptists and non-denominational Protestants are not quite as obvious a Conservative demographic, but this exercise doesn't really work unless we conclude that nowadays they're largely a Tory demographic. Given the historic focus of the LDS church on anti-communism, Mormons are an obviously Conservative group. I'll leave the question of Jews to someone who is more able to speak on the social positions of Jews in America and in Britain.

I don't necessarily know how the social attitudes of American Jews differ from British ones, but Jews in Britain regardless of how secular they are have been Tory since at least the time of Thatcher (though they did swing back a bit over the Blair era). The Jewish areas in the corridor from Golders Green to Radlett for example, are generally very wealthy, and seem to me to be fairly socially liberal and secular. These areas tend to be the strongest most loyally Tory wards in the area (look at how the Golders Green, Garden Suburb, Finchley Church End, Mill Hill, Edgware wards in Barnet and the Elstree and 2 Aldenham wards in Hertsmere vote for example). Unless American Jews are just way more left wing than their British counterparts (this is something I don't know) then it's very likely they would have gone the same way, they 100% wouldn't have voted for Corbyn* though.

*Though tbf Corbyn would have lost all 50 states save *possibly* Maryland. 

[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.