The UK with Dems/GOP

[Хahar 🤔]

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).

[Хahar 🤔]

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).

Yeah, that's fair enough.

To be honest I think I keep on forgetting about the Lib Dems, in part because I'm trying to correct for a bias I have towards wanting the Labour Party to do well. Most of the places I would have pegged as Lib Dem-maybe some of the NoVA seats, SC-01, IL-09, maybe some of the Broward seats--would have otherwise gone with the Tories, and that felt kind of like hurting the Conservatives out of bias. Meanwhile the only Labour-held seat that seems like it could go Lib Dem thus far is NC-02 and MD-03.

Sure, I understand the impulse to just assume that Labour would win everywhere. I also don't exactly understand which urban voters who are too rich to vote Labour vote Conservative and which vote Liberal Democrat; my instinct as an American is to say that they'd all be Lib Dems, but that's clearly not right.

[Хahar 🤔]

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.

[Хahar 🤔]

The Mormon vote could be interesting. They strike me as a naturally small c conservative group and are reasonably well off, so they should largely vote Conservative. However, the much weaker polarisation around moral conservatism does suggest greater potential for Labour than the Democrats, at least in the urban centres of Utah.

I mentioned Mormons earlier and I'm not inclined to agree with this point. The history of Mormon involvement in politics is long and I would probably offend people if I said all of what I thought, but Mormons are different than evangelical Protestants in that their voting for right-wing candidates is not necessarily centered around moral conservatism. The important thing to remember here is that the Salt Lake City church hierarchy has historically been very strongly anti-communist. It's difficult to use foreign examples to draw any firm conclusions, since the historic policy encouraging European converts to come to Utah delayed the formation of substantial Mormon communities in Britain, but my guess is that an avowedly socialist party would do worse among Mormons than the Democratic Party.

[Хahar 🤔]

I find it quite unlikely that the San Francisco district would vote for any party but Labour.  As Alcibiades points out, San Francisco has a long history of great union strength. San Francisco also has unusually regimented and organized local politics, with a remarkably well-defined left and right faction. Transported to a British context, I don't think that these factions would represent different parties; it seems more likely to me that they would be competing factions within the Labour Party. The relationship between capital and labor and the activist class feels too close for them to be represented by different parties. My guess is that this in turn would discourage substantial non-Labour organization within the city. You could have seen a strong Liberal Democrat vote in 2005 for obvious reasons, but I don't think that there would be the sort of Liberal Democrat organization necessary for long-term strength.

The counterpoint here that comes to mind is that Liverpool has for a substantial length of time been governed by Liberal and Liberal Democrat councils. I don't know enough to understand the underlying difference between Liverpool and the monolithically Labour council of Manchester or which of those cities would be more like San Francisco.

This isn't a fun answer, but the issue with suggesting a Green victory in San Francisco is that American congressional districts are so large. It is difficult to imagine the Green Party ever winning a constituency with a population close to 800,000.