The UK with Dems/GOP

[JimJamUK]

I wonder though if Wales isn't perhaps a bit like West Virginia. There are similarities beyond the superficial.

I’m not so sure. The Welsh Valleys had 55%-60% Leave votes in 2016, while Wales as a whole voted the same as the UK and still stands out as much more Labour than a simple demographic model would suggest. I think we can be pretty confident West Virginia would be much more pro Brexit and culturally conservative. The Welsh Valleys would therefore be more comparable to places like the Wyoming Valley (Scranton) which had enduring Democratic strength until Clinton and still aren’t completely gone, while West Virginia (and similar parts of Kentucky, Ohio etc) would be more like County Durham and the Midlands where Republicans would be winning seats well before Clinton (most of the non-metropolitan Midlands would probably be gone by 2000).

[JimJamUK]

Would Cities of London and Westminister be very Republican?  Always was confused by seeing Mark Field (is that his name?) win every single year in what I would think would be a very very blue district in the U.S... isn't it like our Manhattan districts?

The Upper East Side is overwhelmingly Democratic and Cities of London and Westminster is more socially mixed, so yeah. Middle class, metropolitan, remain voting Tories and especially Lib Dems would largely be Democrats. See also, inner London seats like Kensington, Chelsea and Fulham, and all of Wandsworth, as well as more suburban areas like Twickenham and Finchley and Golders Green. Put it this way, if Democrats aren’t massively over-performing Labour in these sorts of places, then where would they be?

[JimJamUK]

That map doesn't see to make a lot of sense. Surely NE Ohio would be better for a social democratic/union dominated than Southern Ohio? Why would Labor do better in say Denton + Collin? A lot of the assumptions are whack.

Labour would do well in the coal mining/industrial parts of south-east Ohio, but the complete lack of differentiation between them and the more generic rural areas shows the flaws in this model (and potentially any model). I think if they included class, age and agricultural employment they would get a more accurate result.

[JimJamUK]

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.

[JimJamUK]

My logic for that was that PA-14 does have quite a bit of exurban, and frankly in some parts, suburban areas, which more closely fits the description of a flipping district which vileplume gave. If you look at income maps of the Pittsburgh area lots of PA-14 is very poor but there are also big chunks of Westmoreland and Washington counties which are quite prosperous.

I don't the demographics of PA-12 and PA-09 super well, but both have very poor industrial areas. Though there is the much more Tory seeming area of Lebanon in PA-09.

14 has some ex industrial areas that would traditionally be monolithically Labour and still pretty comfortably so, while the exurban developments would be hurting Labour but Pittsburgh would probably be one of the most cultural Labour metropolitan areas so even wealthy commuters may not have flipped the seat in 2019.

I haven’t got the population distribution to hand, but 9 strikes me as definitely Conservative in 2019 and probably 2017 actually given how much of it is either exurban Berks or agricultural. 12 is a safe Conservative seat as the post-industrial small towns, insofar as they vote Labour, would be outvoted by the large agricultural areas and the Harrisburg commuter belt in the south of the district.

[JimJamUK]

I think you might be underestimating the extent to which both PA-09 and PA-12 are both quite ex-industrial.

In PA-09 everything north of Berks is ex-coalmining areas, which is why Democrats used to win a lot of those bits. That certainly doesn't mean they wouldn't have flipped in 2019 of course--independent of Labour collapsing with rural voters there's also a decent counterweight in Lebanon and northern Berks, which is more ag oriented.

PA-12 doesn't really have much in the way of Harrisburg commuterland fwiw--Perry is part of the MSA but it's a quite peripheral area to that metro area and is a pretty small percentage of the district's population. I can buy it flipping for sure but Labour probably has a high floor on account of State College and the small post-industrial cities and towns (Williamsport is a big place!)

The coalfield in PA-09 is actually a lot smaller that it might immediately appear. Montour, Columbia and a good chunk of Lucerne isn’t ex coal mining, and even quite a bit of Carbon and Schuylkill is exurban/rural. These areas are largely not voting Labour. It’s the sort of district that because of population trends would have been a lot better for Labour in the past than now.

That’s a fair comment re; Harrisburg. What I meant was that the southern end is reasonably well off given how rural it is which will in part be Harrisburg commuters (but also for other small cities I concede). I just don’t think the small industrial cities would be able to carry Labour over the line. Williamsport isn’t tiny, but it’s still only a small proportion of the district, and a few other small urban areas like State College, Bradford, Lewisburg don’t add up to much more. Most of the population of the district lives in non-incorporated rural areas which would vote overwhelmingly Conservative (as they long have Republican).

[JimJamUK]

Part 3:

Another good attempt which is mostly agree with. Nit-picking, i suspect Minnesota 8th would very likely have flipped Conservative in 2019, the actual Iron Range is quite small and Labour would need very large margins out of it and Duluth to overcome the agricultural areas (which they would have got pre-2019). Ohio 14th would also likely have voted Conservative as its mostly suburban/exurban Cleveland. I also don't think Michigan 1st would be a swing district, the Upper Peninsula would be winnable but the Lower Peninsula part is either agricultural or vacation homes, both awful places for Labour. Its a similar case for Wisconsin 7th (but the Green Bay based 8th district would certainly be winnable for Labour). I also suspect Indiana 8th (SW Indiana) is post-industrial enough to be won pre-2019.

[JimJamUK]

The problem with identifying Lib Dem voting places is that in the UK basically anywhere that votes for them these days is voting based on local circumstances rather than natural national voting intention. Even the most obvious place of modern Lib Dem strength (SW London) sees their support decline heavily on the London Mayor/Assembly elections. Therefore, its hard to identify which places would for historical reasons have backed the Lib Dems and because of local strength have continued to do so, while its also unclear which middle class socially liberal districts would see their 'natural' Lib Dem vote of 20-25% double to actually elect Lib Dem Congressmen.

[JimJamUK]

Wrt: MN-08, I think that Labour probably would have just held on. The Iron Range is actually quite a lot of the seat--it's just shy of an outright majority. Quite a bit of MN-08 is also not especially agricultural--a lot of it is historic logging territory actually so I assume Labour would do a bit more similarly to Democrats irl. Plus I could see Labour actually doing even better with natives. Similar story with WI-07 and MI-1 except the proportions are different, but all have a strong historic Labour base as they did irl--the whole industrial zone by Lake Superior historically in the U.S. was far left and union heavy even in comparison to other similar areas in the rest of the country, and would consequently probably give Labour insane margins even if they were slightly cut down in 2019.

I don't know the Cleveland area especially well, but I get the impression that OH-14 is heavy on the kind of lower middle class "white ethnic" voters who also predominate in places like IL-03. Cleveland also seemed to me to resemble the kind of place, like Merseyside, where Labour might overperform due to the conservatives being uniquely weak. There's also Ashtabula which seems like it would give Labour a strong floor.

WI-08 is interesting--it doesn't seem to me like a Labour-friendly seat, given the importance of tourism and that the Fox Cities are sort of quintessential right wing voting areas--small, not too unionized, homogenous, and relatively middle class and economically stable. But I easily could be wrong!

You're definitely right wrt: IN-8; I always forget the coalmining history of that part of the country. There's a decent argument for Labour also having a shot at Mary Miller's district too, lol.

Something I didn't really talk about but which matters also I think are kind of parochial or historic influences on voter behavior which are particularly pronounced in the Midwest, like the sort of inordinate strength Republicans have in Cincinnati or Eastern Wisconsin. Not really sure how to model these--it doesn't matter a ton anyway given that the vagaries of the lines kind of take away that question, but it's sort of an interesting thought experiment.

I suspect we might be using different definitions of the Iron Range. The Arrowhead region makes up a large portion of Minnesota 8th but the actual mining communities in the Iron Range only make up the minority of a few counties. Its the latter which would have a very good Labour vote (certainly better than the Democrats particularly in the southern end). Thats a fair point on logging, I suspect Labour would do better with these communities than the average English rural community, but unless there's some small scale urbanisation I suspect it would only be relative success (definitely not as well as Democrats have traditionally done).

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.

That cultural point is potentially correct, but it seems to me that a fairly urban district with an industrial history should be winnable for Labour, and I suspect German Catholics in these sorts of areas would be more friendly to Labour than they have been in recent decades to Democrats. But I may be completely wrong as well!

[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.

[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.

[JimJamUK]

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.

[JimJamUK]

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

-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

I agree that parts of the West Coast would be Lib Dem territory, particularly the Bay Area. Very socially liberal but wealthy suburban areas aren’t a good fit for either Labour or the Conservatives and consequently tend to have a very good Lib Dem vote (think Oxford West and Abingdon, South Cambridgeshire etc). However, I still think Labour would win San Francisco and Seattle themselves, as even pretty wealthy but ‘alternative’ urban centres vote Labour these days. They might have voted Lib Dem pre-2015, but will have been lost by 2015 and the Lib Dem’s ended up even further behind in their Labour marginals in 2017 and made little progress in 2019.

[JimJamUK]

It probably goes without saying that Orange County would be absolute garbage for Labour. The white vote would be VERY strongly Conservative, and the Asian vote would perhaps be even more so. Labour would basically be restricted to a (relatively modest) majority of Hispanics. Basically anything that flipped IRL in 2018 wouldn’t be remotely winnable.

[JimJamUK]

I would give Jayapal's seat to the Greens, but I agree they'd be in with a shout in San Francisco, too, and probably also in the CA North Coast district.

The CA North Coast district would be the only Green-Con marginal in the country. Lib Dems might have done well and won it in 2005 (or maybe even a bit earlier) with their base in Marin and the wealthier parts of Sonoma first, losing it to the Cons in 2015, but then the Greens would have come through in 2019 to win it after the LDs crashed in part to tactical voting. The Greens would always have had a significant presence in Mendocino and Humboldt, their base in the district, although those areas probably would have tactically voted LD before 2015. Labour would have been relevant in those places and in Del Norte in the past due to the lumber industry but would have disappeared in the region by 2005.

The CA North Coast district is the only place in the country where local US Green parties have in the recent past actually won local elections (e.g., they governed Sebastopol for a while in the 00s and Arcata in the 90s), so of course the less-fringe UK Greens would be very successful.

San Francisco strikes me as a much better prospect than anywhere else in the Bay Area. It’s worth remembering that the only constituency the Greens have actually won IRL is Brighton Pavilion, on a low vote share and benefitting from both major parties having no-go areas within the constituency pre-2010. The only other constituency where they’ve came reasonably close in Bristol West, with a collection of low double digit vote shares over time mainly in other left-liberal urban areas. The party can of course win the odd council seat and is now even building up proper strength in some council areas, but this usually just means keeping their deposit come a general election. Therefore, the Greens could hypothetically do well at local/state elections in the Bay Area, but mostly make little headway when it comes to Congressional districts, particularly in the more right wing areas (the national Green vote is a more left-liberal protest vote than their local elections vote which in places where are competitive is a lot more, well, Lib Dem style localist).