heh,
prior to 2018 I often thought of Pima County, AZ as voting relatively modest for the Democratic Party despite a large Hispanic population and white liberals. Tucson suburbs used to provided ginormous for the gop.
Like looking back at Obama in 2008, he actually won a decent number of majorty-white precincts that would’ve voted for McCain in cities like Dallas or Phoenix.
By 2020, there were very few suburban/exurban Trump precincts, and the few there are were lightred.
And Kelly in 2022 basically sweeped all of greater Tucson
A big theme of these southern cities is having pretty dense outer Republican leaning suburbs and exurbs, which Tucson just lacks, and unlike a city like Austin, there doenst seem an obvious reason why industry would make it particularly liberal. Any ideas?
Tucson does have suburbs, but they are relatively small in proportion to the metro compared to other major cities. Irrespective, they used to have high turn out and provide margins needed for the GOP to be competitive in Pima County.
People in Tucson tended to be quite environmentally sensitive, and that was/is a major part of its Democratic leanings.
