Why are downtown Austin precincts not very D?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Austin is by far the most liberal part of Texas, with many heavily white precincts giving Biden over 70 or even 80% of the vote.

Yet the small collections of precincts that make up downtown Austin vote notably less D than their surroundings, many giving Trump ~30% of the vote and voting outright for Rs in the past decade. These days the downtown precincts are obviously safe D, but there's a huge difference between D + 40 and the D + 80 I would expect.

You'd think the dense downtown of such a liberal city would be like D+80 or something as we see in downtown Philadelphia, Atlanta, or New York City. But nope.

Why is this? Does it have to something with the state capital being there? Are the people who self-sort into the immediate downtown more Conservative than their suburban peers somehow?

[ProgressiveModerate]

Isn't this kind of similar to Charlotte?

To some extent, but in Charlotte it could just be because the downtown precincts are whiter than the more heavily black precincts that surround them. In Austin, you have the downtown precincts (which are fairly white) voting well to the right of mostly white inner-ring suburban precincts.

[ProgressiveModerate]

It looks like the core of downtown Austin has doubled in population between 2010 and 2020, going from 5000ish people to 10000ish people. If it's anything like the downtowns of other big Southern cities, it probably didn't have too many people before the present-day boom and a good chunk of those new residents are condo-dwellers paying a premium to live downtown.

Austin has a lot of interesting and culturally rich neighborhoods, so choosing to live downtown means you're probably more focused on work instead of experiencing the city's culture. People of that class and with those priorities voting to the right of the rest of the city makes sense imo.

Interesting point, but counterpoint: the downtown is a neighborhood in itself and generally those who are willing to give up a single family home with backyard for living in a dense walkable urban neighborhood skew heavily D.

[ProgressiveModerate]

The CBDs of many Sun Belt cities are more GOP-voting than their other urban neighborhoods.  A lot of it is explained by racial demographics, but it's also the case that suits-in-a-glass-penthouse will skew more conservative than the kombucha-drinking gentrifiers who prefer more creative settings. 

Austin isn't even the best place to see this.  The main downtown precincts in Houston and Nashville voted for Romney!

Yes, but tbf Houston generally lacks liberal whites so the CBD not being that blue makes sense in the context of Houston

How downtown Austin votes isn't necessarily weird in itself, but it's weird in the context of Austin which is such a liberal city.