Can any other US city/metro ever match the geopolitical chaos of NYC?

[ProgressiveModerate]

I was looking at 2022 Gov precinct results in NYC, and was like damn, this is actually insane:



Tons of urban R+80 enclaves next to the sea of D+90 communities. Lots of cultural and political self-sorting leading to some pretty crazy political geography in the suburbs. This is largely thanks to intense racial, ethnic, and cultural sorting.

However, it feels as if most other US cities are heading towards this reality where political geography is just a blue blob - downtown is deep blue, and the further out one gets in the suburbs the redder it gets with little variation. The only significant cities that come to mind as exceptions are Miami and a few smaller southern cities where racial polarization is still very strong. Chicago for instance doesn't really have any notable R enclaves in the city proper, and the suburbs are a relatively geopolitically homogenous apron of D+15ish communities.

Even within Dem primaries, you often just get lame regional divides.

One thought I have is metro Houston, Houston, especially southwest metro Houston is receiving an influx of tons of different unique ethnicities, but they don't seem to sort as aggressively enough to result in NYC levels of geopolitical chaos.

[ottermax]

Several sun belt metros are maybe less "distinct" in their patterns especially due to a lack of density... but would be considered fairly chaotic or complex to understand at first glance.

Las Vegas comes first to mind with its almost unpredictable patchwork of somewhat integrated neighborhoods making it very difficult to make sweeping conclusions about specific communities.

South Florida has some similarities to NYC in terms of ethnicity-driven patterns of extreme voting percentages.

And as you mentioned, Houston and DFW to some extent don't fit the neat bullseye pattern we might expect with the modern day party alignment. However, it seems like 2016 or 2020 may have been the peak for urban-rural polarization so NYC might just be a preview of what is to come for other metros especially with more diversity.