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>The Northeast is generally thought of as the most liberal part of America (aside from coastal California maybe). I sure don't think of the northeast that way.
by xiaoma 10y ago
>The Northeast is generally thought of as the most liberal part of America (aside from coastal California maybe).
I sure don't think of the northeast that way. I see it as fairly conservative both in politics and business. One data point is that it wasn't anywhere in the northeast that first legalized weed. It was Colorado and Washington, followed by Oregon and Alaska. Another data point is that people wear jeans or shorts at work in Silicon Valley (or Socal, Oregon, Colorado, etc) whereas they're far more likely to be required to wear suits in the north east.
The northeast is very urban, which has some overlapping effects with but is still very different from actually being liberal. Change is mostly driven by the west. It's just that the change reaches the dense cities of the northeast more quickly than the rural areas in between.
- Grishnakh 10y agoExcellent point, but good luck convincing all the Hillary-voting, suit-wearing Democrats in the northeast that they're not "liberal". Just look at the other responses to my post here even. But agreed, there's absolutely a huge difference between west coast liberals and east coast "liberals". The marijuana issue is an interesting thing to look at too, when you compare to red-vs-blue state maps. The "liberal" northeast still hasn't legalized weed (not even Vermont), whereas Colorado was one of the first two, and CO is a rather purple state (CO Springs is a ridiculously conservative place), and Alaska is very much a red state, being the place that elected Palin governor. It really seems to come down to social libertarianism versus authoritarianism. The "liberals" in the northeast want to ban sodas for your health, whereas the liberals in the west want to legalize drugs.
- zardo 10y agoThat just gets to how silly the idea is that you can map policy opinions onto a single principal component and get good separation.
- Grishnakh 10y agoExactly; we try to distill everything political in this country into two "teams", but the problem is that the teams are not even remotely homogeneous or agreed on policies. Trump vs. establishment GOP and Bernie vs. establishment DNC show this.