Posted on 11/04/2004 3:06:08 AM PST by NZerFromHK
When I look at US presidential election results, one thing which strikes this foreigner is how uniformly left-wing the mega cities are. For instance, only 15% of votes from New York City area went to Bush.
I never understand why this could take place. There must be some poeple who work in whatever jobs (finance, engineers, IT etc) and start thinking "Umm, social security system is broke and the Democrats are calling to maintain the status quo. Bush mentions he will look at ways to restructure so he should get my vote."
Could anyone suggest why this is happening? Is it because votes are counted on a county basis? Because the middle class don't bother to vote? Because they are so blind to social liberalism that they overlook high taxation? Or because US cities are usually small so what we define as city suburbs in New Zealand are usually under another name?
(To offer a perspective in comparison the New Zealand Parliament has around 20-22 seats for what we call Greater Auckland Area - the largest city in New Zealand. We have four major cities under Auckland and 3 districts in our area and that means around 8 Parliament seats in the City of Auckland proper. Of the 8 seats, one would be proper city centre area, 2 would be the burb next to the city centre, and the rest suburb seats. Now 5 of them have the right in power and 3 by the left - it is not uniformly left-wing)
To limit the scope I'm looking particularly at New York City (tri state area) and wider Los Angeles Area (including outer burbs like Orange county, etc).
Thanks for the answers in advance.
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the public treasure. From that moment on the majority always votes for the candidates promising the most money from the public treasury, with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy followed by a dictatorship. The average age of the world's great civilizations has been two hundred years. These nations have progressed through the following sequence: from bondage to spiritual faith, from spiritual faith to great courage, from courage to liberty, from liberty to abundance, from abundance to selfishness, from selfishness to complacency from complacency to apathy, from apathy to dependency, from dependency back to bondage."
--Lord Alexander Tytler on the fall of the Athenian republic
Tell me that the major cities -- worldwide -- do not fall into this mold, and mold their inhabitants into expecting 'the government' to "do something about ......".
I live on the only borough in New York City that went for Bush, Staten Island. Bush got 56% of the vote, which is a record for the borough. Incidentally, this borough is also home to most of the city's cops and firefighters. I don't think that's a coincidence.
I'm interested at how congress seats (US level and state) are divided in NYC. Are there congress seats that get conservatives elected? (We do have many here in Auckland)
My congressman, Vito Fossella, is the lone Republican in New York City. And he's by no means a RINO -- he's a conservative and everything.
Thanks. I live in a conservative suburb in Auckland and our electorate (district) is an extremely safe conservative seat. Put in a regular conservative and a more moderate regular conservative, both would rank 1 and 2 in an election and the leftist candidate would be ranked third with a large margin behind. Perhaps because NZ is a small country and we have more reps (4 million for 76 seats)
How to explain this? We now have enclaves of the receivers of social welfare and government workers purveying that welfare being the predominant operation in big cities. Schools and the NEA come to mind. Also the preponderance of service (nonmanufacturing) jobs are there.
Thanks.
Corruption. Big city Democratic machines spend taxpayer dollars to pass out patronage and lies. In return, they reap voter dependence and massive vote fraud.
I have a friend that lives in Auckland. I intend to visit some day :). That said, I don't think you understand the enormity of people. I work in Bergan County New Jersey it's a "burb" with lots of towns, 30+ if I had to guess. Population for the county is over 850,000. Based on the Auckland website, this county alone is nearly double the entire population of Auckland. There's another half dozen counties in the area with similar sized populations.
In Otherwords, our "suburbs" are huge. Your downtown is our Rural Farmland, hehe. So while a conservative can win in the burbs, it's nearly impossible in the city(NYC) where 9 Million people.
I suspect it has alot to do with an entitlement mentality. They expect twice a week garbage pickup. Got a pothole, call 311. The Firehouse is 2 blocks away, the police station 3. There's buses, subways, and 20 of everything you could ever want, much of it is provided by the gov't.
For example, I used to live in Rural Ohio, if someone was making too much noise partying late into the night, we go over, ask them to tone it down. That's unthinkable in NYC. That's what 311 is for, and that's what the cops are for. That's what government does for you. Makes you comfortable, solves all your problems. Tax Cuts? How can we pay for twice a week garabage pickup, with a Tax cut! Unthinkable, my god, my trash will stink up the whole house, Unthinkable! Run that Liar out, Tax cuts are bad! Get the idea?
Actually a lot of poeple working at service sectors in NZ do vote right fro time to time. And how about those who are self-employed or working in jobs like finance, engineering, etc?
I think we probably have different definition of suburbs. :) We have over 20 suburbs in Auckland City alone and we sort of define it like districts. In other words, Bergen county would have 30 suburbs in ourdefinition, and we would also have divided NYC with 30-40 "suburbs" outside downtown. And in NZ we have reps elected for every 2-3 suburbs - if the whole NYC has reps in US house of Rep the same proportion as NZ Parliament, you would have over 600 reps alone! :) I guess with such density we have a much larger chance of getting conservatives represented.
I suspect it has alot to do with an entitlement mentality. They expect twice a week garbage pickup. Got a pothole, call 311. The Firehouse is 2 blocks away, the police station 3. There's buses, subways, and 20 of everything you could ever want, much of it is provided by the gov't.
We all have the same things, except we contract out all public transportations to private companies to run through competitive tendering (and we don't pay anything to supplement their costs except for nighttime and weekend services). It runs much less than the government run buses in the 1980s.
I always found that America has less socialism and bureaucracy in general, but once you goes to bureaucracy they are a lot nastier than NZ and US metros is a lot more socialist at inner city level than comparable cities here.
For example, having worked in NYC for the past few decades, I have worked with many gay people. An impressive percentage of these have come from the south or the mid-west. These non-mainstreamers will always be left of center politically.
And, it's not only homosexuals. People who are "genetic" socialists, the guilt-ridden and driven "do-gooders," the "artistes," etc., all find a more congenial home in LA, Chicago or NYC than they would in Athens, Georgia or Evansville, Indiana.
Thanks. We also have them but we also have a fair share of free market people and social conservatives (although sc are quite rare these days I confess) who vote conservative people. How about those born in NYC? There must at least be some who turn out to be conservatives.
We are a relatively small minority and we get pummeled by the libs all the time; so, people whom are not that committed to the correct political philosophy or who do not have the "bottle" to stand up to the onslaught, just fall into line with the prevailing socialist line.
When you look at how totally biased papers like the NY Times and LA Times are, you can see how such islands of ignorance form. These people aren't only twisted in how they view the world, they are given incorrect and incomplete "facts" on which to base their decision.
I live a county west of Malsua, in what can still be considered semi-rural. Using the NZ definition of a suburb (district), there are probably 600+ suburbs for NY. Running all the way from Eastern Pennsylvania to the Southwest corner of Massachusetts, and the from Southern New Jersey to the far tip of Long Island, NY.
Check out this post, http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a3a34e1c42411.htm
notice that huge blob of yellow light around NYC, it's all suburbs, the Republican/Conservative population is in the middle and edges, the Democrat base live in the center(NYC proper).
You have to admit they get an almost daily dose of undiluted hatred toward Bush in the media. And NY is simply a liberal bastion where almost everyone thinks the same.
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