# What are the most conservative and most liberal cities in the US **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [April 25, 2014, 11:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999 "2014-04-25T23:21:42Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![njtt](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/ecd19e/32.png) [@njtt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/njtt)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/21 "2014-04-27T12:33:13Z")
> [@Baker](#): > > I like how James J. Kilpatrck, whom many considered “conservative”, defined the term. > > _If there is one basic tenet of conservatisn it is that government has no business meddling in the private lives of a free people._ So apparently Kilpatrick thought “conservative” meant" libertarian". It doesn’t, although some people with libertarian views are also very conservative in some respects. Obviously he was an ignorant man. ---
**Author:** ![MichaelQReilly](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/df705f/32.png) [@MichaelQReilly](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MichaelQReilly)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 1:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/22 "2014-04-27T13:48:02Z")
Burlington, Vermont. The most liberal town in the most liberal state. ---
**Author:** ![mhendo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mhendo/32/3159_2.png) [@mhendo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mhendo)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 4:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/23 "2014-04-27T16:29:07Z")
> [@njtt](#): > > So apparently Kilpatrick thought “conservative” meant" libertarian". It doesn’t, although some people with libertarian views are also very conservative in some respects. Obviously he was an ignorant man. Libertarian thought has been an important part of American conservatism for most of the post-WWII period. In fact, one of the key problems in constructing a unified, national conservative movement in America has been bringing together the libertarian and the traditionalist wings of conservatism. A far back as the 1940s, libertarian types who followed the ideas of F.A. Hayek (and, later, Milton Friedman) felt they had little in common with the traditionalist (often, but not always, Catholic) conservatives who followed the moral conservatism and anti-modern teachings of Russell Kirk. The two groups, at least at the intellectual level, were brought together in a loose alliance by William F. Buckley, under the umbrella of his _National Review_ publication. In the broader public culture, the conservative movement was helped by the abortion issue, which quelled some of the suspicion that American evangelical Protestants had felt about Catholic moral conservatism, and brought the Protestants and Catholics together to oppose Roe v. Wade. The detente, at the intellectual and the cultural level, was always fraught with tension, and the libertarians and traditionalists have always been very wary of one another. At least intellectual conservatives, to their credit, have generally recognized the tensions between laissez-faire, free-market ideology and traditionalist, moral governance. In the broader world of conservative politics, though, there have been plenty of Americans who have been willing to pretend that there is no inconsistency between crying “small government” out of one side of the mouth, when it comes to taxes and regulation, and crying for government to discriminate against the dissenters and the homos and the brown and black people, out of the other. The Republican Party has often managed to quell the infighting sufficiently to mount a unified candidate in Presidential elections, but the wide variety of conservative political positions among individual Republicans shows that the libertarian/traditionalist schism is still a powerful force in national conservative politics. One area where it’s been very evident over the past ten years or so is in the gay marriage debate. For the most part, libertarian types have no real interest in denying gays the right to vote, and this has not gone over well with the moral conservatives of the Bible Belt. ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [April 27, 2014, 5:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/24 "2014-04-27T17:16:37Z")
> [@MichaelQReilly](#): > > Burlington, Vermont. The most liberal town in the most liberal state. I came here to say this. I’d also consider Brattleboro, after a significant portion of the town started walking around naked, although that was several years ago. Also, Northampton, MA has to rival Eugene for lesbians per capita. ---
**Author:** ![Lamar\_Mundane](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/85f322/32.png) [@Lamar\_Mundane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamar_Mundane)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 12:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/25 "2014-04-28T00:44:41Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > As far as Provo, UT I thought that was a bastion of liberalism in a red state. Maybe my info was wrong. That’s Salt Lake City. Provo is about 95% Mormon and the home of BYU. It is blood red. SLC most recently had a quite liberal Democratic mayor. ---
**Author:** ![even\_sven](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/dfb087/32.png) [@even\_sven](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/even_sven)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 1:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/26 "2014-04-28T01:58:30Z")
It’s hard to get more liberal than Santa Cruz, CA. It makes Berkeley look like Pat Buchanan. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 7:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/27 "2014-04-28T07:07:17Z")
See also this thread started by me from half a decade ago (can’t believe its been that long…): [http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529405](http://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=529405) ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/28 "2014-04-28T07:09:01Z")
> [@Rick\_Kitchen](#): > > Green Party candidates get more votes in San Francisco than Republican Party candidates, even though Democrats run the city. > Nudity is legal in San Francisco unless it involves sitting in public places where other people might be unwilling to sit where you were just sitting. Not according to this where Romney won around 47,000 votes while Stein won 5,000. Don’t know about the nudity part: [http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2012-general/ssov/pres-by-political-districts.pdf](http://www.sos.ca.gov/elections/sov/2012-general/ssov/pres-by-political-districts.pdf) ---
**Author:** ![Wendell\_Wagner](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/8491ac/32.png) [@Wendell\_Wagner](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wendell_Wagner)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 7:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/29 "2014-04-28T07:43:57Z")
I think that you’re not very accurate about what are the most liberal and most conservative cities in the U.S. You’re assuming that a city in which hip, newish ideas are commonly discussed are liberal (which are often college towns). That’s only part of being liberal. Look at the charts in this report (page 8 for most conservative cities and page 10 for most liberal cities): [http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/metro/081205libs.pdf](http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/metro/081205libs.pdf) Cities that have large African-American populations tend to be liberal. Cities with large amounts of poor people tend to be liberal. Cities with large college student populations tend to be liberal. Cities with large numbers of single people tend to be liberal. Cities in the middle of Boswash, Sansan, and Chipitts tend to be liberal: > **[BosWash](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BosWash)** > > BosWash is a name coined by futurist Herman Kahn in a 1967 essay describing a theoretical United States megalopolis extending from the metropolitan area of Boston to that of Washington, D.C. The publication coined terms like BosWash, referring to predicted accretions of the Northeast, and SanSan (San Francisco to San Diego) for the urbanized region in Coastal California. The general concept for the area described by BosWash was first identified (with the name "Megalopolis") as "The Atlantic Bo... > **[California megapolitan areas](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SanSan)** > > California's major urban areas normally are thought of as two large megalopolises: one in Northern California and one in Southern California, separated from each other by approximately 382 miles or 615 km (the distance from Los Angeles to San Francisco), with sparsely inhabited (relatively) Central Coast, Central Valley, and Transverse Ranges in between. Other ideas conceive of a single megalopolis encompassing both North and South, or a division of Coastal California vs. Inland California. Th Be... > **[Great Lakes megalopolis](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Lakes_Megalopolis)** > > The Great Lakes megalopolis consists of the group of metropolitan areas in North America largely in the Great Lakes region. It extends from the Midwestern United States in the south and west to western Pennsylvania and Western New York in the east and northward through Southern Ontario into southwestern Quebec in Canada. It is the most populated and largest megalopolis in North America. > At its most inclusive, in the United States the region cuts a wide swath from the twin cities of Minneapolis–S... Cities that have very few African-Americans tend to be conservative. Cities with large Mormon populations tend to be conservative. To a lesser degree, cities with large evangelical Christian populations tend to be conservative. Cities on the edge of Sansan tend to be conservative. Smaller cities in Texas tend to be conservative. You’re going to say, “But, these characteristics of both liberalism and conservatism are contradictory.” And you’re right. Liberalism and conservatism in the U.S. are both massive confused coalitions of people. It’s partly because there are clear distinctions in what is meant by economic and cultural conservatism and what is meant by economic and cultural conservatism. But it’s worse than that. The characteristics that we think of as liberal and conservative are a huge collection of basically unrelated ideas which we’ve smushed together. Whenever this is discussed, the examples of liberal cities that people name are smaller cities with some tendency toward hipper ideas. That doesn’t prove that they are liberal. That may make a cute TV show about their eccentricities, but it doesn’t correlate well with people’s actual beliefs and voting patterns. It’s possible for someone with hip ideas and habits to be very economically conservative. ---
**Author:** ![puddleglum](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/puddleglum/32/137_2.png) [@puddleglum](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/puddleglum)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/30 "2014-04-28T15:08:57Z")
It is hard to quantify liberal or conservative. It is much easier to know which towns vote consrvative or liberal the most. The most liberal city by voting is Detroit, and the most heavily conservative city is Provo, Utah. The only large cities that vote Republican are Phoenix, Oklahoma City, Fort Worth, and Salt Lake City. The 25 most liberal cities by voting are Detroit, MI: Gary, IN;, Berkeley, CA, the District of Columbia; Oakland, CA; Inglewood, CA; Newark, NJ; Cambridge, MA; San Francisco, CA; Flint, MI; Cleveland, OH; Hartford, CT; Paterson, NJ; Baltimore, MD; New Haven, CT; Seattle, WA; Chicago, IL; Philadelphia, PA; Birmingham, AL; St. Louis, MO; New York, NY; Providence, RI; Minneapolis, MN; Boston, MA; and Buffalo, NY. The most conservative cities by voting are Provo, UT, Lubbock, TX; Abilene, TX; Hialeah, FL; Plano, TX; Colorado Springs, CO; Gilbert, AZ; Bakersfield, CA; Lafayette, LA; Orange, CA; Escondido, CA; Allentown, PA; Mesa, AZ; Arlington, TX; Peoria, AZ; Cape Coral, FL; Garden Grove, CA; Simi Valley, CA; Corona, CA; Clearwater, FL; West Valley City, UT; Oklahoma City, OK; Overland Park, KS; Anchorage, AK; and Huntington Beach, CA. With the exception of Provo all of the conservative cities are less conservative voting than the liberal cities. This [information](http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/metro/081205libs.pdf)is about ten years old. ---
**Author:** ![astorian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ad7895/32.png) [@astorian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/astorian)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 3:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/31 "2014-04-28T15:52:35Z")
People are often surprised to find that, even in the Sun Belt, big cities are dominated by Democrats, often liberal ones. People often assume that Houston and Dallas are Republican strongholds. Not so. Oh, the SUBURBS of Houston and Dallas are very conservative, but the cities themselves always elect Democrat mayors Houston is the largest city in the USA with an openly gay mayor. The most conservative “cities” are probably large suburbs like Plano, Texas. ---
**Author:** ![snowthx](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowthx/32/10660_2.png) [@snowthx](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/snowthx)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/32 "2014-04-28T20:48:58Z")
> [@astorian](#): > > People are often surprised to find that, even in the Sun Belt, big cities are dominated by Democrats, often liberal ones. > > People often assume that Houston and Dallas are Republican strongholds. Not so. Oh, the SUBURBS of Houston and Dallas are very conservative, but the cities themselves always elect Democrat mayors Houston is the largest city in the USA with an openly gay mayor. > > The most conservative “cities” are probably large suburbs like Plano, Texas. I was thinking along the same lines. It seems cities tend to be more on the Liberal side, while rural areas tend to be more Conservative. A slight tangent to the OP: what are the most Conservative cities, and the most Liberal rural counties? ---
**Author:** ![RickG](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/rickg/32/5174_2.png) [@RickG](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickG)\ **Post date:** [April 28, 2014, 10:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/33 "2014-04-28T22:22:02Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > As a Boulder resident, I’d dispute the “most liberal” label. It used to be, but the city has changed a lot over the years. It’s now a very expensive place to live so the hippies have moved out, and now it’s full of scientists and engineers. > > It certainly votes Democrat, and it isn’t conservative at all, but it is more libertarian than liberal these days. Real libertarian, not what some right wingers like Rand Paul thinks that means. It means that you stay out of other people’s business and leave them alone to do they’re thing, and if that means what they like to do in their bedroom or if they want to have an abortion, that’s OK. If they want to go to a megachurch or carry a gun, that’s OK as well. > [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](#): > > As a scientist/engineer in Boulder, I agree with this. Another Boulder engineer voting with this. We’ve been here 20 years, and even back then Boulder was nowhere near as liberal as Berkeley, which is where we came from. I’d say it leans more socially-liberal on personal behavior and not as much on poverty and social justice issues. People talk a lot about affordable housing, for example, but there’s not a hell of lot of it. Preserving open space and Flatiron views gets a lot more attention, and that’s essentially big-government regulation for the affluent, being that it keeps property values high. Disclaimer: I have a house that has easily doubled in value since we bought it, so I like those property-value preserving things, too. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 8:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/34 "2014-04-29T20:10:57Z")
For sheer ultra-right-wing, Alex Jones-style madness, you’d be hard pressed to beat small town Utah. La Verkin, UT, the next town over from my dad’s hometown, _seceded from the United Nations_ a few years ago. 😛 > **[Utah town goes 'U.N. free'](https://www.hcn.org/issues/209/10674)** > > La Verkin, Utah, declares itself a "U.N. Free Zone" in a > controversial ordinance that would have required U.N. supporters to > identify themselves as "U.N. Agents," file "activity reports" and > pay unspecified fees. ---
**Author:** ![Commander\_Fortune](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/5f8ce5/32.png) [@Commander\_Fortune](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Commander_Fortune)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 9:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/35 "2014-04-29T21:11:26Z")
> [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](#): > > As a scientist/engineer in Boulder, I agree with this. Another longtime resident of Boulder - also in agreement. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 9:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/36 "2014-04-29T21:46:33Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > I was thinking along the same lines. It seems cities tend to be more on the Liberal side, while rural areas tend to be more Conservative. A slight tangent to the OP: what are the most Conservative cities, and the most Liberal rural counties? I would assume that the most liberal rural areas are probably in new england. Is Vermont’s rural area liberal? My assumption is also in many blue or purple states the rural areas are red and the city areas are blue. But the bias isn’t overwhelming, maybe 2-1. Back 100 years ago the rural areas in the miwdest and plains states were supposedly hotbeds of progressivism. ---
**Author:** ![It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/it_s_not_rocket_surgery/32/312_2.png) [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/It_s_Not_Rocket_Surgery)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2014, 10:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/37 "2014-04-29T22:28:02Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > I would assume that the most liberal rural areas are probably in new england. Is Vermont’s rural area liberal? Some parts are. But Vermont’s “cities” are the size of towns in other states, so it’s a tough call. Rural Maine and New Hampshire are not very liberal, although there are loads of libertarians there. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 2:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/38 "2014-04-30T02:44:22Z")
> [@It\_s\_Not\_Rocket\_Surgery](#): > > Some parts are. But Vermont’s “cities” are the size of towns in other states, so it’s a tough call. > > Rural Maine and New Hampshire are not very liberal, although there are loads of libertarians there. Yeah, a city of 20k people in the midwest is usually going to be very conservative. In Vermont that would be a top 5 city for population. ---
**Author:** ![Richard\_North](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b782af/32.png) [@Richard\_North](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Richard_North)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 2:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/39 "2014-04-30T02:54:48Z")
Most liberal? That’s tough to say. Most conservative? I’d say Salt Lake City. A very clean and cookie-cutter type of city. It is predominately, of course. The city literally revolves around the Temple. Each street is number how far east/west/south/north it is from the building. ---
**Author:** ![Lord\_Feldon](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lord_feldon/32/341_2.png) [@Lord\_Feldon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lord_Feldon)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:24am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/40 "2014-04-30T03:24:01Z")
> [@snowthx](#): > > I was thinking along the same lines. It seems cities tend to be more on the Liberal side, while rural areas tend to be more Conservative. A slight tangent to the OP: what are the most Conservative cities, and the most Liberal rural counties? Liberal and Democratic don’t necessarily mean the same thing, but the bluest county in the country in the 2012 presidential election was Shannon County, South Dakota, population 13,586. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999.md?page=3)