# 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:** 10\ **Page:** 3
**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 30, 2014, 9:54am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/41 "2014-04-30T09:54:39Z")
Once again, read the tables at the end of the link I gave: [http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/metro/081205libs.pdf](http://alt.coxnewsweb.com/statesman/metro/081205libs.pdf) Salt Lake City is not conservative in its voting patterns. Among the 237 cities in the U.S. with over 100,000 people, it ranks as the 95th most liberal and hence the 143th most conservative. It’s a big city. It’s not that large within its borders, but it’s the center of a large metropolitan area. It’s only three-quarters white non-Hispanic. It has a large Hispanic population and a significant homosexual community, and less than half its population is Mormon. It has a Democratic mayor and a mostly Democratic city council: > **[Salt Lake City](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salt_Lake_City)** > > Salt Lake City, often shortened to Salt Lake, and colloquially called SLC, is the capital and most populous city of Utah, United States. It is the seat of Salt Lake County, the most populous county in Utah. With a population of 200,133 in 2020, the city is the core of the Salt Lake City metropolitan area, which had a population of 1,257,936 at the 2020 census. Salt Lake City is further situated within a larger metropolis known as the Salt Lake City–Ogden–Provo Combined Statistical Area, a cor S... What does the fact that the streets are numbered according to how far they are from the Temple have to do with anything? The streets in Washington, D.C. are numbered and lettered according to how far they are from the Capitol Building in the same way, and D.C. is the fourth most liberal city in the U.S. And D.C. has its own Mormon Temple, incidentally, which, while it’s just outside the city, is very prominent: > **[Surrender Dorothy](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Surrender_Dorothy)** > > "Surrender Dorothy" is a famous special effect used in the 1939 film The Wizard of Oz, where the Wicked Witch of the West flies on her broomstick to write the two-word phrase across the sky. The phrase later attained local fame as a graffito in the Washington, DC, metropolitan area. > The first appearance of the phrase is in the 1939 version of The Wizard of Oz (it is not in the novel or any previous adaptations). In the scene, Dorothy Gale (Judy Garland) has reached the Emerald City with her co... You’re trying to rate the liberalism/conservatism of a city according to its superficial look, not according to the beliefs and voting patterns of its inhabitants. Shannon County in South Dakota is very heavily Native American and pretty poor, so it would be surprising if it wasn’t very liberal in its voting record. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 11:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/42 "2014-04-30T11:28:47Z")
> [@Richard\_North](#): > > 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. Salt Lake City has had Democratic mayors continuously since 1976. My congressman, Jim Matheson, is a Democrat (a Blue Dog Dem, but still). SLC is the lone liberal bastion in one of the reddest states in the country. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 11:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/43 "2014-04-30T11:37:22Z")
> [@Lamar\_Mundane](#): > > Oh, and I’d nominate Provo, UT for most conservative. Provo has to be one of the most conservative cities of its size in the country. Certainly the most conservative major college town. I can speak to this from experience, as my wife went to high school there, my MIL works for BYU, my FIL is a retired Provo police captain, and I live about 30 miles north of there right now. 😛 ---
**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 30, 2014, 12:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/44 "2014-04-30T12:07:48Z")
According to the report in the link I gave, Provo is indeed the most conservative city in the U.S. with a population over 100,000. ---
**Author:** ![Hector\_St\_Clare](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/b5ac83/32.png) [@Hector\_St\_Clare](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hector_St_Clare)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 2:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/45 "2014-04-30T14:23:47Z")
> [@Wesley\_Clark](#): > > 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. It’s a little more complicated than that. A map of, say, the 2008 election results by county is pretty informative. In essence: - Rural counties dominated by African-Americans (parts of the Deep South), by Mexicans (parts of South Texas and New Mexico), and Native Americans (in places like South Dakota and northern Arizona) vote Democratic. - Rural whites in New England vote Democratic. - Rural whites in the South vote _extremely_ Republican. - Rural whites in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and the Upper Peninsula of Michigan (and to a lesser extent other parts of Michigan) are swing voters who lean Democratic. This might be because of the Scandinavian cultural influence, the greater history of unionization in those areas, etc. Rural whites in most of the rest of the country favor Republicans, though less so than in the South. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/46 "2014-04-30T15:49:39Z")
> [@OneCentStamp](#): > > Provo has to be one of the most conservative cities of its size in the country. Certainly the most conservative major college town. And if you think it’s conservative now, you should have seen it 30 years ago, when I was living in Salt Lake and dating a girl at BYU. The story goes that a transfer student from California showed up at the Provo Democrat precinct on caucus night and the woman whose house was pissed because she wasn’t expecting visitors. . . Of course, Bountiful at the time was pure Mormon. ---
**Author:** ![OneCentStamp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/o/13edae/32.png) [@OneCentStamp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/OneCentStamp)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 3:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/47 "2014-04-30T15:55:41Z")
> [@TokyoBayer](#): > > And if you think it’s conservative now, you should have seen it 30 years ago, when I was living in Salt Lake and dating a girl at BYU. > > The story goes that a transfer student from California showed up at the Provo Democrat precinct on caucus night and the woman whose house was pissed because she wasn’t expecting visitors. . . > > Of course, Bountiful at the time was pure Mormon. I was there 22 years ago, attending BYU. :smack: ---
**Author:** ![alphaboi867](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/alphaboi867/32/3898_2.png) [@alphaboi867](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/alphaboi867)\ **Post date:** [April 30, 2014, 11:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/48 "2014-04-30T23:29:50Z")
> [@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. Actually San Francisco [banned](http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/S-F-barely-passes-public-nudity-ban-4055606.php) public nudity 18 months age, with a few exceptions for public festivals and small children. ---
**Author:** ![TokyoBayer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tokyobayer/32/13989_2.png) [@TokyoBayer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TokyoBayer)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 3:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/49 "2014-05-01T15:02:38Z")
> [@OneCentStamp](#): > > I was there 22 years ago, attending BYU. :smack: You have my sympathies. My parents grew up in farms near little Utah and Idaho towns, Payson and Lava, something like 99.9% Mormon. We were from Salt Lake, just below the university, and it was still very Mormon then. ---
**Author:** ![Superhal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/b4bc9f/32.png) [@Superhal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Superhal)\ **Post date:** [May 1, 2014, 4:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999/50 "2014-05-01T16:02:21Z")
I believe Hawaii has voted Democrat in like 90% of all elections, local, state or national. That seems to make them…conservative? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-are-the-most-conservative-and-most-liberal-cities-in-the-us/686999.md?page=2)