Top 10 U.S. States by Democratic Party Support

DC is not a good place for Republicans it seems. Cross that one out from my list of places to possibly live.

Washington is a beautiful area and great place to live.

Then why would you say "cross that off" as if you were considering it and then changed your mind when you found out that residents of the district vote Democratic?

Also most people who work in DC live in Virginia or Maryland.

What I meant by that @Kalbahamut was that I was considering living there at some point, but as mentioned above, the cost of living is quite expensive, and added with other things, I decided to "cross it out" (figuratively speaking). Voting is one of the least of my concerns when thinking about living in a place.

DC is a beautiful city with tons of things to do and see. Northern Virginia is one of the nicest areas in the country. Among the most diverse areas in the world. Some of the most affluent neighborhoods in the USA. Good schools, good hospitals, great options abound for food, shopping, entertainment, culture, and nature. It's quite cheap next to Norway. Quite expensive next to Ukraine. The traffic situation is worse than Mayberry or Juneau, but a dream come true compared to Riyadh or Cairo or Manila. You could live there 30 years and never once see a crime of any kind more serious than jaywalking or exceeding the speed limit quite easily. I guess it's all relative.

It has always voted for a Democratic president

Cost of living isn't expensive out there. It's only housing. That's literally the only difference between DC and St. Louis. Housing in STL is affordable, housing in DC is not. Just watch any of the HGTV shows. They always have folks buying homes in DC. Like 1000 square feet for $235,000. Just stupid expensive.

Right. And if you get a place in... Manassas... or... somewhere on the Maryland side I don't know which areas are cheapest anymore... you will pay considerably less. It's too expensive for my tastes personally but it's not that expensive relatively speaking to live out in the suburbs. Not crazy expensive like Sweden. I've lived all over ther world but spent a greater portion of my life there than anywhere else and honestly have no idea what the negative comments above are in reference to unless they simply lack the perspective I detailed. Everything is relative, I suppose.

I recently went to DC. The food wasn't great, but apart from that I agree with what @kal is saying. It was much nicer than New York in my opinion. It didn't feel at all dangerous and the people were pretty friendly. I don't think your political stances should make much difference to your experience to the city, but it is possible that different people will genuinely have very different opinions of the city for other reasons.

TM: you just don't know where to go to eat if you had bad food there. I said options abound, not that every place you eat is going to be good. We've still got McDonald's.

I also see a lot of comments from conservatives claiming that they had to flee California as it was a socialist cesspool or something similarly ludicrous. These places are objectively nice places to live. And when I lived in California myself for a few years as a young man who was still religious and leaned conservative on most issues, I was still able to acknowledge that fact. I think some just feel the need to hate them because of their politics.

Sure, but I was just giving my subjective experience of the city. Great food was not one of the things I was able to enjoy. It wasn't terrible though, certainly better than in some other places I have been.

You can find bad food everywhere if you look in the wrong places or don't bother putting any effort in to finding good places. I try to avoid the pitfall I see so many tourists in when they characterize the food of a place based on the 5 meals they had, which were usually all just an afterthought to their itinerary anyway. But even I've been guilty of this sometimes. But anyway you can find amazing cuisine all over the DC area from pretty much any place you can imagine. Great Japanese, Thai, Vietnamese, Mexican, Salvadorian, Lebanese, Italian, Indian, Afghan, etc. So much variety and quality at the same time. Good American food, too, if you know where to go. But the thing I like most about the area is that it's among the most diverse and international places in the world, so, it's nice to have so many options.

@Gamer1162 The homicide rate may be very high, but I lived there for 4 years and I was completely fine! I think it's just the places you need to be aware about. It wasn't as bad as you think. You may see the research but they are assuming because of what happens. They probably don't even live there! Go and see for yourself before believing these stories. If you still don't want to go because of your political belief that is fine! But, don't believe with the ears of reporters. They always make up things.

I'm from Illinois and trust me there are only a handful of places here that even compete with DC. Luckily I live in one of them, Evanston.

Also did someone really say that St. Louis is better than DC?Lord.

Actually it has indeed been shown that people who are conservative tend to be predisposed to having a stronger disgust response than those who lean liberal. They react more negatively to things that are unfamiliar, and are much more given to a strong fear response. I'm not sure if this correlates to what you would define as "intestinal fortitude"... but if someone doesn't like a place because it contains people unlike them in thought or kind, or they are easily dissuaded from visiting a or staying in a place that is different or unusual to them... I think it would make sense to say that they lacked this. There are other ways you could define it, though, and other examples of things that might demonstrate it that conservatives might fare better on? As long as it's something familiar to them... maybe... working on a farm or rural living? Hunting wild animals? Voting for an orange mentally unstable orangutan? These are all things more liberals would find disgusting and hard to do.

you are making value judgments when the study is making none. The results seem very plausible and make a lot of sense. and your opinions QM are not automatically objective and impartial by default. You have your own biases and I run into people a lot who think like you do - who look down on others who they see as partisan, proclaiming themselves impartial, while usually knowing less about many issues than those they look down on simply by virtue of the fact that they generally dislike politics and don't learn that much about them. But they still get their opinions and information from somewhere. The assumption that both sides of every argument are automatically equal and all parties are bad and nothing that seems to suggest otherwise can be trusted is every bit as myopic as the view that one political party or the other is always in the right. the study, if you don't want to just assume.

I’ve also heard of the research kal has provided. It does make sense, even from a nonpartisan standpoint - conservatives tend to use more fear politics (“immigrants will destroy American industry, the Dems will raise your taxes”, etc.) while liberals are more idealistic (“free college will be great, Medicare for all will solve your problems”, etc.). Climate change is a notable exception to this rule.

The big question now is whether your disgust response was stronger when you were younger?

Just because a researcher is liberal does not mean their results will be biased if the experiment is designed properly - that’s the whole point of science. However, the point still stands that the overwhelming body of research conducted by liberal researchers would logically denigrate conservatives simply by experimental design because that’s what they would think of when designing experiments whether they realize it or not. It would be interesting to see more research into happiness vs political leaning, as I remember the “happiest states” quiz was saturated with conservative states. The political narrative is so engrossed in negative stories these days that that may have skewed research one way or another given the partisan leaning QM mentioned in research (though it’s interesting to ponder why it is there in the first place, again as QM mentioned).

Returning to the original purpose of this thread - I visited DC a few years ago, and enjoyed it quite a lot. For reference, I stayed in a neighborhood near DuPont circle (if I remember the name correctly). It was substantially nicer than my home city of Beantown, probably in my eyes due to its urban planning (L’enfant knew what he was doing!) and green space. It felt more like a compact and busy suburb than a sprawling urban metropolis to me.

It's more likely that criticism of the studies was flawed and biased from what I've seen than that the studies, all of them, were themselves flawed and biased. Pretty "convenient" to assume the latter thing, based on comments on Reddit, for example, if it confirms a presupposed bias that Republicans and Democrats are equally terrible - and anyone, or anything, suggesting otherwise must be themselves biased. Further, as I pointed out twice above, to even believe that the studies say something "bad" about conservatives or Republicans requires making a value judgment. Which is something that the study doesn't do. You could just as easily use different phrasing to try and make it seem like the study said something "good" about conservatives - that they were not more fearful or easily disgusted... use words with different connotations that mean the same things... say... they're more vigilant, for example. More risk-aware. Or trust more in the familiar and reliable.

Is that really a radical position to take? To suggest that conservatives are more likely to prefer what is known to them or traditional? More likely to dislike something they saw as new, different, strange or foreign? If your kneejerk reaction to hearing this, almost patently obvious, thing is to accuse the researchers of bias or seek out information confirming that suspicion.... I'd say that this points pretty clearly to your own bias.

@Kal - Quizzer1162 is a Republican, clearly. Ignore this numpty.

I'm politically unaffiliated.

No.

It's most likely a Cyprus debate comment xD

They were on EuroVision!!

But, California doesn't border a state that borders Canada.

That's crap. Maryland borders no state that borders Canada unless you count Pennsylvania's tiny coast along Lake Erie. The same thing is true for Delaware. Hawaii doesn't border Canada either, and as someone else said, California not only doesn't share a border with Canada, it doesn't even share a border with a state that shares a border with Canada.

And the following states not bordering Canada have now gone Democratic in 2 straight elections AND are leaning Democratic this year:

Virginia, Colorado, New Mexico, and Florida. Among others.

Perhaps I didn't explain it well. You can go from any state that voted for Kerry straight to Canada without passing through a red state. Take California: you can go directly north to Canada and only pass through Oregon and Washington, both of which went for Kerry. From Maryland, you go up through Pennsylvania and New York, both of which went for Kerry. I mentioned in my original post that Hawaii, for obvious reasons, is kind of beyond the scope of the point. And I said it was the *2004* electoral map. Calm yourself. I was just offering an observation.

@jmellor13 I'm not exactly sure what these other two were reading because you definitely explained your train of thought well enough and you clearly state your data comes from the 2004 election. Gotta love when people don't read and proceed to critique your comment

@jmellor13, technically speaking, to get from California to Canada you still have to go through republican areas. If you look at the 2016 election results for each county. The borders of California, Oregon, and Washington are all separated by red counties.

Yeah California north of Sacramento and Oregon outside of the big cities and their suburbs are all very conservative areas.

Conservative talk radio has turned peoples brains to mush, conspiracy theorists have been banging on so long and often that it actually appears there's weight and genuine history to their preposterous theories, there isnt. Modern American conservatives appear to place themselves as the defenders of traditional values and the working man, all the while getting fat on the backs of the people they claim to represent. It's a complete s*** show. The UK isnt any better either.

Idea: maybe neither political party is heaven on earth. Maybe politics and the idea that Republican and Democrat are the only options are stupid.

Both major parties in the US are corporate owned. The biggest difference is which corporations have bought into which party.

kenpo: while there is a sliver of truth that could be extracted from your cynical and over-simplistic sentiment, it's not close enough to being true that repeating it is not very harmful. There are extremely substantial differences between the parties, especially today in the era of Trump. When the choice was between Bill Clinton and George HW Bush? Maybe not so much. But now? The difference could not be more stark.

Even recently, Gov. Murphy came *really* close to losing, so the state is more competitive for state-level races than it is at the federal level. Still blue though.

Interesting. In most states it's the opposite situation: urban areas that are very blue or deep purple surrounded by a rural or suburban sea of light purple or red.

I don't know enough about New Hampshire generally to offer meaningful comment, except to say that I lived in Boston for five years, and several of my friends' wealthy families moved to New Hampshire for tax purposes and to get away from Boston's liberal politics. Manchester and Nashua are both less than an hour (with no traffic) from Boston, so they could move without surrendering access to the city when they wanted it. Vermont is way too far west for that, especially if you want to live anything resembling a city. Burlington is up in the northeast corner of the state. After that, you're looking at "cities" with like 15,000 people. So I would imagine New Hampshire gets a disproportionate share of conservative Bostonians. Whether that share is appreciable enough to move the needle...I have no idea.

And Colorado! Maybe our most beautiful state.

It was quite close :)