New York City is Obama country
Bloomberg News, today, makes a point of telling us that New York City voters overwhelmingly supported Obama.
Obama beat Republican challenger Mitt Romney by 81 percent to 18 percent in the nation’s largest city… Obama’s share of the vote is the best showing by a presidential nominee in New York since its five boroughs were consolidated in 1898, according to data compiled by Bloomberg from the state elections board and the 2005 books “America at the Polls” and “The Encyclopedia of New York State.
The results underscore New York’s decades-long status as a Democratic bastion where most residents are racial and ethnic minorities. Of the city’s 8.2 million residents, 29 percent are Hispanic, 23 percent are non-Hispanic black and 13 percent are non-Hispanic Asian, according to 2011 estimates from the Census Bureau.
…
Manhattan, which includes Wall Street, is the one borough where Obama’s support edged downward, falling to 84 percent from 86 percent four years ago.
Why mention that Manhattan includes Wall Street? Wall street is a street and not a neighborhood, and not a street with many residential buildings. It’s a place where people go to work.
The writer of the article was probably trying to point out that the finance industry is New York City’s most conservative industry, and I agree. Yet still, I estimate that the majority of people who work in that industry and live in Manhattan, including extremely wealthy executives, voted for Obama and not Romney, but by a narrow margin, not like the media industry where probably 90% voted for Obama. (And other major industries in Manhattan, law, advertising, fashion, business services, all vote more Democratic than finance.)
There are a lot of mixed marriages in which the husband has a high-paying job in finance and votes Republican, and the wife votes Democratic. And if they have children old enough to vote, their children of both sexes also vote Democratic.
The slight drop from 86% to 84% probably is related to a general trend I saw in exit polls in which the wealthiest Americans switched their vote, by several percentage points, to Obama in 2012. Obama’s loss of support may have nothing to do with Obama or the economy and more to do with wealthy voters being unable to hold their nose and vote for a ticket in 2008 that included Sarah Palin, and that wealthy voters liked Romney because he’s very intelligent and has a track record of success in business endeavors.
Romney’s strongest support in New York City came from Orthodox and Hasidic Jews and Russian immigrants in Brooklyn, and from blue-collar whites in Staten Island.
I wouldn’t imagine that New York’s figures are much different from those in other big cities. And the 2% drop in Manhattan is probably just statistical noise.
Peter
ironrailsironweights
January 10, 2013 at 1:42 pm
Hey, NYC, this was good ?
mg
January 10, 2013 at 3:08 pm
“Romney’s strongest support in New York City came from Orthodox and Hasidic Jews and Russian immigrants in Brooklyn, and from blue-collar whites in Staten Island”.
Basically the boring fringe people in NYC voted Republican.
Just Speculating
January 10, 2013 at 4:33 pm
Manhattan is a fortified city-state.
A Moat & Stockade
Partying on The King’s Mutton
While The Plague
Threatens others…
Firepower
January 10, 2013 at 6:46 pm
Of course NYC is Obama country. It has a 3rd world country gini coefficient, expensive real estate so that only the rich or the very poor can live there, and it borders Canada. NYC chased out the middle class whites for years leading to this set up. They only vote for strict law enforcement in their city because it is their playground.
SOBL1
January 10, 2013 at 7:29 pm
The United States of America has a third world country Gini coefficient.
Nicolai Yezhov
January 10, 2013 at 8:14 pm
and that is why i did not contribute to Sandy relief
they have obama, so screw them
joe mack
January 10, 2013 at 8:11 pm
Those people in Staten Island who voted for Romney, got a surprise visit from Obama after the Sandy damage. They must have felt like awkward losers.
Just Speculating
January 10, 2013 at 10:38 pm
here’s a topic for the lion – i don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “escape from new york”. i enjoyed it, good sci-fi movie with a tantalizing concept. anyway, so back when the movie was made, new york was so bad that it was plausible that there would be a time when they just gave up and made the place a prison. however, these days it seems pretty much the exact opposite. manhattan is effectively a “moated” community where rich people flock and have natural barriers on all sides to protect them. this trend seems “stable” today but then again, the city must have had dark undertones in the 70s and 80s to make that movie. working back off the concept of “people can’t predict how their future selves will feel about the present”, would be interesting to hear your thoughts on future forecast for manhattan.
my two cents – when a place has it this good for so long, mean reversion is inevitable. hard to stay so much better. but then again, the rest of the country can go to hell – we need to keep at least our moated community intact. so, perhaps it remains an oasis for the foreseeable future.
ralph
January 10, 2013 at 10:20 pm
“manhattan is effectively a “moated” community where rich people flock and have natural barriers on all sides to protect them. this trend seems “stable” today but then again, the city must have had dark undertones in the 70s and 80s to make that movie”.
Expensive real estate in Manhattan is effectively the moat you are talking about. It was much smaller back in the 70s and 80s, but ironically after 2 Republican mayors (Giuliani and Bloomberg), 3/4 of the island became gated for those with money.
Just Speculating
January 11, 2013 at 10:04 am
also – the stereotype of a republican father with a family that votes democratic is sadly very accurate and probably describes why the city votes the way it does. plus the 50% in taxes he pays is funding the children of other families that vote 100% democratic (if they vote at all). another question – is it possible that the country would ever reduce the right to vote as opposed to expansion? eg, it seems reasonable that only people who were net payers of taxes should have the right to vote, because they are the ones who fund the activity. however, even though that sounds rational to write, it is a radical position to take. however, the US seems virtually guaranteed to have a debt crisis, in large part because we’ve agreed to pay for benefits that we can’t afford. the question is: will we come to our collective senses first, or do we need to go off the cliff (not the fiscal cliff, but the inevitable destruction of the currency or insolvency of the government) in order to rebuild?
ralph
January 10, 2013 at 10:26 pm
An influential/rich republican residing in Manhattan isn’t all that different from a rich liberal. Mayor Giuliani closest associates were rich liberals. He managed to clean up the city and put more of their kind in it. This being said, any republican residing in Manhattan isn’t a “real” conservative.
Just Speculating
January 11, 2013 at 10:17 am
@ ralph
When this country was founded the franchise was restricted to property owning white men for a reason.
Conquistador
January 10, 2013 at 11:56 pm
Not true. The New York constitution restricted the franchise to male property owners 21 and over. There were no racial restrictions. Blacks who owned property that satisfied the requirement could vote.
not too late
January 11, 2013 at 12:53 pm
Considering nearly all blacks lived elsewhere at the time of the founding (primarily the South) New York’s social posturing doesn’t surprise me. In fact it has a lot in common with the modern era.
Conquistador
January 11, 2013 at 4:31 pm
I believe that the NYC public schools are less than 15% white. Any city where the public schools are overwhelmingly non-white is a city that votes overwhelmingly for Democrats. For whites in NYC, being a liberal is a luxury good that they can afford.
NYC also shows the Republicans why comprehensive immigration reform and allowing million of third world immigrants into the country will be a boom for Democrats.
superdestroyer
January 11, 2013 at 7:39 am
NYC like most coastal liberal cities are segregated by class and race, and usually these 2 mean the same thing. Upper class White liberals on one side and poor racial minorities on the other.
The middle class White demographic never had any significant presence and were usually concentrated in the outlying areas (suburbs).
Just Speculating
January 11, 2013 at 9:54 am
“my two cents – when a place has it this good for so long, mean reversion is inevitable. hard to stay so much better. but then again, the rest of the country can go to hell – we need to keep at least our moated community intact. so, perhaps it remains an oasis for the foreseeable future.”
The major risk to NYC’s position is if it loses the financial services industry to less-expensive locations. I read that is actually happening, as jobs which would formerly have been located in NYC are now being located in lower-cost cities in the US. Of course, those are the lower-paying financial services jobs, so it hasn’t had a huge impact. Add to that the Dodd-Franks regulations, though, and the financial sector’s contribution to NYC will definitely decrease. It’s probably not a coincidence that the movie “Escape from New York” was made just before the Reagan era and it’s massive bull market that ran for 20 years and pulled a lot of talent into NYC.
BS Inc.
January 11, 2013 at 10:21 am
I have been hearing stories that silicon alley here in NYC would be the next wall st, where tech startups would be the lucrative area to go into. The process is this. NYC would rival the SF Bay area in startups, and the old school financial sector would be in the background, which seems to be happening already.
Just Speculating
January 11, 2013 at 12:40 pm
the best silicon alley it can do is blunt the magnitude of NYC’s decline if/as wall street retrenches. there is way too much money being generated by wall street to pretend otherwise. mayor bloomberg’s multi-billion dollar fortune is almost exclusively tied to wall street. when firms cut traders, they cut bloomberg terminals, which cuts his revenue.
the economics for most of these fancy startups is basically a bubble. very few of the websites generate much actual cash, and the ones that do become wildly inflated. $1 of sales through a website is worth $100, versus a $1 of sales at a hot dog stand in central park is worth $0.25 if that.
so where does the value of those websites come from?
it’s their likelihood of being acquired (or “acquihired”) by a larger tech company. the larger tech companies that buy them – apple, google, msft, amzn, facebook – are currently in their own bubble of sorts, which is made possible by the largest legal tax avoidance in the world, and which is unsustainable in an economy running $1 trillion annual deficits.
and NYC as a startup hub is a tough sell. it really only appeals to hipster web people who want to do fashion or media startups. people who think brooklyn is “awesome” instead of depressing. anyone who rationally thinks about it, as nerds are wont to do, and isn’t swayed by the ability to pay $15 for a tapas plate at a bunch of hip new places (a few of which exist in CA as well), would think that year round nice weather and less crowding would make for good quality of life.
plus – can you imagine founding a company in a garage, where it is 20* F for three months of the year? HP and Apple were founded in garages.
back to wall street – all of america’s money, and much of the rest of the world’s, flows through the institutions headquartered there, and they take a small toll each time it comes through. hard to beat that as a business model, although washington DC is coming close with taxes, public unions, lobbyists etc.
earlier commenter was right that mostly the low value wall street jobs are going away, but they absolutely are. in a sad kind of way, wall street used to support a lot of folks who would otherwise be middle and lower class, perhaps construction workers, but instead made ridiculous money to punch and process paper tickets etc, press buttons etc. Still happens in certain corners of finance, mostly fixed income, but that will change. if you care about fairness, it was an environment where everyone did well.
kind of ironic since wall street is demonized as “the rich” but it used to include a lot more knuckleheads who were rich by dint of their participation, which is a kind of fairness when you think about it.
ralph
January 12, 2013 at 10:34 am
“kind of ironic since wall street is demonized as “the rich” but it used to include a lot more knuckleheads who were rich by dint of their participation, which is a kind of fairness when you think about it”.
So are you agreeing that Wall St is taking the backdrop? It’s already shrinking as many of these jobs formely taken up by knuckleheads are gone.
“NYC as a startup hub is a tough sell. it really only appeals to hipster web people who want to do fashion or media startups”.
Ok, then why isn’t SA located in Williamsburg? It would make a lot more sense if hipsters are the main force behind it.
Tech jobs in NYC have seen a rise in the last few years. I don’t think we could say that same about the financial sector.
“back to wall street – all of america’s money, and much of the rest of the world’s, flows through the institutions headquartered there, and they take a small toll each time it comes through. hard to beat that as a business model, although washington DC is coming close with taxes, public unions, lobbyists etc”.
Could it be true that this toll has less collectors now, because less money is flowing into it, and the world’s money will be flowing elsewhere? I myself don’t know, but finance isn’t what it was five years ago.
Just Speculating
January 12, 2013 at 1:08 pm
wall street is taking the “backdrop” only in the sense that people currently enjoy talking and thinking about startups. that is different than saying “NYC’s economy will be driven by silicon alley in the future.” the reason startups appeal to everyone is that they seem like lottery tickets, where anyone who wants to try, can. that makes them media friendly. whereas wall street is an established money making business with defined entry points (ivy league, MBA) and barriers to entry to protect against new competitors. comparatively speaking, it has become boring to talk about wall street, but boring and moneymaking are not incompatible. in fact, wall street would be much better off it was ignored so they could go back to making obscene money quietly.
other responses:
- silicon alley is a place, but more importantly an abstraction. there are lots of startups in brooklyn. for obvious reasons.
- tech jobs on the rise – not necessarily paying as well. could also be seen as a form of NYC slowly moving downmarket.
- america’s money flows – are a function of our importance in world trade. as long as we have leading businesses and a government that can self-finance at will, there is going to be a lot of money flooding this country. for example, the US government finances itself through NYC. if america’s economy and businesses decline, and/or the government can’t self finance, then yes, wall street would suffer. but it’s a relative thing, because it would mean the country is suffering even more.
ralph
January 12, 2013 at 1:41 pm
recent article that was posted by a “real person” that purports to show why tech is eclipsing wall street but really winds up proving the opposite.
http://pandodaily.com/2013/01/14/finance-lost-tech-won-heres-why/
fails to grasp startups being sexy because they are a lottery, but lotteries have a lot of losers and wall street being a game with a lot of winners. more like the law firm model only with better compensation.
far better odds of achieving a great average outcome on wall street than startups, assuming you can get in the door.
lion of the lionosphere
January 14, 2013 at 11:43 pm
Here’s an article from an unlikely source about the best and the brightest avoiding Wall St and going into the tech sector. Reasons citing the financial sector being constricting and the tech sector having the opposite effect, that is freedom and innovation.
http://www.scmp.com/business/banking-finance/article/1137797/brain-drain-bleeds-wall-street
Just Speculating
January 29, 2013 at 11:49 am
[...] cares if, in reality, Brooklyn is overwhelmingly Democratic outside of the Hasidic neighborhoods. This is television, it’s supposed to show a better version [...]
Girls in the NY Times « Lion of the Blogosphere
January 11, 2013 at 4:06 pm
In Connecticut, which went for Obama strongly, there were a few towns in the Southwest that voted significantly for Romney like Greenwich and New Canaan. These towns have many people who work on Wall Street. Wasn’t enough to strongly affect the state voting though.
Most people who live in Manhattan and work on Wall Street are probably the single young ones, many of whom went to top colleges and have been infected by leftism (though I’d imagine that even among the young single Wall Streeters, there is a significant number of Republicans). The increase in Republicans in Manhattan is not just statistical noise. It is due to Manhattan becoming whiter. Even among Manhattan whites, you find a few conservatives, certainly more than among blacks or Puerto Ricans.
I wonder if many NYC young people actually are registered to vote in other places, like where their parents live (which is likely to be a more competitive state than NY).
Jack
January 11, 2013 at 4:14 pm
“The increase in Republicans in Manhattan is not just statistical noise. It is due to Manhattan becoming whiter”.
Republican Manhattanites are a small minority here, and their lifestyles reflect their wealthy liberal neighbors. Most of them are men anyway, and they’ll date and marry women with liberal views, who outnumber them significantly.
A Republican living in Park Avenue does not share any commonality (other than party affiliation) with a Staten Island working class person because of a difference in lifestyle and educational background. This was the reason why guys like Mitt Romney was a poor candidate for his party.
Remember most prestigious high paying jobs usually require a degree from one of those leftist institutions.
Just Speculating
January 11, 2013 at 4:49 pm
I don’t disagree with any of that. Romney’s disconnect with the working class is why he lost almost the entire Midwest.
Jack
January 12, 2013 at 3:20 pm
WRONG. Romney won almost entire midwest. He lost in the rustbelt states, Virginia and Florida.
And I blame the Republican Party’s adamant refusal to raise taxes on the richest Americans for the loss of working-class votes in those states.
Lion of the Blogosphere
January 12, 2013 at 3:42 pm
The real divider in this country isn’t political affliation. What separates most people is class, especially the wealthy HYP (Harvard, Yale, Princeton) crowd used as the divider line.
Just Speculating
January 13, 2013 at 10:54 am
As Steve Sailer has pointed out early and often, the big Red-Blue divide is between having a family with marriage versus being childless/marriageless. The former avoid the city, especially given the reality of city schools.
New York is a perfect microcosm of this, as is DC. In both cases, if you are married with children, you get out to the suburbs post haste.
Childless people mostly don’t feel troubled by mass 3rd world immigration, or budget disasters left to the children, or the decline of America, the loss of civilization to teeming hoards, or other Democratic party objectives.
Dan
January 11, 2013 at 4:47 pm
The new trend is for people wealthy enough to afford private school to stay in the city.
Lion of the Blogosphere
January 11, 2013 at 5:20 pm
The number of seats in the good private schools is very limited. Having children means trying to get through the hurdles of getting into the private schools. There not enough spaces in the good private schools for everyone.
superdestroyer
January 12, 2013 at 12:40 pm
The new trend is for people wealthy enough to afford private school to stay in the city.
Even private schools aren’t a safe haven anymore because so many are hitting the “Asian student” threshold where elite white parents have to pull their kids out of a private school because of too many Asians. If the public schools are worthless because of non-Asian minorities and the private schools can’t be used because there are too many Asians do you suppose the elite will have to resort to home schooling?
The Undiscovered Jew
January 12, 2013 at 1:09 pm
The number of seats in the good private schools is very limited.
And they’re running out of private schools that haven’t passed the Asian threshold. Not that I have any sympathy for the elites losing their private schools to Asians, mind you. Btw, is anyone else noticing the Indians are increasingly agitating the hell out of the SWPLs, more so than even East Asians?
The Undiscovered Jew
January 12, 2013 at 1:13 pm
A very good friend of mine (biglaw associate from YLS) recently moved to Westchester from Manhattan just because his oldest child hit two years old — he and his wife explained that the biggest reason for their move was because they didn’t want to deal with trying to get him into one of Manhattan’s ultra-competitive pre-schools, which appears to be mandatory for city folks these days.
Ian
January 15, 2013 at 2:29 am
Just to prove as to why NYC is an anomaly, and is disconnected from the rest of America. Mayor Bloomberg, a Republican, who was originally a Democrat, won his third term based primarily on race, and not of party affiliation. Many wealthy White liberals as much as wealthy Republicans voted for him, where as racial minorities and some working class Whites voted for Thompson, a Black Democrat.
Just Speculating
January 11, 2013 at 5:17 pm
You say Romney lost the Rustbelt but won the Midwest. Every state in the “rustbelt” except possibly PA is considered to be Midwestern. Romney lost OH, MI, WI, IA, IL, MN, PA while winning MO and IN.
Jack
January 13, 2013 at 2:24 am