Portland is radicalizing, the rest of Oregon is not

Posted on September 5, 2020September 6, 2020 by Razib Khan

The New York Times has a piece out, 100 Days of Protest: A Chasm Grows Between Portland and the Rest of Oregon. It is one of those articles where the reporter talks to individuals who present a gripping narrative in an ethnographic sense. Aside from Portland, there are names of towns that are probably unknown to most people. Gresham, Sandy, and Boring.

I’m an Oregonian. I grew up in Northeast Oregon, close to Idaho. I’ve spent time in a liberal college town in western Oregon, a liberal arts town in southern Oregon, and also a few years in Southeast Portland, south of the Hawthorne district. There are even a few readers of this weblog who will date to the period when I lived in Southeast Portland in the early 2000s, and would sometimes post about strange things I’d observe around the Powells on Hawthorne (e.g., the one time I walked past a Haredi Jewish guy who seemed to be speaking in ebonics inflected English, arguing with a pierced individual, on the issue of Israel).

The piece in a general stylized sense reflects a reality: Oregon, and the Pacific Northwest, is highly polarized between liberal urban islands in the midst of conservative rural hinterlands. Over my lifetime this has gotten more extreme. One of the reasons is that the decline of the unionized resource and manufacturing has meant that a Left faction similar to Northern European social democrats is not a major force anymore (towns like Ballard and Astoria have strong ethnic Nordic flavors). In its stead has been the rise of cultural liberalism, driven in large part by the migration of “Californians” into cities like Seattle and Portland, but also smaller cities and towns such as Eugene, Bend, and Ashland (some of the most anti-California people I’ve met turned out to be the children of people from California, of course). I put Californians in quotes because a lot of the Californians may not even be from California, but rather people who made a successful career in California after graduating college in the Northeast.

My major gripe with the piece in The New York Times is that it presents a false picture of reciprocal polarization. The data people at The Times actually have put out their precinct-level 2016 results that illustrate what I’m saying. For example, here is a sentence from the piece: “In the town of Gresham, 15 miles from the urban canyons of downtown Portland.” Gresham is contiguous with the eastern half of Portland. In 2002 on a clear weekend day with good weather I actually walked from my place in Southeast Portland to Gresham on surface streets. The main thing you’ll notice is that Gresham is noticeably more working class. The meth epidemic that hit Oregon hit Gresham particularly hard. But Gresham is not a deep-red suburb. As is clear from the map, Gresham narrowly voted for Hillary as opposed to Trump.

The precinct that I lived in Southeast gave 5% of its votes for Trump. In contrast, 40% of people in Gresham voted for Trump. Another town mentioned was Sandy. It is true Sandy is on the conservative side. I knew people from Sandy. But again, if you check on the map above you’ll see that 55% of people in Sandy voted for Trump. This is the majority, but this is not overwhelming. 35% seems to have voted for Hillary (large third party vote obviously).

If you’re an Oregonian you notice some other patterns. The very wealthy suburb of Lake Oswego only gave 25% of its vote to Donald Trump. This is very Trumpy compared to Portland, where most precincts are 5-10%. But, it shows the strong cultural trends in the broader zone around the city. Further to the east, where there are some more conservative suburbs, wealthy West Linn voted 30% for Trump, while poorer and more working-class Oregon City voted 40% for Trump.

What is the major takeaway? Looking at the map it is hard to find any populous region in “Red Oregon” which is as anti-Hillary as Portland is anti-Trump. The conservative town of Baker City gave 22% of its votes to Hillary. The conservative city of Medford in southern Oregon voted about 40-50% for Hillary (depending on the precinct).

There are places where very blue cities are surrounded by red-tinged suburbs. Look at Milwaukie. But that’s not the story here. Portland is basically a political culture where the right-wing is occupied by the liberals and the left-wing is occupied by the radicals. To some extent, it’s always been like this, but the dynamic has amplified over the past 40 years. In 1988 George H. W. Bush won 37% of the votes in Multnomah county, dominated by the city of Portland. In 2016 Trump won 17%. If you look at these two elections you see some evidence of polarization on both sides, but the counties which went noticeably more Red are very lightly populated (e.g., < 5,000 votes!). Suburban Portland has gone from a Red tilt to a Blue tilt (e.g., Washington county, which is the wealthier suburban Portland area was slightly leaning toward George H.W. Bush but now only gave Trump 30% of the vote). Jackson County, the most populous Red county has only become more marginally Red (9% margin in 2016 vs. 7% in 1988).

As an Oregonian articles like this just make me more skeptical of these narrative-driven pieces about American regions. Interesting. But true? Check the data journalism of The New York Times first!

Austin vs. Portland

Posted on April 25, 2017April 27, 2017 by Razib Khan

The above video is from a Portlander who is quite anti-Austin, though in a tongue-in-cheek fashion.

The issue of cross-city comparisons was on my mind for two reasons. First, Joel Kotkin wrote an article last fall in Forbes, America’s Next Great Metropolis Is Taking Shape In Texas, that friends are sharing on Facebook. Second, I’m someone who has lived in both cities (around downtown Austin and the Hawthorne neighborhood in Southeast Portland). I still travel between Texas and Oregon, and it’s pretty interesting how people react when they find out that I live in Texas or that I’m from Oregon in the other locale. Kind of a wary curiosity about my opinions (in Austin one is careful to mention one’s California days lest the wrath of the native be triggered).

In Oregon it rains gently at an angle; raincoat, not umbrella.

First thing, though the video above is kind of silly and not too serious, I do want to address one thing. Texas is not more arid than Oregon. I’m actually originally from eastern Oregon, so I have to remind people that 2/3 of the state is quite dry, whether it be semi-arid or arid. Inspection of the above map shows that a much larger portion of Oregon is extremely arid than Texas. Also, Portland gets 41 inches per year. Austin? 37. The difference is that Portland’s is frontal precipitation that is dispersed over much of the year in drizzles and overcast skies, while Austin is subject to more convective bursts. Where there are 145 sunny days in Portland per year (remember there is summer drought), there are 230 such days in Austin.

Austin combines a vertical downtown with huge expanses of quasi-suburban sprawl.

Austin still has a lower cost of living, mostly because of housing. Due to its rapid population growth, Austin’s transportation infrastructure and supply of health professionals is far inferior to Portland. But, the population growth is obviously due to an economic dynamism which Portland can’t match; unless you work at Intel it seems most educated young people in Portland are retired and working as a barista on the side (this is an exaggeration, but you get the point).

I’d say Austin’s food is definitely better and cheaper. For beer, I will give the nod to Portland, which has a more well developed scene for microbrews. The same with coffee. It’s hard to compare outdoor amenities. The Pacific Northwest has real trees. The rest of the country has bushes. Austin is near the Texas hill country, but Oregon has hills, mountains, and gorges. It has Crater Lake. But because of the warm weather you can go swimming and enjoy the outdoors the whole year without much

preparation in Austin. The Colorado river in Austin is less geologically impressive than the Willamette, but there’s a lot more recreational activity because it’s warm and dry so much of the year.

A major difference between Portland and Austin is the university scene (or lack thereof). Portland State University has about half the student body of UT Austin, but its prominence within the city (and nationally) is far less than that simple quantitative measure. UT is located right north of downtown, so it’s an integral part of the Austin scene. In contrast, though PSU is located just south of downtown Portland, it is a much lower key presence. UT Austin is the flagship campus of the state university system of Texas. In contrast, PSU did not initially offer doctoral programs, and is a Research 2, a opposed to a Research 1, institution. Its roots were as a commuter school, and it still has many non-traditional students. In contrast UT Austin students are some of the most academically talented kids from all over Texas, which does not have large elite private universities, like California (Stanford and USC are both much larger than Rice).

Finally, the arts & entertainment scene. This is really about taste obviously. Portland has a more artisanal arts scene, if that makes sense. More off the wall, homegrown, and organically and haphazardly presented. I didn’t really take advantage of it much when I lived in Portland, but honestly I’m not big into the arts scene here in Austin. But I’ve gone to shows now and then. It’s hard not to in Austin, which is crawling with musicians, and where live music is blasting up and down 6th street. But as Austin has gotten more popular and well known, it has also gotten more commercial and commoditized. National acts like Taylor Swift an Adele swing through town, and SxSW and ACL are huge draws. It’s easy to take it for granted, and honestly now it’s just part of the background furniture of my life.

Note: I don’t have much to say about the fact that Austin is the capital of Texas. For me the main consequence of this fact is that perhaps this is one of the major reasons that the flagship university of the state system was located here (though usually it doesn’t work out like that). The Capitol is downtown, and there’s some political stuff going on there. But it’s pretty sealed off from the rest of the town. In contrast, Sacramento, probably is more affected by being the capital of California, since the city is less distinctive. And Albany is totally overshadowed by being the capital (I am naming three cities where I have actually lived at some point).