To: Lane3 who wrote (1610 ) 1/19/2001 10:32:59 AM From: hobo Read Replies (2) | Respond to Good morning Karen,So far, this has not altered black voting patterns. But other ethnic groups are following the trail, first blazed by Italians, Poles and others, away from identity politics and towards assimilation. One-third of Latinos voted Republican. In Texas, the figure was 43%; in Florida, 50%. And there you can see the political affiliations reversing. Cubans in the city of Miami have traditionally voted Republican. The younger generations who have left for the suburbs of Broward County, to the north, are more Democratic. Cutting across the divide between the two cultures is a different pattern: the growth of a large, tolerant, middle-class suburbia. It would be better to think of America as a bell shape. At the edges are the two sharp tails of the cultural and social divide. In the middle is a bulge of moderate opinion. The test of Mr Bush’s presidency will be whether he marginalises the centre and encourages the tails, or whether he ignores the tails and appeals to the centre, as his campaign promised to do. But of all the determinants of voting behaviour, religion was the most precise. The more often voters went to church, the more likely they were to vote Republican. Of those who never go, 61% chose Mr Gore, 32% Mr Bush. For those who go more than once a week, the votes were reversed (see chart "Godly v ungodly", above). It is almost a perfect fit. Mr Barone points out that Mr Gore won the two counties with the lowest church-going rates, Manhattan and Los Angeles County, by margins comparable to the biggest Democratic landslide in recent history (Lyndon Johnson’s defeat of Barry Goldwater in 1964). Yet Mr Bush won Montana, Wyoming and Idaho by rates approaching the biggest Republican landslide in recent history, Richard Nixon’s defeat of George McGovern in 1972. do you see a pattern here ? i mean.... all those Hollywood types buying land & ranches in the open lands of Idaho, Montana & Wyoming ....?
