Seven Most Liberal Cities in the US

Americans have countless stereotypes about people from different regions of the country. There’s the polite Midwesterner, the abrasive New Yorker, the Berkeley hippy, the gun-toting Texan. Nowadays cities everywhere in America tend to lean to the left, even the ones in conservative states like Texas. And in case you are wondering which cities are the most liberal, the article on Insidermonkey about the most Liberal cities in the US may be able to answer that question.

Of course, this shouldn't come as too great of a surprise. As I noted in an earlier article, conservatives tend to prefer smaller, more rural areas, while liberals prefer living in urban areas. So what is it that makes a city liberal? We're looking for something deeper here than the usual “Best Places” tabulation of hot job markets, low taxes, booming real estate, temperate climate, and the absence of freeway congestion. Cities can rank quite high in these categories and still be dreary, soulless places. Indeed, such “qualities” sometimes diminish the spirit of a community, social fragmentation, urban sprawl, and lousy public services.

It seems to us that a good place to live ought to offer more than just high salaries and a low crime rate. That’s why we set out to find cities that are making a special effort to foster connectedness and contentment among all the people who live in them. In the process of selecting our Top 7 cities, we gave high marks to places that hold together as communities even though they may not score that well on a traditional checklist of advantages and disadvantages. Yet sadly as it turns out, the substantive impact of citizen’s preferences on policy outcomes is quite large. The most liberal cities have higher taxes per capita, rely on less regressive tax systems, and spend twice as much per person as their most conservative counterparts. Anyway, if you want to know more about it and want state wise information, take a look at the US’s 10 Most Liberal States as well.