Politics
The San Francisco Bay Area is widely regarded as one of the most liberal areas in the country. According to the Cook Partisan Voting Index (CPVI), congressional districts the Bay Area tends to favor Democratic candidates by roughly 40 to 50 percentage points, considerably above the mean for California and the nation overall. All congressional districts in the region voted for Democrat Barack Obama over Republican John McCain in the 2008 Presidential Election. Over the last four and a half decades the 9-county Bay Area voted for Republican candidates only twice, once in 1972 for Richard Nixon and again in 1980 for Ronald Reagan, both Californians. The last county to vote for a Republican Presidential candidate was Napa county in 1988 for George H. W. Bush.
| Year | Democrat | Republican |
|---|---|---|
| 2008 | 73.8% 2,172,411 | 24.4% 717,989 |
| 2004 | 69.2% 1,926,726 | 29.3% 815,225 |
| 2000 | 64.1% 1,607,695 | 30.0% 751,832 |
| 1996 | 60.5% 1,417,511 | 28.3% 662,263 |
| 1992 | 56.2% 1,476,971 | 25.0% 658,202 |
| 1988 | 57.8% 1,338,533 | 40.8% 945,802 |
| 1984 | 50.8% 1,157,855 | 47.9% 1,090,115 |
| 1980 | 40.7% 827,309 | 44.4% 904,100 |
| 1976 | 49.9% 950,055 | 45.8% 872,920 |
| 1972 | 48.2% 990,560 | 49.1 1,007,615 |
| 1968 | 50.8% 890,650 | 41.3% 725,304 |
| 1964 | 65.7% 1,116,215 | 34.1% 579,528 |
| 1960 | 52.0% 820,860 | 47.6% 751,719 |
| District | Location | Cook PVI | % for Obama, 2008 | Median Household Income | Per Capita Income |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| &066th district | Marin County and southern Sonoma County | D +23 | 76.0% | $59,115 | $33,036 |
| &077th district | Richmond, Vallejo, Vacaville, and Pittsburg | D +19 | 71.7% | $52,778 | $22,016 |
| &088th district | City and County of San Francisco | D +35 | 85.4% | $52,322 | $34,552 |
| &099th district | Oakland, Berkeley and Piedmont | D +37 | 88.1% | $44,314 | $25,201 |
| &1010th district | Fairfield, Livermore, Pleasant Hill, Walnut Creek, Concord, and El Cerrito | D +11 | 64.9% | $65,245 | $31,093 |
| &1111th district | Parts of Contra Costa, Alameda, and Santa Clara counties including Morgan Hill, Pleasanton, and San Ramon | R +01 | 53.8% | $61,996 | $28,420 |
| &1212th district | San Francisco Peninsula including most of San Mateo County | D +23 | 74.3% | $70,307 | $34,448 |
| &1313th district | Much of the East Bay, including Fremont, Union City and Hayward | D +22 | 74.4% | $62,415 | $26,076 |
| &1414th district | Silicon Valley, including Redwood City, Mountain View, Sunnyvale, Palo Alto and Santa Cruz | D +21 | 73.0% | $77,985 | $43,063 |
| &1515th district | City of San Jose (western areas) | D +15 | 68.4% | $74,947 | $32,617 |
| &1616th district | San Jose, Morgan Hill | D +16 | 69.6% | $67,689 | $25,064 |
| Median | Districts: 6th, 7th, 8th, 9th, 10th, 12th, 13th, 14th, 15th, 16th | D +21.5 | 73% | $65,052 | $32,826 |
During the Base Realignment and Closures (BRACs) of the 1990s, almost all the military installations in the region were closed. The only remaining major active duty military installations are Travis Air Force Base and Coast Guard Island.
Read more about this topic: San Francisco Bay Area
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“Politics is not an end, but a means. It is not a product, but a process. It is the art of government. Like other values it has its counterfeits. So much emphasis has been placed upon the false that the significance of the true has been obscured and politics has come to convey the meaning of crafty and cunning selfishness, instead of candid and sincere service.”
—Calvin Coolidge (1872–1933)
“Beware the politically obsessed. They are often bright and interesting, but they have something missing in their natures; there is a hole, an empty place, and they use politics to fill it up. It leaves them somehow misshapen.”
—Peggy Noonan (b. 1950)
“The so-called consumer society and the politics of corporate capitalism have created a second nature of man which ties him libidinally and aggressively to the commodity form. The need for possessing, consuming, handling and constantly renewing the gadgets, devices, instruments, engines, offered to and imposed upon the people, for using these wares even at the danger of one’s own destruction, has become a “biological” need.”
—Herbert Marcuse (1898–1979)