Where Republicans Carried The City Vote

Today's New York Times has an interesting graphic showing the precinct-by-precinct vote in this year's Presidential election.  Although Republican nominee Mitt Romney did very poorly in Manhattan and in most of New York City, he carried numerous outer borough precincts. 

You might think, based on the amount of internet chatter about the relationship between density and political ideology, that only the least dense, most suburb-like parts of the city voted Republican.  But in fact this was sometimes not the case.  For example, areas dominated by Orthodox Jews (who tend to be hawkish and to view Obama as insufficiently pro-Israel) voted overwhelmingly Republican.  Kew Gardens Hills (21,934 people per square mile, pretty close to the citywide average) voted Republican, as did Borough Park (47,520 per square mile).  By contrast, the easternmost, most suburban edges of Queens voted narrowly for Obama, as did Staten Island (which has one-fifth the density of Borough Park).   And the heavily black and very suburb-like southeastern edges of Queens voted overwhelmingly for Obama, just like Maryland's sprawling, majority-black Prince George's County (which gave Romney only 9.3% of its votes).

What's my broader point here?  I think this illustrates that density per se is not necessarily a major factor in voting.  Race, religion, and age matter more.