and Provo is from Mars. A ranking of the most liberal and conservative cities. The group behind the poll places a lot of emphasis on the presence — or lack thereof — of blacks. I have no doubt that’s an important factor, but it seems to me there’s a lot of other stuff going on. Size, for one thing. The comparative sizes of the liberal and conservative cities seems to be pretty dramatic (not knowing the population stats off the top of my head). But also culture. I’m pretty dubious at the idea that if all the blacks in New York City, San Francisco, Berkeley et al left town that these places would lurch so far to the right they’d lose their lefty flavor. Then there’s there’s the whiff of paranoia. Here’s what a director of the survey says:

“While there are a few liberal cities without large African American populations, these wind up being the exceptions. College towns like Berkeley and Cambridge have modest black populations but remain bastions of upper middle-class, white, intellectual liberalism. These liberal white communities, however, are more reminiscent of penguins clustering together around a shrinking iceberg than of a vibrant and growing political movement,” Reiff says.

Does this mean that white liberals need to entice African-Americans into the fold if they’re going to survive?