Central Pennsylvania is Not Like Alabama

It seems pundits have a habit of referring to Pennsylvania with a phrase that goes something like "Philadelphia on the east, Pittsburgh on the west, and Alabama in the middle." The obvious problem is that this isn't true. Obama won Alabama, remember, because there are a lot of black people in Alabama. If the point you're trying to make is that there are a lot of conservative white people but not a lot of black people in central Pennsylvania, Alabama is actually a pretty terrible comparison. Why this keeps getting repeated is a bit beyond me.

Comments

[Corey]

It's an old saying that gets repeated a lot in Pennsylvania (especially in Pittsburgh and Philly, with variations like "PA is Pittsburgh and Philly with Arkansas in between". It's meant to explain a cultural distinction (and sometimes electoral). But you're right, it doesn't hold for the sort of demographics that work in Obama's favor.

I grew up in Pittsburgh and went to college in northwest Pennsylvania and the characterization isn't too far off. It's why, in part, a light blue state like PA elected Rick Santorum, and why you see people driving around with Confederate flags on their trucks even though we're north of the Mason-Dixon line and, y'know, Gettysburg and whatnot.

[Weisloa]

I lived in PA for my first 22 years and have lived in Alabama for the last year. I find the comparison pretty hilarious, in some ways applicable and in other ways not applicable at all. There is a large sense of community among small towns here in Bama, but I've never lived anywhere with a large, rural African-American population. To see African-Americans driving beat-up pick-ups really threw me for a loop. I think the "black" vote went Obama here, but the white vote did too... there is by-and-large a strong sense of regret for the damage done during the civil rights era, and those lessons were hard learned here, but they were learned. PA never learned them- the races have never been forced to address their differences and messy past anywhere outside of the Deep South. I see the racial divide as increasing with an increase in the northerly latitutde. In that way, PA is not where AL is. Also, economically, AL has picked up some of the rust-belt industry and so is effectively becoming the PA of the mid-19th century, while PA is trying to evolve beyond that. The economy here will crash and become the 2nd rust belt- hopefully tho AL will be able to take PA's evolution as a lesson and maybe make a few technological leaps into the modern era... we're still a couple generations behind down here.

[Norman]

More people live in cities now than towns so it is possible more people live in those cities than the rest of Pennsylvania(Philadelphia is very large),even rural Pennsylvanians tend to vote Democrat of course, that I would say is because rural Pennsylvania along with West Virginia holds the remains of what was once the Great Southern Democratic party even though they were union states.

[Katie]

Obama didn't win Alabama.

[Joe]

I grew up in Philadelphia PA and spent my first 34 years in PA. I moved to Alabama in 2005 and I find that some of the comparisons do ring quite true.
Alabama is and always has been a "red" (republican) state. Katie is correct, Obama won Montgomery (the "west philly" of AL), but McCain actually won the electoral votes for Alabama.
There are a few things that I find disturbing about living in Alabama
1. I swear the civil war hasn't ended. Yankee is generally worse than "terrorist" in these parts.
2. The true Alabamanians as I call them love it when we (yankees) visit, but it's a totally different situation when we decide to move here.
3. Alabama is very much like north central PA was back in the day (Scranton/Wilkes Barre area)
I actually chose to move here because the area reminded me of the mountains in central PA.
4. The vehicles blow my mind, no state inspection, no emissions, and I have quite literally seen vehicles with no windshield that are being held together by bungee cords driving down the roads.
Moving from Philadelphia PA to Anniston AL, though Anniston is a large city by AL standards has been quite the culture shock.

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