The more suburban region of
#KCMO
called "the Northland", is often portrayed as a conservative bastion. But Tuesday's election results paint a clearer picture about this region.
The southern part of the Northland is lower-income, more diverse *and* votes more progressively (1/9)
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It's notable that
@JenayforKC
won 8 precincts in southern Clay County in districts 2 and 4, with
@lfrench
's 25 point margin in Clay County largely coming from the portion of it in the 1st district, the more northern district. (2/9)
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This trend holds across all of the at-large races where there was a clear ideological difference. The southern Northland consistently leans more toward progressive politics. (3/9)
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Taking a look at race data, a similar pattern emerges. while still majority white, the southern portion of the Northland is far more diverse. This is an area with the most diverse public schools in the state of Missouri, something
@NKCSchools
often touts. (4/9)
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Looking at income data, it also follows this pattern. Many neighborhoods in the Northern portion have median incomes >$100k, while my neighborhood in Southern Clay County has a median income of only $38k, with some neighborhoods nearby having median incomes as low as $28k. (5/9)
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This is the oldest part of the Northland. After World War 2,
#KCMO
rapidly annexed land North of the Missouri river in hopes to capture tax revenue from higher-income white people leaving the urban core through white flight. (6/9)
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This process of white flight isn't just historical, though. White flight is happening today with ongoing urban sprawl.
Leaders in the Northland like to boast how rapidly it's expanding. But who does that benefit? (7/9)
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When infrastructure $ in the Northland are put toward McMansion subdivisions in the middle of nowhere, it leaves behind the existing, older parts of the Northland with inadequate infrastructure.
This is a thread demonstrating our lack of sidewalks (8/9)👇
I want to draw particular attention to this section of the Northland.
Much of this part of town was developed prior to being annexed by the City of Kansas City in 1950. Meaning that it was built without regulations requiring builders to build sidewalks.
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This is all to say that when people make generalizations about "the Northland" or when elected officials talk about what "the Northland" thinks about a given issue, consider that there's probably a voice being left out. (9/9)
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@JazHays
Really impressive data analysis -- can I ask where you got the data from? Would love to play around with it
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@jocho0913
Clay County posts precinct-level election results for every election here:
They are published as PDFs, so I wrote a script that parses those documents and dumps into a spreadsheet. Manual transcription is reasonable as well
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@JazHays
The Northland is frequently mocked as "bargain JoCo".
But that in itself makes me wonder: as we've seen JoCo move to the left due to education and diversification, are we going to see the same trend in even Platte and north Clay?
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@JazHays
Kansas City is 60/40 Progressive/Conservative, but city council is 12/1 Progressive/Conservative.
All this map says to me is that we'd get better representation with 2 At Large council members (One from the Northland, one from Jackson County) and 10 In District council members.
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@JazHays
I live in the southern to middle portion of northland. I vote for Libertarians most of the time. I will consider some Republicans but never a Democrat
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