My honors thesis project, advised by Professor David Broockman and Professor Terri Bimes, examines the crisis of “West Coast liberalism” that was coined by New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristoff (2024) in electoral terms. It is currently a work in progress, but a full draft and associated datasets will be made available in May 2025.
My research has been accepted for poster sessions at two conferences: the Southwestern Political Science Association‘s 2025 Annual Meeting in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Western Political Science Association‘s 2025 Annual Meeting in Seattle, Washington.
I am also grateful to have received research funding from the Charles H. Percy Undergraduate Grant for Public Affairs Research through the UC Berkeley Institute of Governmental Studies. I also received grant funding through the Fiat Lux Fellowship.
Abstract: In the last few years, there have been notable urban political shifts on the West Coast between “progressive” and “moderate” Democrats that, in parallel to concerns over public safety, have received significant attention locally and nationally. In this thesis, I investigate crime and the unhoused as the two major issues driving these political shifts. I argue that, one, urban West Coast electorates are targeting their backlash against progressives, but two, that is not necessarily a reflection of the local realities of crime and homelessness. First, I conduct a regional analysis of five traditionally liberal West Coast metropolitan areas (Los Angeles, Oakland, Portland, San Francisco, Seattle) with a modified difference-in-difference approach. Second, I conduct a local analysis of San Francisco at the census block group level with the same difference-in-difference approach. I augment my statistical analyses with descriptive analyses to contextualize these electoral shifts. My research contributes to the study of local government and is particularly timely given the ongoing nature of political change in West Coast cities.
Keywords: urban politics, local elections, progressive politics, public safety