Why is the panhandle so conservative?

The guy who ushered in the the BIGGEST budget in state history is a con?

 

It’s basically southern, much like North Fl, excluding Gainesville. Also a decent military presence.

 

Because it’s the dick part?

 

The panhandle is lower Alabama. I lived there for 15 years. My wife will never move back (she doesn't like Alabama).

 

As any parent of a young child knows, “why?” questions are among the most philosophically difficult questions to answer. However, there is probably a single factor mentioned already that itself would well predict this outcome: rural vs urban. People seem to be obsessed with red vs blue states, but really those are arbitrary entities that themselves can be predicted almost entirely by urban:rural citizen ratio.

Why this wasn’t always the case is also an interesting and challenging line of thought. It appears that Americans have been self sorting, with liberals choosing urban life and conservatives choosing rural environs. This is the basis of the very influential book, The Big Sort.

 

Because it’s a great place ?

 

Huge factor.

 

Grew up in the Panhandle. Mostly rural. As for Gainesville being different, go 20-30 miles away from Gainesville in any direction and the area is just like the Panhandle. Tallahassee is the same. Both cities dominated by university and other government workers, and thus heavily democratic. The Panhandle used to be heavily Democratic, but that was decades ago.

 

Mostly enlisted.

 

The Air Force has the biggest presence in the panhandle, and apart from Space Force it has highest officer-to-enlisted ratio. Plus it’s not just the rank-and-file members, it’s the whole of the support community — families, civilian employees, contractors, retirees — that tends to lean conservative.

 

A lot is just rural vs urban, isn’t it? Rural everywhere leans farther right, which is interesting.

 

Wouldn’t say conservatives are choosing rural life due to population declines in those areas.
Would say more rural people are choosing to be conservative (as evidenced by change in voting in those areas from D to R).

 

Wait. I thought the rest of Florida was the dick, Miami was the piss hole, and the panhandle was kind of the balls? Have I had ot backwards?

 

More rural. More military. More churches. Less ethnic diversity. Northwest Florida in particular has some interesting history to include having been part of the state of West Florida when Florida was divided.

Pensacola for example has a lot of Spanish street names but also Mardis Gras is a thing here. New Orleans is the same distance from us as Tallahassee. And yes, central time zone.

All this said, Pensacola itself still has a lot of Democrats in the City limits at least.

West Florida - Wikipedia

West Florida (Spanish: Florida Occidental) was a region on the northern coast of the Gulf of Mexico that underwent several boundary and sovereignty changes during its history. As its name suggests, it was formed out of the western part of former Spanish Florida (East Florida formed the eastern part, with the Apalachicola River as the border), along with lands taken from French Louisiana; Pensacola became West Florida's capital. The colony included about two thirds of what is now the Florida Panhandle, as well as parts of the modern U.S. states of Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama.

Florida Panhandle - Wikipedia

Throughout the 19th century the Panhandle was sparsely populated, dotted in places with small farming communities, none of which had as many as a thousand residents. Many Panhandle residents had, in fact, migrated to the area from Alabama and had relatives there; it was also easier to trade with and travel to southern Alabama than to reach East Florida by slow, arduous journey across the thick cypress swamps and dense pine forests of the Panhandle. It was natural for West Floridians to feel that they had more in common with their nearby neighbors in Alabama than with the residents of the peninsula, hundreds of miles away.[8]

In 1821, Pensacola was the only city (in 19th-century terms) in West Florida, with a population estimated to be about 3,000. In the 1850 census, the enumerated population of Pensacola was 2,164 (including 741 slaves and 350 "free Negroes").[9]

Alabama annexation proposals
During the course of the century, proposals for ceding the Florida counties west of the Apalachicola River to Alabama were often raised:

 

I think that is likely happening as well. Here’s a recent treatment of the topic, which mentions both factors:

Conservatives go to red states and liberals go to blue as the country grows more polarized

 

Twice in my lifetime Panhandle legislators filed bills to leave Florida and become part of Alabama. This occurred due to huge population gains in central and south Florida. Both times the bills failed.

 

Kind of like Alabama.

 

This. FL01 Congressional district is the most militarized US House district in the country. Four major bases here in Pensacola NAS, Tyndall, Hurlburt, Eglin AFB. Also there are midlevel bases at Whiting Field and Duke Field.

When Naval aviators traverse the oceans, they tend to call Pensacola their home (It's where they all start out, also no state income tax).

Retired officers are everywhere here. The big Navy Hospital in Pensacola doesn't hurt.

Before Morning Joe won this seat, it was Dem held for decades. Earl Hutto (chairman of the Armed Services committee) was untouchable.