Northeastern United States

From New World Encyclopedia


Regional definitions vary

The Northeastern United States is a region of the United States. [1][2] As defined by the U.S. Census Bureau, the Northeast region of the United States covers nine states: Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Connecticut, New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. Delaware, Maryland, and Northern Virginia are sometimes referred to as part of the Northeast census group because of their inclusion in the BosWash megalopolis. However, the Census Bureau includes these two states in the South Atlantic region.[3]

A 2006 census estimate put the population of the region (as defined by the U.S. Census Bureau) at 54,741,353. The Northeast is bordered to the north by Canada, to the west by the Midwest, to the south by the South, and to the east by the Atlantic Ocean. Its largest city, New York City, is also the largest city and metropolitan area in the United States.

The Northeast is also the richest region of the United States. In 2007, the U.S. Census Bureau reported that the wealthiest states were Maryland (first), New Jersey (second), Connecticut (third), Hawaii (fourth), and Massachusetts (fifth)[1]

New York alone accounts for nearly 8 percent of U.S. gross domestic product as of 2005.[4] While they rank high in income, they are predominantly small in overall population and area (New York and Pennsylvania aside), with only New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania ranking in the top 10 states in population and no state ranking in the top ten in regards to size.

Geography

The Northeast is the smallest Census Bureau-defined region in the country but has the most states of any census region. The region has a landscape varying from the rocky coast of New England to the fertile farmland of the Ohio River Valley behind the Allegheny Front in Pennsylvania. The Isles of Shoals near the Maine/New Hampshire border begins the rocky Atlantic coastline of the Northeast. Jagged cliffs rise up to a hundred feet above the ocean on Maine's northern coast; south of West Quoddy Head Peninsula in Maine, the easternmost point in the United States, the coastline subsides to sandy beaches that extend through the rest of the Northeast's Atlantic coastline. Between Cape Cod in Massachusetts and Cape May in New Jersey are a series of large islands including Nantucket, Martha's Vineyard, Block Island, Long Island, Manhattan, and Staten Island.

Four major rivers' mouths pierce the coastline to empty into the Atlantic: the Delaware at the New Jersey/Delaware border, the Hudson at the New York/New Jersey border, the Connecticut in Connecticut, and the Kennebec in Maine. The Kennebec River extends over one hundred kilometers past Augusta, Maine and into the thick pine forests of Maine. The Hudson empties into New York Harbor in the New York metropolitan area and extends north between the Berkshires and the Catskill Mountains before it terminates in Upstate New York at its source in the Adirondack Mountains. The Mohawk River flows eastward from its source near Utica, New York between the Catskills and the Adirondacks before merging with the Hudson north of Albany. Two of the Great Lakes, Lake Ontario and Lake Erie, also border the region.

The Connecticut River flows south, running along the border of New Hampshire and Vermont between the Green Mountains and White Mountains, before flowing through Springfield, Massachusetts, and Hartford, Connecticut, on its way to empty into Long Island Sound. In the White Mountains of New Hampshire is Mt. Washington, the tallest mountain in the Northeast and the windiest location in the United States. The White Mountains were also the location of the famous geological formation called the Old Man of the Mountain, which collapsed in 2003. To the west of the Green Mountains on the New York-Vermont border, and extending into Canada, is glacier-formed Lake Champlain, where Vermont's largest city Burlington is located. The Lake Champlain area drains north into the St. Lawrence river valley.

The Delaware River flows from its source between the Pocono Mountains and the Catskills down, forming the border between Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and passing through the Lehigh Valley, Trenton, and Philadelphia areas before emptying into Delaware Bay on the Delaware/New Jersey Border. The Susquehanna River begins in the Catskill Mountains of New York and winds down a valley between the Allegheny Plateau and the Pocono Mountains in Pennsylvania before crossing the border into Maryland and emptying into the Chesapeake Bay.

To the north and west of the Susquehanna are the Finger Lakes of New York, so called because they resemble human fingers, and the Northeast's borders with the Great Lakes of Lake Ontario in New York and Lake Erie in both Pennsylvania and New York. On an isthmus between the two Great Lakes on the New York/Ontario border near Buffalo is one of the most famous waterfalls in the world, Niagara Falls.

To the south, flowing out of the Allegheny Plateau is the Ohio River which flows through Pittsburgh and on into the U.S. Midwest where it ultimately merges with the Mississippi River.

Climate

Despite being geographically one of the smallest regions of the United States, the northeastern states possess a wide range of climates. Rainfall varies from over 50 inches annually in some coastal areas, to 32 inches in the western part of Pennsylvania and New York. Snowfall can range from over 100 inches per year in Upstate New York to only trace amounts in the coastal areas of Maryland. Generally, northern New England, the parts of New York north of the Mohawk River, highland areas in the Appalachians and some coastal areas possess a warm summer humid continental climate, with warm, humid summers and snowy, often bitterly cold winters. Cities in this zone include Syracuse, NY, Burlington, VT, and Portland, ME. Below this line, much of the region (except for the higher elevations) has a hot summer humid continental climate, with hot, humid summers and moderately cold, snowy winters. Most of the major cities of the Northeast lie within this zone, including Pittsburgh, New York, and Boston. The area around the Chesapeake Bay which is only sometimes called Northeast as well as the states Maryland, Delaware and extreme southeastern Pennsylvania possess a humid subtropical climate, with hot, humid summers and more mild winters. Cities that lie in this zone include Baltimore and Washington, D.C., with Philadelphia lying on the transition zone.

History

New England

Main article: New England

New England is perhaps the best-defined region of the U.S., with more uniformity and more of a shared heritage than other regions of the country. New England has played a dominant role in American history. From the late seventeenth century to the mid to late righteenth century, New England was the nation's cultural leader in political, educational, cultural, and intellectual thought. During this time, it was the country's economic center.

The earliest European settlers of New England were English Protestants who came in search of religious liberty. They gave the region its distinctive political format — town meetings (an outgrowth of meetings held by church elders), in which citizens gathered to discuss issues of the day. Town meetings still function in many New England communities today and have been revived as a form of dialogue in the national political arena.

Education is another of the region's strongest legacies. The cluster of top-ranking universities and colleges in New England—including four of the eight schools of the Ivy League, as well as MIT, Tufts, and numerous other elite colleges and universities—is unequaled by any other region. America's first college, Harvard, was founded at Cambridge, Massachusetts, in 1636. Many of the graduates from these schools end up settling in the region after school, providing the area with a well-educated populace and its most valuable resource, the area being relatively lacking in natural resources, besides "ice, rocks, and fish". True to their enterprising nature, New Englanders have used their brains to make up the gap, for instance, in the 19th century, they made money off their frozen pond water, by shipping ice in fast clipper ships to tropical locations before refrigeration was invented.

As some of the original New England settlers migrated westward, immigrants from Canada, Ireland, Italy, and eastern Europe moved into the region. Despite a changing population, New England maintains a distinct cultural identity. It can be seen in the simple woodframe houses and quaint white church steeples that are features of many small towns, and in the traditional lighthouses that dot the Atlantic coast. New England is also well known for its mercurial weather, its crisp chill, and vibrantly colored foliage in autumn. The region is a popular tourist destination. As a whole, the area of New England tends to be liberal in its politics, albeit restrained in its personal mores.

The extreme southwestern part of the region (that is, the western third or so of Connecticut) is sometimes considered culturally and demographically to be more like the Mid-Atlantic region because of its proximity to New York City.

Mid-Atlantic

These areas provided the young United States with heavy industry and served as the "melting pot" of new immigrants from Europe. Cities grew along major shipping routes and waterways. Such flourishing cities included New York City on the Hudson River, Philadelphia on the Delaware River, and Baltimore on the Chesapeake Bay.

Dutch immigrants moved into the lower Hudson River Valley in what is now New Jersey and New York State. Swedes went to Delaware. The English Catholics settled in Maryland. An English Protestant sect, the Friends (Quakers), settled Pennsylvania. In time, all these settlements fell under English control, but the region continued to be a magnet for people of diverse nationalities.

Early settlers were mostly farmers and traders, and the region served as a bridge between North and South. Philadelphia, Pennsylvania midway between the northern and southern colonies, was home to the U.S. Continental Congress, the convention of delegates from the original colonies that organized the American Revolution. The same city was the birthplace of the Declaration of Independence in 1776 and the U.S. Constitution in 1787.

The Mid-Atlantic with two of America's largest cities, New York City and Philadelphia, contains vast importance in the region. A major center of business, media, education, the arts, and cuisine, the area could be considered one of America's most prominent regions. With all these attractions, many immigrants are lured to the region. New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Maryland, and Delaware are rich in immigrant culture throughout their history, beginning with the Europeans. The region now boasts large Asian and Hispanic populations. African immigrants have many strongholds in urban areas.

Culture

Language, ethnicity, and religion

Culturally, the Northeast is somewhat different from the rest of the United States. While some regions of the United States, such as the U.S. South, are predominantly Protestant, half of the states in the Northeast are predominantly Catholic, with Rhode Island having the highest percentage of Catholics in the Continental United States. This is largely due to substantial levels of immigration the region received in the 19th and early 20th centuries from Ireland, Italy, Quebec, and other Catholic regions. The Northeast is home to many other religious groups. For example, New York has the highest percentage of Jews in the nation, followed by New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Connecticut and Massachusetts also have a significant percentage of Jews relative to most other U.S. states, as does Maryland. The Northeast also contains the highest concentration of Italian-Americans and Irish-Americans in the United States.

The Northeast is an ethnically diverse region, with high populations of African-Americans, Hispanics, and Asians, though it has a generally low number of Native Americans. The high level of diversity has much to do with New York City, which was and still is an entry point for many immigrants, however, the other major cities of the region have significant ethnic diversity as well. The three largest cities in the census-defined Northeast (New York City, Philadelphia, and Boston) have the same four largest ancestries African American, Italian, Irish, and Puerto Rican.

As is the case in much of the United States, people from many European American backgrounds live in the Northeast, although white Northeasterners frequently identify with their ethnic background more strongly than do U.S.-born whites from other U.S. regions. Massachusetts, particularly in the Boston area, is regarded as the Irish capital of the United States. New York City, Philadelphia,Baltimore, and New Jersey have long been known for their many Italian-Americans (many of whom have moved to outlying suburban areas). The New York City borough of Brooklyn also historically is a major center of the Jewish-American population; while a significant community still lives there, in the mid-20th century Jews made up over 50% of the borough's white population (the city as a whole also contained over 50% of the entire country's Jewish population at the time).

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania is home to the famous Pennsylvania Dutch (who are actually of German descent), but now a large, vibrant Hispanic population lives there as well. Overall, the Northeast has high percentages of people of Jewish, German, Italian, Irish, Portuguese, and French-Canadian descent. The cities of New Bedford, Massachusetts, Fall River, Massachusetts, Kearny, New Jersey, and Newark, New Jersey each have high populations of people of Portuguese and Brazilian descent; increasingly so does Mount Vernon, New York, a small city that borders New York City to the north which also has a significant African American and Caribbean–West Indian community.

The Northeast has the second largest Asian population in the United States, after the West Coast. The largest of these groups are Indian, Chinese, Korean, and Filipino, in that order. There are also significant populations of Japanese, Vietnamese, Thai, and Cambodians.

Downtown Philadelphia

Almost all the Asians are concentrated in five states: New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Massachusetts. However, Connecticut and Delaware are seeing a rapid surge in Asians.

The Northeast has the third largest Hispanic population, after the West Coast and the Southwest. The majority of the nation's Puerto Ricans reside in the region, chiefly in the states of New York, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Also, the Northeast has the most people of "Other Hispanic" heritage in the country, with the majority of them being Dominican, Central American and Colombian.The Northeast also has the second-largest population of Cuban Americans of any region, but their concentration is more widespread (the South has the largest Cuban population, but it is almost completely concentrated in southern Florida). Hudson County, New Jersey has the highest Cuban population outside South Florida. The neighborhood of Washington Heights in Manhattan is regarded as the center of the Dominican diaspora and Paterson, New Jersey is considered the center of Peruvian immigration. The Baltimore/Washington D.C Area has the second largest population of Salvadoreans in the U.S after Los Angeles. While the Northeast has one of the smallest populations of Mexican Americans of any U.S. region, its Mexican population is growing at a faster rate than that of any other region in the country, and there are many cities and towns throughout with significant populations.

The Northeast also has the second largest population of African-Americans, only behind the South. Most of the Black population resides in New York, Maryland, Pennsylvania, or New Jersey. New York has more Blacks than any other state, Pennsylvania is ranked tenth in number of African Americans, and New Jersey is ranked fifteenth. Maryland is the state with the largest percentage of blacks in the region. Massachusetts and Connecticut also have large Black populations, along with Delaware having a large percentage of its population African American, but a relatively smaller total population. The Northeast also contains the bulk of the African immigrant population in the United States.

The Northeast has the largest concentration and percentage of Jews in the United States, and their presence is most notable in the areas of Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York City,and southern New England. The region also has the highest amount of Hindus and Sikhs in the nation, with a slight lead over the west. This is due to the fact that the Northeast has more people of Indian descent than any other part of the country, and in the world outside India.

The region is also home to one of the largest populations of Muslims, Buddhists, and many other religions, including the highest amount of Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox Christians, due to the many Eastern Europeans who have immigrated to the region in the past thirty years.

While much of the region is highly diverse, the Northeast also contains the three states with the highest percentage of European Americans: Maine (96.9% white), Vermont (96.9%), and New Hampshire (96.2%). These three states all have high concentrations of French Canadians, and many descendants of English immigrants.

Cuisine

The Northeast has from colonial times relied on fishing and seafare as a major source of its economic strength, in part because the extreme winter conditions preclude farming as a practical occupation in much of the region.

The result has been an intensely developed seafood sector, which today booms with two centuries of experience behind it and produces some of the most famous dishes in the world. Maine's excellent lobster is shipped around the nation. Boston, one of the oldest seaports in America, makes what the locals consider the finest clam chowder in the United States. New England is also famous for fried and steamed clams.`

Philadelphia's large immigrant population has contributed to a large mixture of tastes to mingle and develop. This city is known for its soft pretzels, cheesesteaks, and hoagies. Philadelphia has also been ranked as one the top restaurant cities in the U.S.

Baltimore, a vibrant metropolis set on the teeming Chesapeake Bay, has been highly successful in capitalizing on its marine history and is arguably the current center of the American seafood market. Patrons from the world over come to the Inner Harbor to enjoy Maryland blue crabs, Maryland crabcakes, crab soup, seafood lasagna, raw oysters, rock fish, and the state's own brand of potato chips, crab chips.

Maryland, Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware are also known for their citizens' heavy consumption of scrapple, a breakfast food mostly unknown outside of the region.

In Maryland and some parts of Pennsylvania, fried eggs are known as dip eggs. Baltimore is also home to a unique variety of fritters. Maryland is also famous for its Old Bay Seasoning and Pit Beef.

Urban, suburban, and rural

Much of the history of the Northeast is characterized by archetypical medium and large manufacturing cities. The sometimes urban character of the region gives it a strange mix of reputations, and many view Northeastern cities as places of economic opportunity. In major northeastern cities, ethnic enclaves aren't uncommon. Most of the cities have large, and at times, provocative, artistic and theatrical scenes.

New York City, the largest city in both the Northeastern United States, and the United States as a whole

Older religious and ethnic factionalism have become relatively minor concerns. At the same time, the major cities are expensive and have large economic disparities, often giving them a reputation of being impersonal and aloof. The decreased importance of manufacturing has left many of the cities without an economic base, giving some of them a reputation for urban decay. Notable examples of cities left damaged and often severely depopulated from loss of manufacturing include Yonkers, Utica, Buffalo, Syracuse, and even parts of New York City in New York state; Newark in New Jersey; Baltimore in Maryland; Lowell in Massachusetts; Hartford and Bridgeport in Connecticut; and Pittsburgh in Pennsylvania. However, examples dot the entire region and much of the neighboring region of the American Midwest.

Some of these cities, though, have enjoyed revivals in recent years, replacing their economic reliance on manufacturing with job development in the medical, technical and educational industries. Pittsburgh, for example, now counts only 23% of its workforce in blue collar occupations according to a 2005 report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. And the last of the city's infamous steel mills closed in 1998.

Though it generally is seen as having a very urban character, at least in its most populated areas, the Northeast was one of the first regions to undergo heavy post-World War II suburbanization. The most notable of these early suburbs was Levittown in the Long Island region of New York, east of New York City; Levittown is often regarded as the archetype of the "cookie-cutter" suburb. The suburban spawl of New Jersey is, likewise, famous, as is New Jersey's reputation for urban decay, despite the region having the lowest murder rate in the United States.[5]

Today, suburbanization is a rampant trend in United States housing development driven by widespread use of the automobile and de-emphasis on mass transit and commuter railroads as a viable form of transportation. Nonetheless, the iconic New York subway system is widely used, as is the PATH system connecting Newark, Hoboken, Jersey City, and Manhattan. The New York metropolitan area's Long Island Rail Road, Metro-North Railroad, and New Jersey Transit commuter rail are the three largest regional rail systems in the country and together transport about one-third of commuters who use rail transportation in the United States each day.

Many of the major and secondary cities in the region also utilize mass transit. Systems that provide both rail and bus service include Baltimore's MTA-Maryland (which serves much of the state of Maryland but is centered on Baltimore), Boston's MBTA, Buffalo's NFTA, Philadelphia's SEPTA and PATCO, Pittsburgh's PAT, and Washington D.C's WMATA. Many other smaller cities have smaller, bus-only systems. In Pennsylvania, new commuter rail projects, such as CorridorOne, are being undertaken to expand service between Harrisburg and Lancaster. Syracuse's OnTrack transit service makes Syracuse the smallest city in the United States to have its own transit system, though it is not widely used. Five states - Connecticut, Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Rhode Island - have transit providers that cover much or all of their respective states.

File:DOWNTOWN BMORE 1.jpg
City centre of Baltimore

The Northeast as a megalopolis

Today, the coastal Northeast is said to resemble a megalopolis, or megacity, an interdependent network of cities and suburbs that blend into each other. Economically, the region provides many of the financial and government services the rest of the country and much of the world depends on, from New York's Wall Street to Boston's academia to Washington's K Street lobbying firms. The megacity is called BosWash, for Boston-Washington describing the width of the region from one metropolitan area to another, or Bosnywash, for Boston-New York-Washington, describing the northern and southern anchor cities and most important metropolitan region in the middle. It is linked largely by the I-95 Interstate, which runs from Florida, through North Carolina, Virginia, around Washington, D.C., through Baltimore, Philadelphia, New York, and up to Boston and into Maine. By rail, the cities are linked by Amtrak's Northeast Corridor. Suburbs of Boston as far north as New Hampshire and even Maine, as well as Washington's southern suburbs in Virginia are arguably all part of Bosnywash.

Some argue, notably political scientists Ruy Teixeira and John B. Judis in their book The Emerging Democratic Majority, that city and suburb in Bosnywash and in other regions of the country are moving towards a state of economic and cultural seamlessness. Teixeira and Judis use the increasingly similar voting and demographic patterns of city and suburbs to make their argument. However, it is also evidenced in increasing population density and tightly-linked infrastructure. Along the Gold Coast, the area across the Hudson River from New York City, of New Jersey, population density has become so great that the state built the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system to decrease traffic congestion. This system complements the PATH system, New Jersey Transit commuter bus and rail service, a complex highway transportation system, and Port Authority Airports. Future expansion of Hudson-Bergen Light Rail could see it go to Staten Island in New York City to the south and throughout Bergen and southern Passaic Counties to the north and northwest. Similarly, both Boston's and Philadelphia's transit systems links those cities with their surrounding suburbs very seamlessly. Further, much of the Northeast region is heavily linked by state-run commuter trains and Amtrak.

Despite the heavy urban/suburban characteristics of the region, many rural characteristics survive. Much of Upstate New York, and even as far south as Westchester County have decidedly rural characteristics. The Pine Barrens and the part of northwestern New Jersey known as the Skylands[6] are known as retreats from the urban areas of the Northeast. In fact, New Jersey is more rural than most people realize despite its stereotype of urban and suburban sprawl. Both Long Island and northern New York have relatively well-known wine producing regions. New York is a heavily agricultural state, and even New York City's boroughs of Queens and Staten Island had some sort of farm production well into the late 20th century. Small towns and cities dot western Massachusetts' Berkshire region, as well as Vermont, Pennsylvania, western Maryland, and New Hampshire. While formerly important rural industries like farming and mining have decreased in importance in recent decades, they persist.

Economy

Until World War II, the Northeast's economy was largely driven by industry. In the second half of the 20th century, most of New England's traditional industries have relocated to states or foreign countries where goods can be made more cheaply. In more than a few factory towns, skilled workers have been left without jobs. The gap has been partly filled by the microelectronics, computer and biotech industries, fed by talent from the region's prestigious educational institutions.

Like New England, the Mid-Atlantic region has seen much of its heavy industry relocate elsewhere. Other industries, such as drug manufacturing and communications, have taken up the slack. The economy of the New York City and Washington, DC sub-regions are more complex; the fortunes of the former are heavily (but far from completely) dependent on the financial industry and the stock market, the latter's economy is heavily reliant on the U.S. Federal government and related services.

As the service sector is less dependent on heavy labor than the formerly dominant industrial sector, the incentive unskilled immigrants and unskilled laborers once had to move to the Northeast has largely diminished. They lack the skills to compete in, for example, the financial, technical, educational, and medical markets. However, the Northeast remains a magnet for skilled workers from around the world.

The Northeast area is the wealthiest region of the country. The Upper East Side of the New York City borough of Manhattan arguably hosts the largest concentration of individual wealth in the world. Maryland, Connecticut and New Jersey are the wealthiest states in the union in terms of both per capita and household income.

Politics

The Northeast region is known for its political liberalism. For example, every state in the region voted for John Kerry in the 2004 election. However, Pennsylvania is considered a Battleground state, meaning that either a Republican or Democratic Presidential candidate could win Pennsylvania. In 2000, Pennsylvania voted 51-47 for Al Gore; in 2004, it voted 51-49 for John Kerry. New Hampshire, with its unique tradition of libertarian politics, has also recently been considered a battleground state. In 2000, it went to George W. Bush 48-47, but in 2004, John Kerry won New Hampshire 51-49.

Historical

Traditionally, the Northeast was a Republican stronghold. During the late 19th century and early 20th century, the Republicans were economically and socially liberal, advocating open markets and endorsing the concept of free labor (a belief that laborers have the right to sell their labor in exchange for wages); therefore, the Republicans of the time generally opposed labor unions and slavery. From the American Civil War until the Great Depression, American politics were largely dominated by Northeastern Republicans and their business interests. The wealth and power of the Northeast during this period generated a great deal of animosity in other regions of the country with more agrarian interests in part because of Republican domination. Some of that animosity still persists today.

The major cities were more likely to support the rival Democratic Party and often were under the control of the powerful political machines that dished out patronage (the most famous of these machines was Tammany Hall in New York City, which even held some political power into the 1960s). Immigration to Northeastern cities rapidly pushed the population of the region upwards from the 1790s until World War II and the Democratic Party often won the support of these immigrants through political patronage. The Democratic Party was also the prevailing party in the American South; despite occasional disagreements between the regional party factions, there was little interference between the two even if there were at times vast differences in ideology. The coalition between the cities of the North and the agrarian South was perhaps ironic in the sense that the Northern Democratic Party was made up of ethnic interests (often Irish Catholic) and unions while the Southern Democratic Party was the party of the White Anglo-Saxon Protestant and enforcer of Jim Crow laws designed to keep blacks from advancing after the Civil War. What the two factions shared were distaste for the Republicans. Southern Democrats, as well as counterparts in western farming states, wanted to pursue populist and agrarian policies in opposition to Republican industrial interests. Their Northern counterparts wielded vast control over political machines controlled at times by ethnic interests, particularly the Irish in New York and Boston, and supported policies that weren't necessarily anti-industrial, but ostensibly designed to alleviate working class poverty. (Racism was sometimes a shared trait between Northern and Southern Democrats as well. While the South promoted slavery and later Jim Crow laws, the ethnic labor force of the North feared African Americans would threaten their employment if they migrated to the cities and took their jobs.)

From the 1930s to the early 1990s, despite the power of labor unions, the Democratic Party was regarded as too economically illiberal (that is, supportive of heavy government interference in the economy and overly supportive of social programs) for a region that had a large professional class. After World War II, many professionals relocated to suburbs, causing them to take on decidedly Republican leanings as the cities remained largely Democratic enclaves. As a result, the Republicans remained competitive in the northeast during much of the remainder of the 20th century. Much of the remainder of the country was heavily supportive of the Democrats from the 1930s until Richard Nixon's Southern Strategy sundered regional party loyalty. When the Democrats began softening their economic policies in the early 1990s, suburban northeastern voters responded favorably and became more supportive of them. On the federal level, many northeastern voters have abandoned the Republican Party, sometimes associating it with reactionary and oppressive policies and other times merely preferring Democratic economic solutions (see New Democrats). However, the local Republican Party affiliates in much of the Northeast remain more socially liberal than their counterparts in other regions of the country.

Present

Since the late 20th century, the region's politics have been largely explained by a strong coalition of demographics predominant in the North that are overwhelmingly Democratic. These groups include the majority Catholic population with a significant urban, Democratic legacy (this would apply to the Jewish population as well), artists, educators, and intellectuals of New York City, Boston, Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Baltimore, Washington D.C. and the Ivy League; the large minority populations of those same cities; a large socially conservative but economically liberal blue-collar population throughout the region; and the often socially liberal suburbanites of New Jersey, Connecticut, Maryland, and New Hampshire. Pro-business policies espoused by the national Democratic Party since the election of Bill Clinton in 1992 have drawn many upper-class white professionals into the Democratic fold who would have been Republicans as late as the 1980s.

This also continues its contrast and rivalry with the conservative South that has existed since the founding of the United States. Within the Northeast, there are great political rivalries between the cities and the suburbs that surround them. This is particularly prominent in Philadelphia, and New York City (which even has a secession movement), where the cities must compete with the suburbs and rural areas for state funding.

However, because of the increasing integration of the BosWash megacity combined with the more centrist Democratic Leadership Council's appeal to free trade advocates, ideological differences have softened between city and suburb in recent decades, strengthening the Democratic Party overall. Over time, residents of the suburbs have begun facing changes once regarded as uniquely urban, such as gangs, urban crowding, and drug abuse, while becoming increasingly ethnically diverse.

Post-war migration patterns weakened the Northeast's power considerably. Industry often relocated to the West Coast and South since they were less expensive, less crowded, and were less prone to labor unions. By the 1970s, California had surpassed New York as the most populous state and by 1994 Texas had pushed New York to third place. By 2020, Florida is predicted to push New York to the rank of fourth most populated state. While New York City remains by far the largest city in the United States and a large recipient of immigrants, most immigration now comes from Latin America to border states such as Arizona, Texas, California, and New Mexico. Secondary cities in the region, such as Buffalo, never regained their economic foothold after the decline of industry, though larger and more famous cities such as New York, Boston, and Philadelphia developed sophisticated service economies.

Today, along with the West Coast and upper Midwest, the Northeast is one of three regions dominated by the Democratic Party.


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