In large cities, there is a great amount of diversity shown throughout nearly every aspect of everyday life and interactions. When cities are highly populated, however, they show more tendencies toward liberal beliefs in terms of political stances and voting trends. Even with such diversity present, these populous areas seem to unify residents in political views more often than not.
Dallas, Texas is not a conservative city. Instead, Dallas is strongly liberal. These liberal ideals are shown through recent voting statistics, elected government officials, financial contributions to political campaigns, abortion views, and efforts to combat climate change within the city.
These liberal views present themselves in an incredibly large amount of ways throughout Dallas. Some of these indicators are explained below.
Recent Voting Statistics
The voting statistics
of an area are an incredibly simple and accurate method of learning more about the political views and majority of a city. In Dallas, the highest voting percentages are in support of the Democratic party, as the city is strongly liberal and supports liberal leaders who share these ideals.
In the 2020 presidential election, a strong 64.9% of voters in Dallas County, the county that Dallas is part of, supported the Democratic party candidate. Only 33.3% of participating voters in the city supported the Republican party candidate, and the remaining 1.8% voted Independent in the election.
Taking nearly 65% of the votes cast, the city makes its Democratic party majority blatantly obvious, especially in comparison to an opposing representation of only 33%. In fact, Dallas has voted Democratic in the last 4 presidential elections held in the United States. Not only does the city show a strong Democratic population majority, but this also has a history of consistently supporting liberal ideals over the course of recent years.
Elected Government Officials
The current mayor of Dallas, Texas is Mayor Eric Johnson, who is a member of the Democratic political party. As a Democrat, Mayor Johnson is known to support and advocate liberal ideals throughout the city. Dallas residents elected a liberal Mayor who will enact liberal policies that support liberal views throughout their city.
The mayors of Dallas are mostly people who didn’t belong to any particular political party. Then, the mayors here were liberal for many years, and only a few of them were Republicans. From 2007 to 2011, there was a Republican mayor, but that was the last one as of recently. Before then, there were a few Republican mayors from the 80s to 90s, but that small number compared to the number of Democrat mayors shows how Democratic Dallas is and how long it has been mostly liberal.
So, Dallas has been held by liberals for a long time, but if a person who wasn’t fully conservative or liberal took office, that would not be surprising based on its history and the state that Dallas is in. But, having a Republican take office would be surprising. It is not entirely impossible, but a conservative mayor is not common enough to make it a real possibility. If another Republican takes the mayor’s office, they would have to have an amazing campaign and appeal to liberal as well as conservative ideals.
Abortion Views
Liberals tend to advocate for legal abortion rights and easy access to these procedures, while conservatives typically work to limit access and ban abortions.
The Roe v Wade Supreme Court case of 1973 ruling determined that legal rights to abortions were provided to all Americans through the US Constitution. Liberals and other abortion rights activists counted this as a large victory. However, on June 24th, 2022, the US Supreme Court announced that this original Roe v Wade ruling has been overturned, meaning that it is no longer considered to be a valid or accurate interpretation of the law.
Instead, the Supreme Court declared that it was not within the federal power to decide, so by overturning the original ruling, they allowed each state to create and enforce its own abortion laws.
Individual states now have the ability to vote among residents and place abortion laws. They can protect abortion rights and increase access to these procedures or limit access or even ban abortions within the state completely. The pro-abortionist activists that had celebrated and supported the original Supreme Court ruling were outraged. Rallies and riots were held in cities all over the nation, and many took place in Dallas, Texas.
On the very day of the US Supreme Court announcement, nearly 200 Dallas residents participated in a rally that gathered at Below Garden park in downtown Dallas. Several local abortion rights organizations planned the event. Some of the most prominent contributors include the Dallas Women’s March, Dallas AFL-CIO, Planned Parenthood, and the Texas Coalition of Black Democrats. Speakers encouraged participants to use their votes and voice to advocate for legal abortion rights and then moved the group to march along the streets downtown.
Rallies were held in the following days, weeks, and months throughout the city. Hundreds of protestors gathered outside of City Hall, and many more gathered in Main Street Garden during the following week alone. In fact, protestors in Dallas marched the streets nearly every other day since the announcement for over 2 weeks!
Clearly, Dallas residents are liberal in their views of abortion rights, and passionately so! Incredibly high temperatures, busy city streets, and even weeks of time didn’t stop hundreds of residents from publicly denouncing the potential loss of abortion rights throughout the nation. The city supports liberal ideals with a strong majority.
Climate Change
Another large effort that is often supported by liberals is to limit the effects of climate change. Like most liberal cities, Dallas has launched a detailed plan to be more eco-friendly. The Dallas Comprehensive Environmental and Climate Action Plan (CECAP) outlines eight large goals and nearly a hundred smaller actions to achieve each one. The city intends to reduce greenhouse gas emissions, build resilience within the city, and improve the overall environmental state of Dallas.
If you live in Dallas, conserving energy is hard and a lot of times impossible because of the heat. If you want to do small things to help support that Dallas climate action plan and you live in Dallas, do things like switching from single-use plastics to long-lasting ones.
The Dallas climate action plan is working on doing things downtown for office buildings and trying to get them to be more energy efficient. the city also is trying to get rid of waste, so throwing away your trash and recycling whenever you can is one way you can do your part.
Financial Contributions to Political Campaigns
There are financial contributions and donations made to political campaigns all over the United States each year. Looking at the number of contributions made and the total finances received in a specific city or area reveals information about the majority of political support given to specific views. Dallas receives far more donations to the Democratic party and liberal campaigns than the number of contributions made to the Republican Party and conservative efforts.
Over the last 3 years, from 2018 to 2021, there have been 59,150 financial contributions made to Republican Party and conservative campaigns within Dallas. These contributions add up to a total of $84,026,679, and each financial donation that was received was an average of $1,421.
Democratic party and liberal campaigns received a total of 153,875 contributions in Dallas over the same 3 years! Their financial donations, however, only added up to a total of $38,898,855, as each monetary donation was only $253 on average.
When viewing only the amount of money received by liberal and conservative campaigns in Dallas, there is a lean toward conservativism. This, however, is common in states that are as highly Republican as Texas, even in large cities where the majority of voters are Democratic and liberal.
It is also important to view the average of money contributed per donation made. The Republican party and conservative campaigns received an average of $1,421 per contribution! Clearly, this is an incredibly large amount of money. These large donations show that while these conservative efforts had fewer supporters, Republican supporters were able to make larger donations. While Republican party and conservative campaigns did receive a higher amount of money within Dallas, it didn’t receive as many donations as the Democratic party did, which shows that the city is mostly liberal.
In total, the Democratic party and liberal campaigns in Dallas received 94,725 more contributions than their opponents. This shows that liberal ideals received approximately 2.6 times more support than the Republican Party and conservative campaigns in terms of donators! Liberal campaigns received incredible support from Dallas residents and account for a higher percentage of the city’s residents.
Dallas, Texas is a liberal city, not due to the dedication of only a few supporters but to the strongly liberal majority and the high number of supporters represented in financial contributions. While Dallas is quite a large city in Texas, it does not share the conservative beliefs of the majority of the state.
