Blacks, Latinos in L.A. more conservative than whites, Times Poll finds

7:47 AM | June 24, 2009

In national politics, black and Latino voters are, on average, more liberal than white voters.

But in Los Angeles, not so. The Los Angeles Times poll of 1,500 registered voters in the city, released this week, shows 40% of white voters describing themselves as liberal, 36% moderate and only 22% conservative.

White voters in L.A. are about twice as likely to call themselves liberal as white voters nationwide, based on polling done nationally by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research, which also conducted the Times Poll. And note that because this is a poll of voters in the city of Los Angeles, it doesn’t include such heavily liberal, largely white areas as Beverly Hills, Santa Monica and West Hollywood.

White L.A. voters are also more likely to call themselves liberal than are either black or Latino voters. In the Times poll, 27% of black voters and 29% of Latino voters identified themselves as liberal, while 28% of black voters and a third of Latinos described themselves as conservative.

And what part of the city has the most voters who identify themselves as conservative? Not the San Fernando Valley, which once had the reputation as L.A.’s conservative bastion, but heavily black and Latino South L.A., where 35% of voters identified themselves as conservative.
-- David Lauter

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/lanow/2 ... finds.html