Edwardsville ,surrounding areas (Chicago, East St. Louis, Alton: home, university, to live in)

[bernerscotty]

Is Edwardsville somewhat liberal? Would like to live in an area that is open minded? Any recommendations would be appreciated. Thank you so much! Appreciate it

[RisingAurvandil]

Edwardsville, and adjacent Glen Carbon, could be classified as purple politically. I'd call them cautiously progressive. They are good areas to live in the Metro East.

[smegmatite]

East St. Louis votes very liberal

[amaurer]

As a resident of Edwardsville, I'll throw in my two cents. I would agree with RisingAurvandil about the politically purple classification, but I'd say it's definitely more liberal than conservative, particularly in the downtown area and the more historic parts, whereas the more rural and outlying parts, as one would expect, are more conservative. Downtown Edwardsville especially has a kind of youthful, more progressive feel, with places like Sacred Grounds, which is a vegetarian-friendly cafe, and others. It also helps being a college town with a large university (SIUE) and a fairly large millennial population that is less than 20 miles from a major city.

If lawn signs are any indication, you see a lot more Hate Has No Home Here and pro-Democrat candidate signs, and even every now and then a Black Lives Matter sign, than, say, blue-line flags (although you occasionally see those too). Also, according to the New York Times' 2016 report "An Extremely Detailed Map of the 2016 Election," most of Edwardsville voted for Hillary back in 2016. https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...etType=PAYWALL

That being said, Edwardsville is the county seat of Madison County, which is a red county that can sometimes swing blue, and thus is something of a blue isle surrounded by red, with the notable exception of Alton. Even neighboring Glen Carbon is much more conservative and mostly voted for Trump in the 2016 election. Also, because it is the political and economic epicenter of Madison County, there is a large mix of people of all political persuasions mingling every day.

So tl;dr, yes, it is pretty liberal, but it's also a blue bubble in a red county. But that honestly doesn't really matter considering it's only a 25-30 minute drive to St. Louis, which is extremely liberal and progressive.

[Curly Q. Bobalink]

I think that the farther you go from St. Louis toward Terra Haute, the more the politics swing from blue to red. A friend of mine moved to Shelbyville (about in the center of the state), and he said he was viewed "with suspicion" because he came from near Chicago, it took him a long time to distance himself from his Chicago roots and convince locals that "He wasn't the stereotypical Chicagoan". Those folks have a lot of pent-up hostility for anything related to the Windy City, LOL.