Weekly column: Is Silicon Valley really (gasp) Republican?

[Declan McCullagh <declan () well com>]

[I was mostly offline over the long weekend and I'm just catching up on 
Politech now. You can expect most of the backlog to arrive overnight. --Declan]

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http://news.com.com/2010-1028-5159153.html

Piercing a Silicon Valley stereotype
February 17, 2004, 4:00 AM PT
By Declan McCullagh

A minor mystery is afoot in Silicon Valley, where tech workers who claim to 
adore Democratic politicians are quietly backing other candidates.

Conventional wisdom holds that area denizens are latte-sipping, 
tofu-snacking liberals as likely to vote for someone like Newt Gingrich as 
they are to wear mink. This is, after all, the region that birthed the 
Burning Man festival, celebrated an illegal gay marriage last week, and 
whose political beliefs presumably would give Pat Robertson a case of the 
heebie-jeebies.

There is some truth to that. In November's race for San Francisco mayor, 
for instance, the Republican candidate garnered 4 percent the votes of the 
Democratic and Green candidates. Registered Democrats and Greens in 
Berkeley outnumber Republicans by over 10 to 1, according to the California 
secretary of state. In Palo Alto, Mountain View, and San Jose, the divide 
is not as stunning, but the ratio remains about two registered Democrats 
for every Republican.

But those numbers don't come close to telling the real story.

Sift through the heaps of data compiled by the Center for Responsive 
Politics and you'll find that people who work for technology firms actually 
disliked Al Gore even more than they disliked George W. Bush.

...
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