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The Los Angeles Times has published a map showing how each precinct in Los Angeles, Orange and San Diego counties voted in the presidential election. Los Angeles, as usual, is overwhelmingly blue except for a few small pockets of red. Who lives there? Apparently, rich people and Scientologists.
There are two precincts near Beverly Hills that leaned in favor of President Donald Trump. precinct 0900004A reported 1,007 votes for Trump and 865 for former Vice President Joe Biden while neighboring precinct 0900010A cast 935 votes for Trump and 660 for Biden. This part of town also favored Trump in 2016.
The area is home to Trousdale Estates, a bougie neighborhood that sits on part of the former Doheny Ranch and where homes sell for an average of nearly $12 million.
Also in this red pocket: a North Canon Drive home that The Trump Organization sold for $13.5 million in 2019. It had purchased the home in 2007 for $7 million, and at one point, also owned the mansion next-door.
Trump’s son, Eric Trump, said in a statement that while they liked the Beverly Hills home, they decided to sell it because the family “has not had the chance to enjoy the property in recent years,” and it had seen “minimal use.”
The other red pocket is over in East Hollywood, in precinct 9000784A, where Trump scored 391 votes to Biden’s 337. In this area, you have Barnsdall Art Park, much of Kaiser Permanente and the Church of Scientology.
In early 2017, the L.A. Times reported on the same red patch, where Trump had garnered 347 votes to Clinton’s 344 in the 2016 election. So, only three votes over, but that same area had gone blue by 81 votes in the 2012 election.
While a spokesperson for the Church of Scientology told the Times that they did not and cannot engage in election activities because “such decisions are not a matter of faith,” the Times found that about half of the precinct’s approximately 1,100 voters listed Scientology properties as their address, while 170 listed Scientology organizations as their primary phone number.
While the church officially maintained its silence on the issue, one anonymous church member who voted for Clinton told the Times that Scientologists were both socially and economically conservative.
“They were divided between pro-Trump stuff that’s anti-government and seeing Hillary as part of the establishment, seeing Hillary as part of the elite,” he said. “Part of it was pro-Trump. A lot of it was more anti-Hillary.”
Another church member who voted for Libertarian candidate Gary Johnson told the Times that Clinton may have been perceived as an advocate for psychiatry, which the Church of Scientology opposes. If you’ve ever stopped by Psychiatry: An Industry of Death in Hollywood, then you know that the church has devoted an entire “museum” dedicated to exposing the practice’s supposed evils.