Why did rural Dane County, WI stay with the Democrats in '16?

[Hassan 2022]

When looking through Wisconsin's city/town/township election results, I couldn't help but notice that Dane County's rural municipalities voted strongly for Hillary, continuing their Democratic voting streak, while the rural municipalities that went strongly for Obama in other counties (e.g. Crawford) ended up voting for Trump. The only exceptions in Dane are Vienna and Dane Town. Iowa County seems to be similar to Dane in this respect. Are income disparities driving this difference? Or something else?

[Lothal1]

Madison, WI is very liberal, and so the suburbs and exurbs surrounding it will be very liberal as well. The same trend happens in Montgomery County, MD and the San Francisco Bay Area where the liberalism spread from the now urban areas to cover the entire county/area through the growth of suburbs.

[jimrtex]

When looking through Wisconsin's city/town/township election results, I couldn't help but notice that Dane County's rural municipalities voted strongly for Hillary, continuing their Democratic voting streak, while the rural municipalities that went strongly for Obama in other counties (e.g. Crawford) ended up voting for Trump. The only exceptions in Dane are Vienna and Dane Town. Iowa County seems to be similar to Dane in this respect. Are income disparities driving this difference? Or something else?

How many of them are actually rural?

The swing towards Trump was concentrated in the corners away from Madison, with Madison bleeding outward. The economy of Madison is based on the capital and the university.

[Drew]

The suburbs and exurbs in Dane County are exploding with growth, as they are bringing in well-educated people from Madison and elsewhere.  Many of these people still work in and identify with Madison.  The economy here is based on government, education, and healthcare.  Not much in the way of manufacturing.  There is a low unemployment rate, and the recession did not hit the area very hard, relatively speaking.  

This seems to also apply to some of the surrounding counties, as they too went Atlas Red.