Which European Ancestry are generally more Republican/Conservative?

[EastAnglianLefty]

I calculated these estimates awhile ago based on the White vote by County project of mine (the granularity is only at the county level, so there is some degree of error here):

Based on these stats, to some degree those who have eastern European ancestry are more likely to be liberal which is quite opposite to the ones living in the Eastern European countries now. I kind of thought the Scandinavians and Germans were likely to be less conservative seeing how many rural counties in Wisconsin and Minnesota vote democratic in the recent elections.

Scandinavians and Germans in Minnesota and Wisconsin may be comparatively Democratic, but then you've got to add in the members of those groups who live in places like the Great Plains, who are extremely Republican.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Poland, yes. Italy has had a government led by the left more recently than either Germany or the UK.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Or indeed that 'ancestry groups' say less about which ethnic groups a person primarily descends from, and more about which ancestry groups are particularly prestigious. People who identify as Norwegian-American rarely have solely Norwegian ancestry, it's a statement of self-identity more than it is a statement of actual descent.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Or indeed that 'ancestry groups' say less about which ethnic groups a person primarily descends from, and more about which ancestry groups are particularly prestigious. People who identify as Norwegian-American rarely have solely Norwegian ancestry, it's a statement of self-identity more than it is a statement of actual descent.

It doesn't have to be about prestige. For instance, Joe Biden, in weaving his own personal narrative, presents himself as an Irish Catholic in the vein of the Kennedys. But the majority of his family lineage is actually English. And generally, Americans have regarded having English ancestry as more "prestigious" than Irish ancestry.

But there is basically no such thing as "English-American" culture, nobody knows what that is, and it's not particularly interesting. Presenting himself as Irish allowed him to compare himself to popular political figures like the Kennedys, and present himself as someone who came from humble beginnings.

I think the issue is that you're attaching a different meaning to the word "prestigious" than I meant.

English-American culture doesn't really exist, nor is there a particular cultural cachet to being from a WASP background these days, therefore it's not prestigious (any more). Whereas being Irish-American has a set of associations that are well understood and are broadly positive. Therefore it is prestigious.

[EastAnglianLefty]

I don't think prestige is even necessarily the best word for it--it's more about a sense of distinctiveness. People are more likely to remember ancestry which is distinct from the default--i.e. "my grandmother always used to say Polish phrases" and not remember the normal English other grandparents. This is probably why German is the most common ancestry among White americans on census forms.

I think prestige can't be ignored - about twice as many Minnesotans claim Norwegian ancestry as Swedish, even though the number of Swedish/Norwegian immigrants was broadly similar. So we're dealing with the same number of grandmothers saying traditional phrases, but one has been remembered much more than the other.

[EastAnglianLefty]

Not an enormous amount - the spelling of the two languages is quite different but the pronunciation is similar and there's a fair amount of shared vocab.

Both are predominantly Lutheran. The agricultural communities the migrants came from will have differed somewhat - Norway being more coastal and Sweden being more forested - but in practice it would be pretty easy to treat a lot of the same cultural inheritances as either Swedish or Norwegian depending on taste.