Day 34: North Dakota

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's a Sioux Reservation. I used to live there.

Outside of that, boring awful place, that has only two decent strip clubs in the whole damn state.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

yeah, there's a county or two in S. Dakota that's also heavily Dem thats also a Native Indian tribe.  Just curious, what makes Native Indians so Democratic?

Because the Reservations are dirt poor. Like third world countries almost.

I was actually born in Bismarck, because that's where the closest sufficient hospital was. When I was 4 and had a fall that knocked out 4 of my teeth, my parents had to drive me to Bismarck for medical attention. That's how bad the health care system there was.

Check out the statistics here. Not pretty: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sioux_County%2C_ND

The county I find most interesting is Steele (the red one furthest east) It's the only county Kerry won that was predominately white, and it's not really that much difference from the rest of the rural ND. I've been there before, but I can't see what makes it different. I'm guessing it's probably always had some sort of Democratic tradition in the past, and that won out over the GOP takeover on social issues that took most other counties like that in 2004.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Actually, Benson Co (Spirit Lake Sioux) has a bare White majority.

True. I said Steele was the only predominately white county to vote for Kerry.When the Natives vote around 90% Dem and the whites 60% Republican the Natives will win even if they are slightly outnumbered.

I loved Fargo.

The movie or city?

The state of North Dakota is interesting because there is very little city-rural divide.  I've never looked into the state much, but I do notice that there is a bit of Norwegian-German divide.

For instance, Bismarck is 58% German, 18% Norwegian, and Burleigh County voted 68% Bush.  Fargo, on the other hand, is 41% German, 36% Norwegian, and Cass County voted only 59% Bush.

Steele County, North Dakota, is supermajority white and over 60% Norwegian.

Most other counties with Norwegian populations, especially around Minnesota, were reasonably close.

This was just from a cursory glance and someone who knows more about the state should probably provide information.

That's true in Minnesota too, the heavily German rural counties are much more Republican typically. Of course the German counties are still less Republican and the Norwegian and Swedish counties are much more Dem for obvious reasons. The main reason for this today is because Germans are much more likely to be fundamentalist Christians, I bet WELS and other such Lutheran demoninations are mostly German. Scandinavians are mostly ELCA.

Interestingly this is the exact opposite in my family, my paternal side is mostly Swedish and much more Republican, my grandparents were both ELCA Lutherans but some of my cousins on that side have joined evangelical type denominations. Meanwhile my maternal grandmother was Swedish but she was a Baptist. My grandfather was mostly German and a Catholic but that side of the family is mostly Democratic. Go figure

The mainreason Bismarck is so Republican is that it's largely populated by people from surrounding small towns who moved it once the town died out or for other economic reasons and took their awful bigoted views and voting habits with them. I had to put up with them for 10 years. Mandan, across the river from Bismarck is even more German but much more liberal (which still isn't saying much) largely because it has a reputation as the party town of the region and the bars are more fun. Bismarck has effectively banned all strip clubs (booo!), Mandan has not but even they don't have a real strip club, the strippers at the one place there don't even get topless and I hear they can't touch you during a lapdance. I have never been there and don't intend on ever going. The people in Fargo and Grand Forks are largely the same, but many come from rural Minnesota which is much more moderate.

I loved Fargo.

why? There's nothing special there, it's only marginally less boring than the rest of the state. At least it has a real strip club though.

Only city in ND worth spending any time in at all: Minot

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Minot? Because it's got a real strip club?

Or is there a legit reason as well?

It does have a real strip club actually (the only other one in the state that I know of, there was one in the southwest corner awhile back but then the local churches whined so much to get the county to ban strip clubs from having liquor licenses. See why I hate prudes so much?) but that's not the main reason. Minot's also got a university and an air force base nearby, so it's at least somewhat youth-orientated. It has a decent record store and places for young people to hang out (there was an indie venue there that had some decent shows) as opposed to Bismarck which for some reason has a bizarre obsession with shutting down every young hangout that exists. People don't even like the religious ones, I remember some letter to the editor with some lady whining about a nearby Christian youth club because the music they played there was loud therefore it could not be Christian and thus was obviously satanic (I wish I was making this up). In fact whenever a secular indie show happened in the area we had to hold it in Lincoln, a small town about 7 miles southwest because that's where the only venue in the area that we could rent that we could have all ages shows in. Plus having a university Minot actually has some youth-orientated bars like my city is full of.

North Dakota is actually a very interesting state; you all know what the NPL was, right?
I think the split between Norwegians and Germans is something to do with WW2; German voters swung strongly away from FDR in 1940 in pretty much every state.
Having said that, it's also possible that the difference between the two groups is somewhat exaggerated due to Norwegians mainly living in the spring wheat growing area, while Germans tend to be found more in the ranching et al areas?

Largely true, but like I said above, German Lutherans have always been way more conservative than Scandinavian ones. I bet the Germans have a much higher percentage of fundamentalists.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

What else are you going to do? Pretty much every free night I got I'm going to a strip club, bar that has no middle aged people there, keg party, or an indie band show. Of course Fargo has NDSU so it's not completely devoid of these things.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I posted this in another thread and I'll post it here as well because it's pretty damn interesting:

In Kidder county in 2000, Buchanan got over 9%. However if you compare the 2004 to 2000 results, the Bush numbers are practically the same despite Buchanan breaking 9% in 2000. This means that most likely a good chunk of the Buchanan vote went to Kerry, or possibly even a majority. If not, then there was a massive swing to Kerry from previous Bush supporters. Kerry even won two precincts in the county, something he couldn't even do in Bismarck, sadly. I'm willing to be this was all because of Iraq.

I'm too tired now but tommorow I'll type up a more detailed analysis of why I think this happened, why Burleigh sucks and it'll be interesting to see if this happened in any other rural counties across the country.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Anyway basically I suspect that as North Dakota has the highest per capita rate of military service in the country and that rate must be much higher in rural than urban areas. So Kidder must have a lot of kids from the county in the army, and many in Iraq. Bismarck has much less, so Bismarck is full of "armchair patriot" Republicans who act like htmldon as far as Bush is concerned. People in Kidder get disgusted at Bush when their kids are in Iraq, so they vote against him. It's a logical explanation for the weird trend.

Not only is Bismarck full of the people mentioned above, but it has some awful sprawl problems. Bismarck has no true suburbs thankfully, but it's full of ugly sprawl on the outskirts of town. Look up the precinct Horizon Middle School. That's where my youngest brother went to middle school. The one I did was closed down and turned into a government building. It was built far outside of town, in an area that was pure farmland only 10 years ago. Not only is it there but so is lots of ugly McMansions. Unsurprsingly it voted over 75% for Bush. Bismarck has too many suburban areas that vote GOP higher than rural areas. What an awful place. I'm quite thankful I'm out.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

As always... have a look at past elections there. Looks like the unusual election was 2000 rather than 2004.

Um, Kidder even voted for Goldwater. It hasn't voted for a Democrat since FDR.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

That old senator was Quentin Burdick. I've driven on many streets named after him.