Irish American, Italian American and Polish American vote: how do they differ?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I think that's a bit of a stretch unless limited to a few rural areas. German-Americans are one of the most assimilated groups. Probably a majority of Upper Midwesterners have some German ancestry (good point here: most Midwest whites don't fall under just "German" or "Norwegian", just about everyone here is mixed.) German-Americans as a distinct culture thus only exists in a few enclaves. By all means they're there (New Ulm, MN, south central North Dakota, and some areas in SE Wisconsin now being gobbled up by Milwaukee exurbia) but that's a small portion of the German population.

Also notable is that Midwesterner cities don't have "ethnic" neighborhoods, they have white and non-white. There aren't any German/Scandinavian/Irish parts of Minneapolis, on fact we actually have more distinction amongst black neighborhoods because of the African-American vs. African immigrant thing, they tend to be segregated. St. Paul did once have a heavily Irish area but that's mostly diluted now, same with the Eastern European population in South St. Paul (actually a suburb) that came during the boom of the meat packing industry, some are still around but most people there would just be seen as "white" today. Even more so in places like Des Moines and Madison, and as a result I'd imagine there's not much difference in voting patterns amongst different groups of whites.