Why are the "WOW" counties in Wisconsin conservative?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Anyone else find it kind of amusing MasterJedi is sounding like me 9 years ago?

There is actually a liberal white middle class area in metro Milwaukee, including some of the suburbs. It's basically the area that sits north of downtown between the black area and the lake. But I think it's safe to say the sort of people who move there are significantly different from the people who move to WOW and this is the region that attracts the people who'd otherwise live in St. Louis Park or Richfield or Skokie.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

I do think though that people often assume Milwaukee suburbs are way more of an outlier than they actually are for the region. The thing is most compare them to Chicago or Madison or here because those are the closest metro areas. But let's look at the whole Midwest:

Indianapolis: Similar
Cincinnati: If anything even worse
Anywhere in Iowa: The cities here don't have the sort of white flight and racial tensions issues such places are known for...and even then somewhere like non-Des Moines Polk County is more Republican than you'd expect.
St. Louis: Mostly similar. Kind of masked by the fact that the black settlement stretches much further out into the metro than in Milwaukee.
Fort Wayne: Similar
Grand Rapids: Similar.
Flint and Lansing: These places aren't as big and in Lansing's case (obviously not Flint) the Iowa explanation applies....however Livingston County is closer to them than Detroit.
Detroit: Actually quite similar in the comparable areas. The ones that don't vote the same are mostly the ones where a black population did come over (like Southfield) or are historic very working class union strongholds, something that's never really been true with WOW. The liberal white middle to upper middle class population in metro Detroit is mostly just confined to Ferndale an Royal Oak. And even the Grosse Points vote Republican.
Columbus: Similar, although kind of easy to miss by the city having some of the most screwed up municipal boundaries in the US. But look at the neighboring counties!
Cleveland: Not exactly similar, but not as different as one would expect if the areas with black spillover and a few exceptions like the ones mentioned in the Milwaukee area are excluded.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

According to ARDA they are about 30% Catholic, that makes them more Catholic than Wisconsin at large and way more than counties like Dane and Eau Claire. But of course, it's the Midwest, so we're talking about Germans and people like Paul Ryan who are so assimilated they don't see themselves as different in any way from WASPy mainstream society...and actually aren't.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wisconsin in the Upper Midwest. The region that we've established where Catholicism doesn't serve as any type of ethnic marker or is separated from mainstream culture.

Also:




http://www.cnn.com/election/2012/results/state/WI/president/#exit-polls

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So this reminds me of that Simpsons episode where a bear escapes from the zoo once, the townspeople panic and demand more anti-bear policing, Springfield sets up a bunch of patrolling helicopters and police just to make sure no bears around despite Lisa's insistence this is pointless because this was a single isolated incident unlikely to happen ever again. And then Homer notices a $5/tax to pay for all this on his next check, he freaks out along with everyone else in Springfield, and Mayor Quimby in response blames illegal immigrants for the taxes being higher.

Sad thing is, that's actually a pretty accurate summary of Trumpism and most movement conservatism today.