What differentiates Montana and the Dakotas?

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Montana had a huge influx of Southerners at one point, that propelled a lot of early Democratic strength in the state. Whereas the Dakotas, or at least North Dakota in particular was settled by a combination of Yankees, Germans and some Scandanavians and thus favored the Republicans (save for daliances with the Populists, TR and the FDR in the Great Depression), until about the 1950's, when the Democrats began to gain strength.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Montana had a huge influx of Southerners at one point, that propelled a lot of early Democratic strength in the state. Whereas the Dakotas, or at least North Dakota in particular was settled by a combination of Yankees, Germans and some Scandanavians and thus favored the Republicans (save for daliances with the Populists, TR and the FDR in the Great Depression), until about the 1950's, when the Democrats began to gain strength.

Yankees, Germans, and some Scandinavians?

North Dakota is the most Scandinavian state in the union.  The state is 47% German background, 30% Norwegian, and 5% Swedish.

Irish make up just under 8% and English 4%.

Yankees made up a very small part of the settlement there.  It was almost exclusively Germans and Scandinavians.

And while they were Republican, just as in Minnesota... there was a strong progressive streak that led to the rise of the non-partisan league which was Republican aligned and then later aligned with the Democrats... which is why the Democratic Party of North Dakota is called the Dem-NPL party to this day.

And to think that North Dakotan Republicans are anything like national Republicans would be a mistake.  They operate much more like a Christian Democratic party of Europe than anything like the modern GOP.

To begin with I started out the post just saying the Dakotas and then added the short line to emphasis North Dakota since I realized as I typed the last part that it was more descriptive of its political history, although it does apply to both. Certainly those are the demographics now and one has to account for the limitations of the modern numbers accounting for the fact of intermixing and the tendency of people to claim German as their primary ancestry. But my primary point was to illustrate that Montana had a more Southern influence whereas the Dakotas had more people of English descent coming from northern as opposed to Southern origins.

Yes, they are there own little operation up there, but my intent was not to bring third area of complexity to what was supposed to be a one sentence post when I started typing it.