What's with those rural counties (Iron, Polk, St. Croix, and Door) increasing Dem turnout?
Polk and St. Croix are actually ex-urban Twin Cities. Door is high end retirement/vacation country.
Suburbia and higher income retirement locales had a history all primary season of having the best turnout improvements for the Ds
Iron is a random outlier
Yeah, lots of transplants from the Chicagoland in Door County.
Iron County used to be as Democratic, if not more so, than Ashland, Bayfield, and Douglas. At one point one could make the argument that it was the most Democratic county in the state. Other than 1972 it voted Democratic every year from 1928 to 2000. While only 12.6% Finnish in the 2010 Census, this number was much higher in the past. I'm not sure if the decrease is do people leaving the county or folks losing sight of their Finnish heritage and calling themselves German due to the overreaching culture of the state. That said, the political leanings of Finnish Americans in Wisconsin and generally nationwide (look across the border into Michigan) was very left, even to the point of socialist tendencies. This has waned over time and maybe there is a slight return back to Democrats?
Iron county as its name suggests was a old mining area[also logging] and in addition to the Finns there is also a bunch of Italians and poles around. I don't think anyone is losing heritage and calling themselves German [perhaps they are calling themselves American which is up to 6% in 2010] But rather outside of Hurley and the old mining towns most of the county is like anywhere else in the northwoods with lakes and cabins attracting people from down south and the local population slowly moving away or dying. One factor for swings however could be that this was the area where Walker was claiming a mine would get built, which of course never materialized. So perhaps some small number of people who bought into that have now swung back.
As a side note Hurley is a notorious hive of scum and villainy going back to at least the 20s with al capone's brother residing in the area until he died there in 1974! Currently the only remaining industry there is a bunch of strip clubs
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