Electoral Map of Whites Under 30

[Alcibiades]

Another thing that doesn't make sense: IA whites vote left of MI whites so I don't get why the numbers would be flipped for the under-30 crowd.

Maybe Michigan whites under 30 tend to be more disproportionately college-educated, given the presence of Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Ann Arbor? Iowa whites may have a pretty consistent partisan level at all age levels by contrast.

Also the reason Iowa was a lean Dem state from 1988-2012 was cause of the farm crises , Iowa before 1988 actually had a more strongly republican history than even Kansas so I don’t think it’s that surprising a generation who doesn’t remember the farm crises reverts back to pre farm crises voting patterns

A good point that Iowa is by no means ancestrally Democratic. Certainly the farm crisis is a big reason why it started voting Democratic in 1988 (and why Mondale also did very well relatively in 1984 there), but the reason why it stuck with the Dems for the subsequent two and a half decades is more due to its northern non-Evangelical culture being a poor fit for the Southern Evangelical GOP, but Trump has managed to bring these voters to the GOP in astounding numbers.

[Alcibiades]

Another thing that doesn't make sense: IA whites vote left of MI whites so I don't get why the numbers would be flipped for the under-30 crowd.

Maybe Michigan whites under 30 tend to be more disproportionately college-educated, given the presence of Lansing, Grand Rapids, and Ann Arbor? Iowa whites may have a pretty consistent partisan level at all age levels by contrast.

Also the reason Iowa was a lean Dem state from 1988-2012 was cause of the farm crises , Iowa before 1988 actually had a more strongly republican history than even Kansas so I don’t think it’s that surprising a generation who doesn’t remember the farm crises reverts back to pre farm crises voting patterns

A good point that Iowa is by no means ancestrally Democratic. Certainly the farm crisis is a big reason why it started voting Democratic in 1988 (and why Mondale also did very well relatively in 1984 there), but the reason why it stuck with the Dems for the subsequent two and a half decades is more due to its northern non-Evangelical culture being a poor fit for the Southern Evangelical GOP, but Trump has managed to bring these voters to the GOP in astounding numbers.

Eh... Iowa is known for pulling more for evangelical candidates in their primaries and also voted for Bush once. Not to mention that Ernst pulverized Bruce Braley in 2014 with basically the Trump coalition before anybody associated Trump with the GOP in any meaningful way.

The state GOP apparatus was taken over by RR elements in the 90s (more because it had a first in the nation caucus than because it was particularly fertile ground for the RR), but this was clearly not a winning formula in general elections. I view Iowa’s leftwards shift in the 80s and 90s as being broadly part of the same phenomenon as that of Upper New England and the Driftless. 2014 was of course a GOP wave year, when they did well throughout the Midwest.