Why are the "WOW" counties in Wisconsin conservative?

[All Along The Watchtower]

In no particular order:

-  Racial polarization of the Milwaukee metro + white flight

- Suburbs are more recently developed IIRC (newer suburbs = very conservative) as well as being almost monolithically middle to upper middle class white

- Closer to the fringe of the Milwaukee metro (since it's not nearly as big as the Chicago metro, for example) making them more outer suburban/exurban in character

- Residents likely feel more alienated from Milwaukee (and thus, less likely to identify themselves with the city, or at least not very strongly) than residents of say, the Chicago suburbs

- Smaller city/metro than places like Chicago or Detroit - thus having a smaller proportion of white liberals than in Chicago and of course having very few minorities like both Chicago and Detroit

- Heavy presence of conservative religious groups (German Catholics, LCMS + WELS Lutherans, white evangelical megachurches, etc.)

- In tandem with the above, higher level of income and educational attainment = more church attendance = higher levels of both voter turnout and Republican affiliation (even higher than usual) among religious conservatives

- Proportionally higher-than-average educational differentials between men and women + high marriage rates (particularly married with children, I strongly suspect) = more of the idealized "traditional" male breadwinner - female homemaker style nuclear families

- A more traditional political divide between labor and management in the local economy, but with a larger-than-average proportion of the latter