WI Senate 2018 - "Quietly Becoming the Top Senate Race of 2018"

[TJ in Oregon]

Duffy senses an opportunity to move from the House to the Senate. I believe many voters of Wisconsin do not support having a lesbian Senator.

why

He didn't write that. It says "Last Edit: Today at 11:59:52 am by Brittain33 " at the bottom, meaning he edited the post, and deleted posts that quoted the original post. The original post said "Senator with San Francisco values" or something. I don't think it was a reference to sexuality, he was likely referring to the fact that she's very liberal across the board, both socially and fiscally.

Anyway, back on topic (on Wisconsin's political tendencies regarding foreign policy).
2004 Senate:

Very clear west-east divide (with the Green Bay area and southeast corners also backing Feingold).

Question: Why did Obama do much better in rural Wisconsin in 2008 than he did in rural Michigan and Minnesota? Look at these:

Obama really swept almost the entire state, just about every rural county went for him.
Compare to:


Both of those (especially Minnesota) have large blobs of rural Republican territory. Does any really know why that's the case?

Wisconsin's east/west political divide has been around since the 1880s. It arose as a fault line between the largely German conservative Democrats in the eastern half of the state and the more progressive Republican Nordic and Scotch-Irish in the west. That divide largely held until WWI when Woodrow Wilson obliterated German support for the Democrats, leading the eastern half of the state to wildly swing between 1916 and 1920. Afterward, the Republican Party was embroiled in a brutal civil war between the Progressive and Stalwart factions of the Party. In the end, the progressive side became increasingly out of sync with the national Republican Party and bolted to the Democrats. That left the more conservative eastern half of the state as the rump conservative Republicans and more progressive Democrats in the western half. That is of course a very brief overview, but that's why there's traditionally such an east/west divide.

Of course it varies by year, and in good Republican years, the rural areas of the west can be split or even Republican, whereas in a Republican implosion like 2008 the Democrats can even win places like Jefferson County.

The Fox Valley is also something of an exception to the usual rules. It was traditionally Republican leaning back in the 1800s, likely related to its largely Belgian ancestry as opposed to German. It developed a little more like a rust belt industrial city but with some conservative Catholic elements. While 2008 is an exception, the Fox Valley generally leans right of center but is willing to vote for Democrats based on economics. In a post-Trumpian world, it looks like increasingly hostile terrain for the Dems, but if they pivot back to economics, they again would have a chance. Some similarities can also be seen with Sheboygan and Manitowoc, the latter of which was long a solidly Democratic County that has since flipped.

In Minnesota, some of the same settlement patterns are present but the geography is different. In Minnesota, the Republican rural areas are mostly either Great Plains-like areas in the SW or heavily German Catholic areas centered around Stearns County.