Am I the only person who doesn't understand how when the Socialist Party was semi-relevant in the early 20th century, Oklahoma was one of their best states?
I don't see the contradiction. Oklahoma has always been socially conservative, but when the vast majority/plurality of the population practiced subsistence agriculture and lived through the Dust Bowl, the left was strong there. When the majority of the population now has easy access to $50-150K oil-related jobs and can continue to live the 1950's social conservative lifestyle on those incomes due to the low cost of living, the left basically ceases to exist.
If there ever is a new opening for the left in OK, it would come from a decade long oil crash.
So Oklahoma was kind of like a populist state during the early part of the 20th Century, but shifted to a more conservative state beginning in the 1950s.
