Why is Indiana a Republican State?

[Person Man]

They were 25% of the electorate.

[All Along The Watchtower]

Indiana is very Republican, but it's not necessarily "conservative" in the way the Tea Party is. The Indiana GOP may have shot themselves in the foot by nominating a Tea Party extremist over a highly respected longtime Senator.

[Oldiesfreak1854]

Indiana is very Republican, but it's not necessarily "conservative" in the way the Tea Party is. The Indiana GOP may have shot themselves in the foot by nominating a Tea Party extremist over a highly respected longtime Senator.

I agree with everythnt you've said, except that I'm a Republican and don't think Indiana is very strongly Republican.  It just leans that way.

[MASHED POTATOES. VOTE!]

Indiana is very Republican, but it's not necessarily "conservative" in the way the Tea Party is. The Indiana GOP may have shot themselves in the foot by nominating a Tea Party extremist over a highly respected longtime Senator.

I wouldn't underestimate Mourdock. It's not like he's a fringe perennial candidate, like Christine O'Donnell or obscure, loony state assemblyman like Sharron Angle. He's already been elected twice to statewide office.

[MyRescueKittehRocks]

You also forget there is a significant contingent of Evangelicals in the state and that is growing. Many of the Tea Party aligned candidates are also Evangelical Christians (Mike Pence, Jackie Walorski, Marlin Stutzman, David McIntoish).

In 2014 we will have a marriage amendment on our ballot

[Small Business Owner of Any Repute]

If you've ever driven through Indiana, you'd get why it's a Republican state. It's a farm oriented, Christian heavy place. And the "major cities" there are pretty ... not-so-major. I mean, Indianapolis is a city, but it's far from the most urban place in the world and its not populated to the point where it can control the state's vote. And even so, Obama only got 63% in Indianapolis' Marion County.

Obama only won Indiana because of Gary, and the urban areas near Chicago that were already familiar with him. It's not a likely state for future Democratic wins.

[Highpointer]

Indiana is basically Illinois without Chicago.

I looked up the election results for 2000, the election in recent years with the most closely divided results. George W. Bush won the electoral college with 271-267, with Al Gore earning the electoral votes of Iowa and Illinois.

According to Dave Leip's Atlas of U.S. Presidential Elections, in 2000,  Gore carried the State of Illinois by 569,605 votes. Gore carried Cook County, which encompasses the City of Chicago and its innermost suburbs, by 746,005 votes, which was greater than his victory margin in the entire state.

Thus, if Chicago and its innermost suburbs were removed from Illinois, Bush would have carried Illinois.

It appears that the original poster is correct. It Chicago was removed from Illinois, the state's electoral results would be similar to Indiana.

[Suburbia]

It just doesn't have big cities other than Indianapolis and South Bend, and has lots of farms. Obama won Indiana in '08 probably because of the Democratic wave, and he won it without Evan Bayh on the ticket. In 2016, the Democratic nominee may have a more tough sell there (especially if it's Martin O'Malley; unless if he picks Sen. Joe Donnelly to make the state potentially competitive.

[Amenhotep Bakari-Sellers]

It is the state in midwest that people especially like in Chicago who want their taxes cheap. Especially gas tax and cigarette taxes. It is tax cutting state. Even Dem OBannon gov cut taxes.

Indiana would be ideal, but Ohio is heavilly targetted.

[⛄]

To be fair: Indiana would have voted Democrat in 1992 if it hadn't been for the most intelligent vice president we've ever had...

[illegaloperation]

Indiana is basically Illinois without Cook County.

[Orser67]

Indiana is basically Illinois without Cook County.

Maybe I'm off here, but Illinois's Republican Congressmen seem a bit more centrist to me than Indiana's House Republicans.

[Never]

Indiana is basically Illinois without Cook County.

Maybe I'm off here, but Illinois's Republican Congressmen seem a bit more centrist to me than Indiana's House Republicans.

That is partly because North Illinois is fairly urban (Chicago).

Indiana being more suburban/rural than Illinois probably goes a long way towards explaining why the former is a Republican-leaning state.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

So far none of the responses touched on the real reason, which is not surprising for this topic when it's been discussed before and is rarely mentioned by anyone besides Al or Lewis. Indiana actually has a higher population density than the US as a whole does, and is home to not only the 13th largest city in the US but the second largest in the Midwest in regards to the "rural" and "no major cities" talking points.

And this:

Obama only won Indiana because of Gary, and the urban areas near Chicago that were already familiar with him. It's not a likely state for future Democratic wins.

Is actually pretty disproven when you compare this map to maps of the state in other years (obviously I'm referring to only the first sentence, not the second):



The answer is what Indiana has that other Midwestern states lack is the hyper-GOP suburbs of Indianapolis. Indiana is not a "culturally southern" state by any reasonable definition of the term, but metro Indianapolis votes like a southern metro. Even in 2008 McCain got over 60% in every Indianapolis suburban county and Romney won them all by about 2:1. The only other metro in the area that votes that way is Cincinnati. However this can be cancelled out by the other Democratic strongholds in the state. Indiana doesn't have any big enough except for the area near Chicago, however since that lacks the core city it almost always isn't enough. The fact that some Cincinnati suburbs are in Indiana as well (not very big areas and basically just some scattered exurbs, but regardless they're there) doesn't help either. You could also point to Milwaukee, but actually it's not comparable because Milwaukee County is big enough and D enough to usually outvote the suburbs. Indiana would be a swing state if it had a metro as large and reliably D as Madison is in it though.

But if metro Indianapolis voted like say even Columbus (which has some pretty Republican suburbs, but those can be outvoted), it would be much more of a swing state.

[illegaloperation]

Here's the calculation thanks to Flo

Indiana + Cook County =

Romney: 1,916,085 (41.2%)
Obama: 2,641,424 (56.9%)
Other: 86,696  (1.9%)

Total: 4,644,205

[Del Tachi]

There's no Chicago or Detroit in Indiana.

Indianapolis' history and development is really different from most other Midwestern cities has its not located on one of the Great Lakes.  Ohio would probably vote the same way as Indiana if Lake Erie was a floodplain and the only major cities in the state were Columbus and Cincinnati.   

[Clarko95 📚💰📈]

It should be noted that Indianapolis annexed many of its Marion County suburbs in 1970 with UniGov, which is why it has ranked from #11 - #15 in terms of population since 1970.

The 1960 census showed a population of 451,000, which then jumped to 744,000 in 1970. After a period of decline in the '70s, it slowly recovered to 830,000 today (plus 2 million or so in the metro).

To further expand on the "no major cities" point, Indiana instead has more small and some mid-sized industrial cities and towns that don't allow the population and political dynamics that occurred in Illinois (Chicago), Wisconsin (Milwaukee + Madison + Driftless Region), Ohio (Cleveland + Columbus + Toledo), and Michigan (Detroit + Grand Rapids) that gave Democrats the advantage/allowd them to be competitive.

Racially, Whites (84% of the population! 81% non-Hispanic white!) are less Scandinavian progressive but rather German/Dutch/English/Irish/Polish conservatives descended from colonial times or shortly after, there aren't many Hispanics or Asians, and Blacks are less than 10% of the population.

The Democrats get their support mainly from:
- Indianapolis (but no so much in the incorporated 'burbs)
- South Bend, Evansville ("mid-sized" industrial cities, but again: less so in the 'burbs)
- Gary/Hammond/East Chicago + the Chicago suburbs in Lake, Porter, and LaPorte counties
- an occasional rural outlier that can swing (Starke County '08)
- southeastern Indiana along the Ohio (but more for the "right" kind of Dem)
- Tippecanoe and Monroe counties (home to the main campuses of Purdue University and Indiana University, respectively)

Republicans rule virtually all the Indianapolis suburbs/exurbs, Fort Wayne area, smaller industrial cities scattered throughout, Louisville suburbs, and pretty much everything not listed in the Dem camp.

[pbrower2a]

Here's the calculation thanks to Flo

Indiana + Cook County =

Romney: 1,916,085 (41.2%)
Obama: 2,641,424 (56.9%)
Other: 86,696  (1.9%)

Total: 4,644,205

That's one way to see it.

Indianapolis annexed unincorporated parts of Marion County, basically devouring what would have been suburban sprawl before it had a chance to form communities with hokey names like "Redford Township", "Webster Acres", and "Park Forest". Outside Marion County, such suburbs are basically hick towns just outside the zone of urban expansion.


Indianapolis grew rapidly rather recently -- like Dallas, Phoenix, and Atlanta -- and its suburban areas are really new and still have rural qualities.  Even the suburbs of Los Angeles are showing their age. New suburbs have low costs of maintaining their infrastructure, and their traffic jams are on commuter routes. Older suburbs have obsolete infrastructure and plenty of traffic jams. Older suburbs lose their rural characteristics and become increasingly urban -- a fact that Barack Obama got very well.

Such states as Illinois and Michigan still voted for Jerry Ford in 1976 and have since voted for Republican nominees for President in electoral blowouts. Ohio may have stalled in that regard (did Ohioans vote for Carter because Ford was a star on the hated U of M Wolverines?)

Without Indianapolis and the awful Gary-Hammond area, Indiana is basically Kansas. The second-biggest metro area entirely in Indiana is Allen County (Fort Wayne), which is comparatively conservative for its size. South Bend is fairly liberal.   

[DS0816]

A hell of lot of rural areas give the state of Indiana its Republican tilt. Add to this that populous Allen County (Fort Wayne) is somewhere around five to ten points above the statewide number. Marion County (Indianapolis) carried Democratic, for a 2004 John Kerry, first time since 1964. (That county, like so many others state after state, is trending Democratic.) So, for a Democratic presidential realignment that began in 2008, Indiana can, and will be, carried if the party's prevailing candidate puts forward his/her concerted effort and/or wins an Electoral College landslide. Barack Obama, in 2008, became the first Democrat to win Indiana since Lyndon Johnson from 1964. Difference between the 2008 Obama and previous state-winning Democrats of the 20th century is that the other ones won Electoral College landslides of having carried at least 80 percent of available states (true with Woodrow Wilson, 1912; Franklin Roosevelt, 1932 and 1936; and Lyndon Johnson, 1964). Obama did it with the carriage of 56 percent of available states. It looks to me that Indiana is more persuadable than otherwise perceived. And if you look at Elections 2008 and 2012, the ex-bellwether Missouri and Indiana have produced statewide margins closely connected with each other. In the last two presidential election cycles, they have been no more than 1.16 percent in spread (even though they had official results that colored differently from each other from 2008). A prevailing Democratic president with a national margin in the high single-digits can carry Indiana (along with Missouri); unlike with Bill Clinton's re-election from 1996.

[Non Swing Voter]

Why wouldn't it be?  It looks a lot more like Republican states demographically (Kansas, Nebraska, West Virginia, Tennessee) than Democratic states (California, New York, Massachusetts)

[jamesyons]

I think there are a few big reasons, first there were no large suburban regions that swung to Bill Clinton in the 90s, the Democratic base in the NW near Chicago is not growing and the only Democratic trend is in Indianapolis and the college towns (Lafayette, Muncie, and Bloomington) while countering this small trend, is the Republican trend in the Ohio river counties which used to vote heavily Democratic.

[dmmidmi]

It is the state in midwest that people especially like in Chicago who want their taxes cheap. Especially gas tax and cigarette taxes. It is tax cutting state. Even Dem OBannon gov cut taxes.

Indiana would be ideal, but Ohio is heavilly targetted.

Indiana's sales tax is 7%--Michigan's is 6%.

The answer is what Indiana has that other Midwestern states lack is the hyper-GOP suburbs of Indianapolis.

This is easily the best answer so far.

[Mr. Illini]

Indiana does not act like Illinois without Chicago. What I think we have to look at is that the state is at the center of a corn-heavy swath that votes heavily Republican. This region encompasses simply Southeastern Illinois, most of Indiana, and Western Ohio.

Southwestern Illinois votes much more like Missouri than Indiana. Northwest Illinois votes more like Iowa than Indiana. Illinois' downstate cities are also more liberal than Indiana's micro-cities.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's basically a southern state. It's been solidly republican since the civil war

Contradictory statement.

[MyRescueKittehRocks]

Indiana does not act like Illinois without Chicago. What I think we have to look at is that the state is at the center of a corn-heavy swath that votes heavily Republican. This region encompasses simply Southeastern Illinois, most of Indiana, and Western Ohio.

Southwestern Illinois votes much more like Missouri than Indiana. Northwest Illinois votes more like Iowa than Indiana. Illinois' downstate cities are also more liberal than Indiana's micro-cities.

What do you consider as Indiana's micro cities?