Iowa's Moderate Margins and The White Vote

[ElectionsGuy]

Moderate Margins. Every republican county in state, besides the obvious outlier of Sioux, was won by less than 5,000 votes. 26 of democrats 38 counties was won under 2,000 votes. 56 out of 99 total counties were won under 1,000 votes. Almost all the % margins are under 60% besides the republican outliers of the Northwestern Corner and the democrat outlier of Johnson County (Iowa City). When studying counties and votes, Iowa is probably the most boring state.

I think this is because the state is incredibly white. States with more diversity have more extreme margins in areas. I think there is a limit to the white vote where Vermont is the ceiling and Mississippi is the floor. Souix County to Johnson County. This is why very white cities like Dubuque never go into the 70's for Dems. You will almost never see a county go >70% D when 90+% White. This same kind of narritive can be explained through Western Wisconsin and Southern Minnesota, there don't appear to be high margins simply because the state is very white in the Midwest where whites happen to not be very republican. This, in my view, seems to be why counties in the Midwest are very moderate with a few outliers.

What do you guys think?

[ElectionsGuy]

Moderate Margins. Every republican county in state, besides the obvious outlier of Sioux, was won by less than 5,000 votes. 26 of democrats 38 counties was won under 2,000 votes. 56 out of 99 total counties were won under 1,000 votes. Almost all the % margins are under 60% besides the republican outliers of the Northwestern Corner and the democrat outlier of Johnson County (Iowa City). When studying counties and votes, Iowa is probably the most boring state.

I think this is because the state is incredibly white. States with more diversity have more extreme margins in areas. I think there is a limit to the white vote where Vermont is the ceiling and Mississippi is the floor. Souix County to Johnson County. This is why very white cities like Dubuque never go into the 70's for Dems. You will almost never see a county go >70% D when 90+% White. This same kind of narritive can be explained through Western Wisconsin and Southern Minnesota, there don't appear to be high margins simply because the state is very white in the Midwest where whites happen to not be very republican. This, in my view, seems to be why counties in the Midwest are very moderate with a few outliers.

What do you guys think?

Iowa doesn't tend to change much throughout the state. It's very rural though and there aren't any major cities. It's interesting how in the Midwest, rural areas aren't safely Republican while just on the other side of the great plains, we see a 70-30 difference.

Yep, specifically in the upper Midwest (Iowa, Wisconsin, Minnesota, Michigan) there are many swing counties. Iowa in particular seems to have a box around it that says "don't go over 60%" because you go to northern Missouri or Nebraska and you immediately see margins over 60%. Many people here in this region get many farm subsidizes from the government so that's a theory, but if that's the case, why doesn't rural Kansas vote 50/50? It's still something I'm trying to figure out and it's kind of frustrating. Here in Wisconsin the rural vote barely leans R, urban vote is ridiculously D (Dane and Milwaukee), and suburbs are Solid R (Waukesha, Washington, Ozaukee, and St. Croix) so if only rural vote was solid R this would be a swing state.

[ElectionsGuy]

My question about Iowa is why were the polls wrong there? What happened between the final poll and election day that gave Obama a surge there?

Possibly undecided independents (or democrat-leaning independents) who got turned off when the liberal media and the Obama team exposed some of Romney's "hateful" words, (I remember the Obama team put together a montage of all the bad things Romney said toward the end (when the most people were paying attention) when Romney kind of took a break toward the end. Obama had a surge towards the end nationally as well with Sandy, so sadly that could've been it too.