Why is Southwest Wisconsin bluer than other regions in the state?
       |           

Welcome, Guest. Please login or register.
Did you miss your activation email?
March 28, 2024, 06:32:45 AM
News: Election Simulator 2.0 Released. Senate/Gubernatorial maps, proportional electoral votes, and more - Read more

  Talk Elections
  General Politics
  Political Geography & Demographics (Moderators: muon2, 15 Down, 35 To Go)
  Why is Southwest Wisconsin bluer than other regions in the state?
« previous next »
Pages: [1]
Author Topic: Why is Southwest Wisconsin bluer than other regions in the state?  (Read 1333 times)
Scottholes 2.0
Wisconsinite
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 905
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« on: November 10, 2018, 01:50:53 PM »
« edited: November 10, 2018, 01:55:16 PM by No More Scottholes »

Even the rural areas in WI are still quite Democratic despite the increasing rural-urban divide. I live in Edgerton (which happens to be in Rock County just South of Dane in the SW region), and Evers and Baldwin won more than 60 percent of the vote in this village.



Logged
TDAS04
Atlas Star
*****
Posts: 23,463
Bhutan


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #1 on: November 10, 2018, 02:25:04 PM »

The driftless area is interesting.  Adjacent areas of Minnesota and Iowa have voted similarly.  (Surprisingly Democratic in presidential elections prior to Trump).
Logged
Strudelcutie4427
Singletxguyforfun
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,375
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #2 on: November 10, 2018, 02:32:12 PM »

Madison bleed over?
Logged
Wisconsin SC Race 2019
hofoid
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,030


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #3 on: November 10, 2018, 03:19:30 PM »

Yep, these areas were ancestrally R until Madison became a huge force in the region. The area (I'm thinking places like Onalaska) is great for tourism, which also brings in a Vermont-like shift in the environment. 
Logged
Mr. Illini
liberty142
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 6,838
United States


Political Matrix
E: -4.26, S: -3.30

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #4 on: November 10, 2018, 07:28:05 PM »

Yep, these areas were ancestrally R until Madison became a huge force in the region. The area (I'm thinking places like Onalaska) is great for tourism, which also brings in a Vermont-like shift in the environment. 

But, the areas across the border in Iowa and Illinois vote similarly.

I attribute it to higher shares of Swedish population and a more influential manufacturing sector.
Logged
Averroës Nix
Sr. Member
****
Posts: 2,289
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #5 on: November 15, 2018, 04:06:53 PM »

You don't see the Driftless Area standing out as a Democratic stronghold on a statewide election map before Russ Feingold's win in 1998. Compare Feingold's map (left) to Michael Dukaki's narrow win from ten years before:

 

At the presidential level, the area's history as a place of Democratic strength dates back about two decades. In 1976, it's an area of Democratic weakness within each of the four adjacent states. You don't even see a huge shift after the Farm Crisis. Clinton did well in the region, but won by no more than he did across the entire rural Midwest. The 2000 election is the first in which it stands out, and by 2008 Obama won it by a wide margin, taking Wisconsin counties like Grant and Crawford by 25 point margins or more.

These counties swung against Obama by double digits in 2012, and after a second large swing in 2016, Trump was winning narrow majorities over Clinton.

You see the same pattern in downballot contests in all four states: Before 1998-2000, the region doesn't have a distinct or unified voting pattern, and if anything tends to favor Republicans in competitive statewide elections. And I remember a local Atlas poster (Gass, maybe?) mentioning that local elections in the Wisconsin part of the region continue to favor Republicans.

There are clearly a mix of factors at play. I'm a bit skeptical of answers that lean too heavily on settlement history as a cause. Here's something that seems to be true outside of the South and extremely sparsely populated rural areas in the West: Marginal agricultural regions, especially those with rugged terrain, tend to be more friendly to Democrats than highly productive ones, at least at the federal level.

You see this in northern New England and parts of Upstate New York. I think we often assume that these areas overlap with rural areas more oriented toward recreation, but there's a distinction between a place that attracts middle class tourists and wealthy retirees and one that attracts people who are just looking for relatively cheap but workable land. The people attracted to these areas, and those who remain in them, are not necessarily liberal or wealthy, but they do tend to be different from those whom you would find elsewhere.
Logged
TJ in Oregon
TJ in Cleve
Junior Chimp
*****
Posts: 8,952
United States


Political Matrix
E: 0.13, S: 6.96

Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #6 on: November 25, 2018, 01:33:41 AM »

I think there are a number of factors at play here. One of them is almost certainly the rugged terrain that makes agriculture profitable, but less so than most other agricultural areas. Outside of metro Madison, the driftless is quite poor.

Another factor is the Madison metro itself bleeding over into Rock, Green, Iowa, and Sauk Counties (but not the counties further out like Grant and Richland). The 2016 results demonstrate this pretty well.

Another factor is the different ethnic and religious background of the driftless area compared to much of the state. This map, which has a scaled display of religious groups as RGB values for each county (Catholic = green, mainline Prot = blue, evangelical = red; note that brighter = more of that group and that I used the ARDA database for these determinations, which most notably counts WELS and LCMS as 'evangelical') aligns well with the older election maps in western WI:


The driftless is less German and more Scandinavian than the rest of WI, poorer, and has worse terrain for agriculture, all of which contribute to its voting patterns.

Some other notes:
-The Driftless area is both very swingy and far more Republican in state legislative races than it is in federal races.
-This is an area that buys into the Law of Jante far morseso than almost anywhere else in the US and it affects how people there react to things. People will vote for whoever makes an argument that he or she will serve their interests and provide good government.
-In older times, the northwoods was also a democratic leaning area, and still is willing to vote for democrats occasionally, but has swung toward the GOP more recently. This swing accounts for most of the differences between the two maps Averoes posted. The driftless has sort of followed suit in a pattern from north to south.
-There are some similarities to Vermont, but make no mistake, the Driftless area does not particularly vote for moderate Republicans over any other type. Compared with New England, it is an entirely different breed. The Driftless is swingy for a rural area but not necessarily culturally liberal.
-The Driftless Area is notably anti-war and Trump's relative non-interventionism likely helped him there.
Logged
Scottholes 2.0
Wisconsinite
Jr. Member
***
Posts: 905
United States


Show only this user's posts in this thread
« Reply #7 on: November 26, 2018, 05:21:45 PM »

I think there are a number of factors at play here. One of them is almost certainly the rugged terrain that makes agriculture profitable, but less so than most other agricultural areas. Outside of metro Madison, the driftless is quite poor.

Another factor is the Madison metro itself bleeding over into Rock, Green, Iowa, and Sauk Counties (but not the counties further out like Grant and Richland). The 2016 results demonstrate this pretty well.

Another factor is the different ethnic and religious background of the driftless area compared to much of the state. This map, which has a scaled display of religious groups as RGB values for each county (Catholic = green, mainline Prot = blue, evangelical = red; note that brighter = more of that group and that I used the ARDA database for these determinations, which most notably counts WELS and LCMS as 'evangelical') aligns well with the older election maps in western WI:


The driftless is less German and more Scandinavian than the rest of WI, poorer, and has worse terrain for agriculture, all of which contribute to its voting patterns.

Some other notes:
-The Driftless area is both very swingy and far more Republican in state legislative races than it is in federal races.
-This is an area that buys into the Law of Jante far morseso than almost anywhere else in the US and it affects how people there react to things. People will vote for whoever makes an argument that he or she will serve their interests and provide good government.
-In older times, the northwoods was also a democratic leaning area, and still is willing to vote for democrats occasionally, but has swung toward the GOP more recently. This swing accounts for most of the differences between the two maps Averoes posted. The driftless has sort of followed suit in a pattern from north to south.
-There are some similarities to Vermont, but make no mistake, the Driftless area does not particularly vote for moderate Republicans over any other type. Compared with New England, it is an entirely different breed. The Driftless is swingy for a rural area but not necessarily culturally liberal.
-The Driftless Area is notably anti-war and Trump's relative non-interventionism likely helped him there.

Interesting. Thanks for the info!
Logged
Pages: [1]  
« previous next »
Jump to:  


Login with username, password and session length

Terms of Service - DMCA Agent and Policy - Privacy Policy and Cookies

Powered by SMF 1.1.21 | SMF © 2015, Simple Machines

Page created in 0.052 seconds with 12 queries.