Why is the driftless area of Wisconsin so [relatively] Democratic?

[jamestroll]

Let's change up discussion here. It is often asked why WOW has failed to crack unlike most suburban areas. Even though it is not directly parallel as the driftless area has clearly become more Republican it is still interesting how Democrats have done relatively well there compared to their counter parts elsewhere in the Midwest the past few cycles.

[Scottholes 2.0]

Let's change up discussion here. It is often asked why WOW has failed to crack unlike most suburban areas. Even though it is not directly parallel as the driftless area has clearly become more Republican it is still interesting how Democrats have done relatively well there compared to their counter parts elsewhere in the Midwest the past few cycles.

WOW is most definitely cracking. It's very obvious. Because WOW was so Republican to begin with, it's still more Republican than other suburban areas across the country.

As far as the driftless area goes, I think other Atlas users who live in Wisconsin or the Midwest can explain the reasoning behind driftless' D voting streak.

Tuesday's SCOTUS race makes me pessimistic about Wisconsin's political future, though.

[jamestroll]

Let's change up discussion here. It is often asked why WOW has failed to crack unlike most suburban areas. Even though it is not directly parallel as the driftless area has clearly become more Republican it is still interesting how Democrats have done relatively well there compared to their counter parts elsewhere in the Midwest the past few cycles.

WOW is most definitely cracking. It's very obvious. Because WOW was so Republican to begin with, it's still more Republican than other suburban areas across the country.

As far as the driftless area goes, I think other Atlas users who live in Wisconsin or the Midwest can explain the reasoning behind driftless' D voting streak.

Tuesday's SCOTUS race makes me pessimistic about Wisconsin's political future, though.

Well three things

1) The turnout was not even 30% and the GOP was clearly more motivated.

2) Many of those rural areas are losing population and Dane County is growing very healthy for the Midwest. Milwaukee County is steady and gaining.

3) WoW may be gaining also but like you said they are slowing cracking. A few extra Democratic votes in those heavily populated counties makes up most of the votes lost in rural Wisconsin.


Overall, Wisconsin will be a Lean R but competitive state. Minnesota and Michigan Democrats did well last year. Wisconsin Democrats did alright.


My hot take is that a Baldwin type victory in Wisconsin in 10 to 12 years would probably include flipping Ozaukee County but winning very few of the counties in south western Wisconsin.

[lfromnj]

fyi driftless isn't ancestrally D.

Its history since Truman
Eisen twice along with Nixon
Did vote for LBJ of course
Strongly nixon in 68 and 72
Carter made some small inroads but not much
Became more R in 1980
Was still republican in 84 although not deep red
Dukkakis won it and it was D since then until 2016.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

fyi driftless isn't ancestrally D.

Its history since Truman
Eisen twice along with Nixon
Did vote for LBJ of course
Strongly nixon in 68 and 72
Carter made some small inroads but not much
Became more R in 1980
Was still republican in 84 although not deep red
Dukkakis won it and it was D since then until 2016.

The farm crisis turned a generation of voters there to the Democrats, kind of like Iowa.

[Zaybay]

To understand the Driftless, you have to understand both its history, and the politics of the region.

If one were to look at a map of the US House of Reps in 2012, one would notice an odd phenomenon. There would be an area of the Midwest, an odd blotch of Blue surrounded by a sea of Red. The Borderlands of IA, IL, WI, and MN all create this odd area of the Midwest that was rather Democratic prior to 2016. But why is that?

Well, as NCYankee and Infromnj points out, this is a relatively new phenomenon. We arent talking MN-08 voting D since 1950 or the South ancestral Dem seats, but instead of a voting pattern that started in the 1990s and solidified in the 2000s. It all really started with the farm crisis, which caused 3/4 States mentioned earlier to vote D in a rather landslide election in favor of Bush. The trend continued under Clinton, and really solidified with the election of 2000, where Gore barely won WI but took almost the entire Driftless area. The region reached its peak in 2008-2012. In 2008, almost every Rep in the area was a Dem, and in 2010, even as 60 Democratic seats fell, only 1 D seat in the region fell, that being the IL seat. This, however, was taken back in 2012 under a new map. 2016 is truly the year the region broke, with it being rather close, but time will tell whether this was a fluke, or a natural progression for the region. For instance, in WI, while the Northern Driftless appears to be continuing its R trend, the Southern and Mid Driftless have gone back to their D roots. If the Northern Driftless will return or if the Southern Driftless will be dependent on how things go from here on out.

Also, Jimmie, WI isnt a lean R state.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

Because of its geography (it's unglaciated and therefore very hilly) it was settled by a lot of Scandinavians (especially Norwegians) whereas much of the rest of the arable Midwest was settled by Germans. The Scandinavians are much less resistant to communal government than descendants of German/Dutch settlers are.

It's old and bad quality but here is a map of Norwegian Americans which shows heavy concentration in the Driftless and the Red River Valley (also a relatively Democratic rural area)



similar map for Swedish Americans



similar map for Finish Americans - notice they have settled the mining and logging regions of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan's UP which are also relatively Democratic



contrast with a map of German Americans and you'll see heavily Republican areas of Eastern Wisconsin, Central Minnesota, Mid-Eastern South Dakota/Nebraska are heavily Germanic



here is a useful article about this: http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/elections/swedish-americans-vote-democrats-national-origins-voting-behavior-united-states

[Gass3268]

Should also note that while the driftless area of Wisconsin leans to the left for Federal and statewide elections, it still tends to vote Republican for the state legislature and local elections. Outside of La Crosse County, the City of Eau Claire, and areas they pull into Dane County, every thing else is represented by Republicans in the State Assembly. Also I think the sheriff's in all of these counties are Republican, including La Crosse County. I might have to make a sheriff's map.

[Zaybay]

Should also note that while the driftless area of Wisconsin leans to the left for Federal and statewide elections, it still tends to vote Republican for the state legislature and local elections. Outside of La Crosse County, the City of Eau Claire, and areas they pull into Dane County, every thing else is represented by Republicans in the State Assembly. Also I think the sheriff's in all of these counties are Republican, including La Crosse County. I might have to make a sheriff's map.

I would be careful using that as a metric, considering WI has one of the most gerrymandered state legislatures in the US. From 2016 to 2018, there was a swing of 14.5 points towards the Dems, and they managed to win.....one seat. In an assembly of 99.

[Gass3268]

Should also note that while the driftless area of Wisconsin leans to the left for Federal and statewide elections, it still tends to vote Republican for the state legislature and local elections. Outside of La Crosse County, the City of Eau Claire, and areas they pull into Dane County, every thing else is represented by Republicans in the State Assembly. Also I think the sheriff's in all of these counties are Republican, including La Crosse County. I might have to make a sheriff's map.

I would be careful using that as a metric, considering WI has one of the most gerrymandered state legislatures in the US. From 2016 to 2018, there was a swing of 14.5 points towards the Dems, and they managed to win.....one seat. In an assembly of 99.

Sure, but the Assembly seats in SW Wisconsin aren't that gerrymandered. Now the Southeast/Milwaukee Metro part of the state is horrendous.

[Ban my account ffs!]

fyi driftless isn't ancestrally D.

Its history since Truman
Eisen twice along with Nixon
Did vote for LBJ of course
Strongly nixon in 68 and 72
Carter made some small inroads but not much
Became more R in 1980
Was still republican in 84 although not deep red
Dukkakis won it and it was D since then until 2016.

The farm crisis turned a generation of voters there to the Democrats, kind of like Iowa.

And now we’re having another one with Trump.

[Nyvin]

Should also note that while the driftless area of Wisconsin leans to the left for Federal and statewide elections, it still tends to vote Republican for the state legislature and local elections. Outside of La Crosse County, the City of Eau Claire, and areas they pull into Dane County, every thing else is represented by Republicans in the State Assembly. Also I think the sheriff's in all of these counties are Republican, including La Crosse County. I might have to make a sheriff's map.

I would be careful using that as a metric, considering WI has one of the most gerrymandered state legislatures in the US. From 2016 to 2018, there was a swing of 14.5 points towards the Dems, and they managed to win.....one seat. In an assembly of 99.

The Democrats also won the statewide vote for the assembly by 8.24% and still only won 36 out of 99 seats.   That's a tragedy of democracy if I've ever seen one.

[cvparty]

Also, Jimmie, WI isnt a lean R state.

he didn’t say that...?

[Zaybay]

Also, Jimmie, WI isnt a lean R state.

he didn’t say that...?

Sorry, I must have misinterpreted this. My mistake.

Overall, Wisconsin will be a Lean R but competitive state.

[jamestroll]

Also, Jimmie, WI isnt a lean R state.

he didn’t say that...?

Sorry, I must have misinterpreted this. My mistake.

Overall, Wisconsin will be a Lean R but competitive state.

There are always exceptions to every rule and Wisconsin breaks a lot of rules but I only see rural areas becoming more GOP but WOW will crack slightly. However, WOW is fundamentally conservative and attracts the exact type of people who are in love with the GOP.


When I am in my 40s it is very plausible that Wisconsin will largely vote Republican but some Democrats will be able to win statewide simply due to large margins out of Dane County and the WOW counties not producing a strong margins for the GOP as before.

[RI]

IIRC, the Driftless area is hilly which leads to a lot of small farms run by locals as opposed to the large, mechanized, corporate agriculture of other nearby rural areas. They also have a lot of dairy farms that are heavy cheese producers relative to the corn production to the south and west.

[Scottholes 2.0]

Also, Jimmie, WI isnt a lean R state.

he didn’t say that...?

Sorry, I must have misinterpreted this. My mistake.

Overall, Wisconsin will be a Lean R but competitive state.

There are always exceptions to every rule and Wisconsin breaks a lot of rules but I only see rural areas becoming more GOP but WOW will crack slightly. However, WOW is fundamentally conservative and attracts the exact type of people who are in love with the GOP.


When I am in my 40s it is very plausible that Wisconsin will largely vote Republican but some Democrats will be able to win statewide simply due to large margins out of Dane County and the WOW counties not producing a strong margins for the GOP as before.

When you're in your 40s, there may be a party realignment. You may never know how demographics will shift in politics and if millennials will start voting Republican as much as baby boomers.

[walleye26]

There’s a few reasons why the Driftless is (kind of) more Democratic-leaning.
1) Due to the steep, tall hills and bluffs in the region, it hasn’t become corporate farm owned. The farms that are there tend to be small family farms, and some historically were co-op farms.
2) There’s more education here than you might think. La Crosse is the largest city and UW-Lacrosse makes it a very blue county, but Viterbo University is also located in LaCrosse. Platteville is home to UW-Platteville, and Richland county has UW-Richland (a two year, UW-Madison feeder university). In Minnesota, you also have Winona State. So there’s a few universities here.
3) Lastly, due to there being a lack of large cities in the area, these small towns allow a more retail-type approach to politics, which allows for swinging back and forth.

[Boobs]

Gonna piggy-back off of this - why is Stevens Point (and Portage County) more Democratic than the rest of the region? Is it just because of UW-SP?

[Hydera]

Because of its geography (it's unglaciated and therefore very hilly) it was settled by a lot of Scandinavians (especially Norwegians) whereas much of the rest of the arable Midwest was settled by Germans. The Scandinavians are much less resistant to communal government than descendants of German/Dutch settlers are.

It's old and bad quality but here is a map of Norwegian Americans which shows heavy concentration in the Driftless and the Red River Valley (also a relatively Democratic rural area)



similar map for Swedish Americans



similar map for Finish Americans - notice they have settled the mining and logging regions of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan's UP which are also relatively Democratic



contrast with a map of German Americans and you'll see heavily Republican areas of Eastern Wisconsin, Central Minnesota, Mid-Eastern South Dakota/Nebraska are heavily Germanic



here is a useful article about this: http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/elections/swedish-americans-vote-democrats-national-origins-voting-behavior-united-states

Ryne Rohla has a even more detailed map of Scandinavian ancestry.

Image Link

Compared to 2016. While many Scandinavian ancestry voters defected en masse to Trump in the rural midwest they still were more  "dem leaning" than German americans.

Image Link


Even Grant county with a lower number of Scandinavian ancestry you can see how strongly they shifted to Trump after voting for Obama.

[walleye26]

Comstock-to answer your question, it mostly is due to UWSP. The townships in the county that aren’t near Stevens Point, Plover, and Park Ridge are relatively Republican (with the exceptions of the village of Nelsonville and Amherst, and the township of New Hope). UWSP is a natural resources/education college, so there’s lots of latte liberals concerned about climate change (and Stevens Point is very pedestrian friendly and has a lot of public transportation) and lots of education majors, which tend to lean D.

Besides UW-Stevens Point, there is a decent sized Asian population (mostly Hmong) that leans Democratic as well.

Edit: I forgot to mention historically there were more Poles in Portage County than Germans/Dutch, and Poles aren’t historically as Republican as Germans and Dutch Protestants. There are also a fair number of Norwegians that settled in the town of New Hope.

[R.P. McM]

Also, Jimmie, WI isnt a lean R state.

he didn’t say that...?

Sorry, I must have misinterpreted this. My mistake.

Overall, Wisconsin will be a Lean R but competitive state.

There are always exceptions to every rule and Wisconsin breaks a lot of rules but I only see rural areas becoming more GOP but WOW will crack slightly. However, WOW is fundamentally conservative and attracts the exact type of people who are in love with the GOP.


When I am in my 40s it is very plausible that Wisconsin will largely vote Republican but some Democrats will be able to win statewide simply due to large margins out of Dane County and the WOW counties not producing a strong margins for the GOP as before.

When you're in your 40s, there may be a party realignment. You may never know how demographics will shift in politics and if millennials will start voting Republican as much as baby boomers.

Possible, but incredibly unlikely. Generational effects are real, and persistent. Boomers have always been a mixed bag politically, so it's not surprising that their current alignment is slightly right-of-center. Same story with Gen Xers — they're close enough to the middle, they could conceivably swing/drift in either direction. But Millennials and post-Millennials aren't swing-voters; they're hard partisans in the same sense as the New Deal generation. Republican margins could improve, but they're starting from such a staggering deficit — coinciding with the formative years of said cohort — that even achieving parity in the distant future would require an improbable bout of good fortune.

[Joe McCarthy Was Right]

Because of its geography (it's unglaciated and therefore very hilly) it was settled by a lot of Scandinavians (especially Norwegians) whereas much of the rest of the arable Midwest was settled by Germans. The Scandinavians are much less resistant to communal government than descendants of German/Dutch settlers are.

It's old and bad quality but here is a map of Norwegian Americans which shows heavy concentration in the Driftless and the Red River Valley (also a relatively Democratic rural area)


similar map for Swedish Americans



similar map for Finish Americans - notice they have settled the mining and logging regions of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan's UP which are also relatively Democratic



contrast with a map of German Americans and you'll see heavily Republican areas of Eastern Wisconsin, Central Minnesota, Mid-Eastern South Dakota/Nebraska are heavily Germanic



here is a useful article about this: http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/elections/swedish-americans-vote-democrats-national-origins-voting-behavior-united-states

Those maps show that there is not a high number of Scandinavians or Norweigans in the driftless area of Iowa, yet that area votes roughly the same way as driftless Wisconsin anyway.

[Hydera]

Because of its geography (it's unglaciated and therefore very hilly) it was settled by a lot of Scandinavians (especially Norwegians) whereas much of the rest of the arable Midwest was settled by Germans. The Scandinavians are much less resistant to communal government than descendants of German/Dutch settlers are.

It's old and bad quality but here is a map of Norwegian Americans which shows heavy concentration in the Driftless and the Red River Valley (also a relatively Democratic rural area)


similar map for Swedish Americans



similar map for Finish Americans - notice they have settled the mining and logging regions of Northern Wisconsin and Michigan's UP which are also relatively Democratic



contrast with a map of German Americans and you'll see heavily Republican areas of Eastern Wisconsin, Central Minnesota, Mid-Eastern South Dakota/Nebraska are heavily Germanic



here is a useful article about this: http://www.geocurrents.info/geopolitics/elections/swedish-americans-vote-democrats-national-origins-voting-behavior-united-states

Those maps show that there is not a high number of Scandinavians or Norweigans in the driftless area of Iowa, yet that area votes roughly the same way as driftless Wisconsin anyway.

[Gass3268]

Aren’t there a good number of hippie farms and settlements in southwestern WI or am I mixing that up with elsewhere? I’m pretty sure that’s why Clinton didn’t completely crater there like she did in all the other rural areas of the state

As an aside, it looks like Tony Evers was only barely able to eke out a win in the 3rd district, and remember, this seat was designed orginially as a D vote sink. Republicans need only change a little bit of it in redistricting (take out Eau Claire County and Portage County) and go up the rivier to St. Croix and it becomes a Lean R seat easily and probably Likely R by the end of the 2020's. I imagine Republicans will probably make the seat significantly more Republican anyhow now that they know it is very much winnable and there's not much Democrats can do about it since Evers' veto is just gonna send it to the state supreme court anyway and Democrats sh**t the bed on that one. Maybe that will convince Kind to finally run for Senate in 2022 though. From the looks of it, he performed about 6% better in margin than Tammy Baldwin did in the 3rd, which is pretty impressive (though admittedly he was facing a nobody). He won four Vukmir counties as well: Pepin, Buffalo, Juneau and Monroe.

We don't know yet what court will determine the maps. Sometimes they go to state courts and sometimes they go to federal courts. Also I'm not even sure if it went to state courts it would even go up as far as the State Supreme Court. There is going to be a lot of legal wrangling. Also if it even goes to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, we don't even know if they'd gerrymander the state. I can't think of a situation were there was a divided state government and courts and to draw the maps in 2011 where the courts then preceded to radically gerrymander. They might have picked a map that favored one side slightly more than the other, but nothing that malicious or radical.