Green County, WI

[walleye26]

This county leans pretty Democratic. Why? I’m sure some people commute to Madison, but still.

[Cokeland Saxton]

Because it's close to Madison. So there's a lot of University of Wisconsin students and state employees.

[TJ in Oregon]

Because it's close to Madison. So there's a lot of University of Wisconsin students and state employees.

Half right, it is close to Madison and close enough to have some commuter/Madison cultural spillover, albeit virtually no students are commuting from Green County to the University of Wisconsin.

But, as an example of the Madison spillover driving the results, here is the 2016 county map:



Hillary mostly just won the areas bordering Dane County (along with incorporated areas).

[iceman]

Iowa county is much more democratic and pretty much immune to TRUMP rural trends in southwestern Wisconsin.

[TJ in Oregon]

Iowa county is much more democratic and pretty much immune to TRUMP rural trends in southwestern Wisconsin.

Iowa County has a similar town map, also showing the liberal areas are those adjacent to Dane:



While Green County has a little bit of an upscale boutique culture of Madisonians looking for rural respite, Iowa County has it to a much greater extent. Iowa County also has a more Nords than Green County and would probably have a higher Democratic floor even without Madison.

Even with all of that, Iowa County trended strongly towards Trump:



It's not impervious to the SW trends, it just was way more Democratic to begin with.

Heck, even rural Dane trended toward Trump!

[Gass3268]

I'm really interested to see how the rural counties around Dane County vote this year. These areas swung/trended toward both Evers and Baldwin in 2018. I could see the same thing happening, even as the northern rurals continue to move to the right.

[Adam Griffin]

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Madison is a weird metro area in that it doesn't have any real areas of Republican strength. Even the Bay Area had some pockets that were willing to vote Republican pre-Trump, and still are to some level downballot (and probably more willing to do so once Trump is gone.) Believe it or not, the Bay Area still elected a Republican State Rep until 2018, and her district gave Romney over 40%. It's an incredibly wealthy area. Yes, wealthy even by the standards of the Bay Area.

The weird thing about this is that by most people's standards and the standards of most countries (but not the US Census), the Madison metro doesn't really extend outside of Dane County. When you see the signs that you're entering Dane County you're still surrounded by farmland. Sure some people might still commute to Madison from there, but commuters from effectively rural towns aren't exactly known for being Democrats, even in state capitol areas, it's not like the exurbs of Indianapolis or Des Moines are Democratic areas. And Madison's suburbs aren't really much different in appearance than the Milwaukee suburbs. Both are the strip mall, chain big box stores and fast food filled stereotypical suburbia. Not that places like that consistently vote D don't to or that many Democrats shop at such places too, but it's a bit striking to wonder what makes the culture so much different. It's not like the economy there is entirely the university and state government, Madison is home to many offices of various energy, insurance, IT, pharmaceutical, banking and lending (my employer was headquartered in Madison before my division was bought by a competitor, and the part of the company that wasn't bought still is) companies, and while those industries might have tons of Democrats still working in there, but it's kind of odd that so few of them who just happen to work in Madison are Republican in comparison to basically any other metro in the Midwest. Madison even has a sizable manufacturing sector, no doubt employing many of those blue collar non-college educated whites.

So yeah, it's a bit odd.