Eastern vs. Western OK

[walleye26]

I had an Oklahoma question regarding looking back at old election results. It seems that awhile back there was quite an East/West split between Democrats and Republicans. Why is this? Is eastern OK more “South” while the West was more “Plains”?

[smoltchanov]

In short - yes. There is a reason why SE Oklahoma is almost officially called "Little Dixie"....

[DINGO Joe]

When Indian territory was opened for settlement, the Boomers came in from adjacent states.  There's actually a bit of a diagonal component to it.

[RINO Tom]

Yeah, it seems mostly cultural.  In that area of the country, it seems many culturally conservative rural voters were mainly divided by a more philosophical distinction, that being which big ten party they preferred.  The Plains has long been more enamored with the Republican ideas of "being left alone," whereas the Deep South has long appreciated a culturally conservative egalitarianism (to Whites).  Oklahoma kind of sits on that divide.

[clever but short]

When Indian territory was opened for settlement, the Boomers came in from adjacent states.  There's actually a bit of a diagonal component to it.

Yes, the Ancestral Democrat counties go all the way West bordering the Red River.

[💥💥 brandon bro (he/him/his)]

You see this in all of the plains states and it's partially due to geography. Moving east to west you face an aridity gradient - east is wetter with more forest, more productive soil, and more diversity in industry and agriculture. This diversity and generally more hospital (and productive) physical climate means larger settlements and a somewhat more collectivist population.

Move further west and the climate becomes much harsher. You move more to larger monoculture farms (lots of winter wheat) and if you go far enough into territory that's too dry for farming and much better suited for ranching (generally taking up more land). This, combined with the fact that the western plains were settled during an unusually wet period and has only dried out in the last century, has led the area to be sparser and less collectivist.

This trend is a little less pronounced in OK because only the panhandle is west of the 100th meridian (which is typically the dividing line in the moisture regime) but if you include the Texas panhandle, the trend holds here. It's very pronounced in the Dakotas where "east river" is typically soy/corn farmers and "west river" is typically ranchers and less productive wheat farmers.

Here is a map of Oklahoma ecoregions. The "cross timbers" region marks the transition from forest (think Arkansas) to drier grasslands (which in turn move from mid-grass to shortgrass as you move further west).

img source

[jimrtex]

I had an Oklahoma question regarding looking back at old election results. It seems that awhile back there was quite an East/West split between Democrats and Republicans. Why is this? Is eastern OK more “South” while the West was more “Plains”?

It is more of a North/South than East/West divide. See 1952 and 1956 results, but also 1912, 1924, 1940, 1944. 1960, 1964, 1980, 1988.

The wheat-growing areas of the north were settled during the 1889 land rush, which attracted farmers from Kansas and Illinois, etc., and is politically like those areas. Areas along the Red River were settled by people from Arkansas and Alabama and Mississippi and could grow cotton. The eastern part of the state was part of Indian Territory and originally settled by the 5 Civilized Tribes, as well as reservations for other groups. But their land was allotted to individual tribal members, and could then be sold.

Tulsa, Bartlesville, and Ponca City were oil towns. Bartlesville was the headquarters of Phillips; Ponca City was headquarters of Conoco; Tulsa was headquarters of Skelly, Getty, Sinclair, Pan American, and Cities Service. These cities attracted people from all over, and became Republican like Midland, Texas. The dominance of Tulsa tended to expand the Republican area eastward.

As late as the 1970s, there were counties along the Red River that had zero registered Republicans.

Over time, Democrats became dominant at the state level, congressional level, and legislative level. Only areas like Tulsa would elect an actual Republican. But the Democrats were more populist and more like Democrats from the South than the urban North. Remember that Carl Albert was House Speaker from 1971-1977. He had attracted the attention of Sam Rayburn who House Speaker as late as 1961. The two represented districts on opposite sides of the Red River. The Democrats were what would be called Blue Dogs now.

As Republicans became more viable, particularly as the population became more concentrated in Tulsa and OKC, moving up the food chain from party office, to county office, to the legislature, to statewide office, to Congress became less viable as a career path. Some would switch parties (e.g. Wes Watkins). Others might continue at the county level. If they moved up to the legislature, they might get picked off. As they retired as county commissioner, their successor would be a Republican.

[Orser67]

I don't have any special insight into OK, but here's another map (+article) that talks about the divide at the 100th meridian that PeenieWeenie mentioned.

In 1878, the American geologist and explorer John Wesley Powell drew an invisible line in the dirt—a very long line. It was the 100th meridian west, the longitude he identified as the boundary between the humid eastern United States and the arid Western plains.

...While the climate divide is not a literal line, it is about the closest thing around, easily seen on maps. Due to global-scale wind patterns, to the west of this longitude, rainfall drops off sharply. East of the line, it picks up sharply. Powell noted correctly that the western plains are dry in part because they lie in the rain shadow of the Rocky Mountains, which rake off almost all the moisture blowing in from the Pacific Ocean. Seager’s team identifies two other factors. In winter, Atlantic storms bring plenty of moisture into the eastern plains and Southeast, but don’t make it far enough to moisten the western plains. In summer, moisture from the Gulf of Mexico moves northward, but that also curves eastward, again providing the East with plenty of precipitation, while the West gets cheated. Seager says there is only one other such major straight-line climate divide on the global map: the one separating the Sahara Desert from the rest of Africa, also due to cutoffs of prevailing oceanic winds.

[Hope For A New Era]

Just wanted to add that you can clearly see the ecoregion divide in Oklahoma City! Drop yourself in Street View at the eastern edge suburbs and western edge suburbs - very clear difference. West = much flatter, much browner vegetation. Probably one of very few cities east of the Rockies with a clear divide in the city like this - possibly the only one. (would Duluth's big elevation gain count?)