Why is Oklahoma so Republican?

[President Johnson]

In most recent decades, Oklahoma has been one of the most Republican states. While I know it's a largely white state, I wonder why this is the case despite having two major metro areas, Oklahoma City and Tulsa, and two more cities with a population of over 100,000? Democratic candidates usually don't even win the two biggest cities and have failed to win a single county in a presidential election since 2000.

It's especially surprising compared to a state like Iowa, that doesn't have such large metros and is even more white. And Oklahoma is not even a state of the Deep South.

[TML]

This state is part of the "Bible Belt" and fossil fuels (specifically oil and gas) make up a significant chunk of its economy. Put these two factors together, and you have a deep red state.

[If my soul was made of stone]

Nowadays, the primary factor keeping Oklahoma so firmly Republican is its massive Evangelical population (47% according to Pew in 2014), one of the largest in the country; Tulsa, the home of Evangelical-affiliated Oral Roberts University, is one of the common contenders for the title of "Buckle of the Bible Belt". Oklahoma City and Tulsa are ancestrally Republican, and while they've become more diverse and cosmopolitan as of late the whiter areas and suburbs, as well as the continued hemorrhaging in formerly Titanium D rural areas in the southeast, have blunted much of that movement. Tulsa's infamous history of racial tension also swung it hard towards the right back in the day, making it one of the most urban counties in the country that Goldwater won by a sizable margin. The sizable Native population is also generally more assimilated and conservative than those elsewhere in the country.

[RINO Tom]

It’s White, religious and heavily tied to big business interests ... all are more important than the currently-spotlighted urban/rural thing.

[Roll Roons]

Eastern Oklahoma is basically the Deep South. They don't call it "Little Dixie" for nothing. The northern and western part, including the panhandle, is an extension of the Great Plains. Rural Nebraska and Kansas have been Republican for decades, so it follows that rural Northern/Western Oklahoma is the same.

Besides that, there's a very strong Evangelical presence. Oil is also a big part of the state economy, and oil workers are solidly conservative. These two factors have kept the major cities as conservative as they are.

OKC, Tulsa and Norman have trended left in the Trump era, which is how Kendra Horn won, but because they were so red to begin with and the rural areas have swung even harder to the right, it hasn't made much of a dent statewide.

And Iowa is much less Republican than Oklahoma because it's not as Evangelical, was more influenced by the Yankee North than the South, and oil isn't a big industry there.

[Skill and Chance]

This state is part of the "Bible Belt" and fossil fuels (specifically oil and gas) make up a significant chunk of its economy. Put these two factors together, and you have a deep red state.

This is most of the story, especially the first part (the oil industry in Oklahoma had a lot of legacy Dems until very recently).  It's arguably the most religious place in the country.  Supermajority Evangelical/Evangelical-adjacent Protestant = Safe R.  Add to this that the non-white population is mostly Native Americans who have fully integrated into rural Plains/Southern culture, so there is no Dem floor like there is in the Deep South.

However, it's worth noting that Oklahoma was overall a better fit for the Bush-McCain era Republican party and has probably peaked by now at the presidential level.

[Tartarus Sauce]

Everybody's already hit on all the major points, the current demographic profile of the state is almost handcrafted to fit the current ethos of the Republican Party.

1. Its cultural profile consists of the Great Plains meeting the South. The former is an ancestrally Republican area while the latter is ancestrally Democratic, but has swung massively towards the GOP over the past two decades.

2. Evangelicals galore, its one of the most socially conservative and religious states in the union.

3. The state's major current and historical industry is oil and gas. Fossil fuel workers reflexively vote Republican en masse.

4. The Native population, though large, mostly encompasses mixed-race individuals that have assimilated into the background white culture, rather than being segregated reservation inhabitants who tend to skew heavily Democratic.

5. Both the OKC and Tulsa metros are among the least densely populated metros in the country, it turns into scattered sprawlville and exurbia pretty quick after leaving the urban cores. This somewhat mitigates the Democratic side of the tight correlation between population density and Democratic vote share.

Meanwhile, a place like Iowa doesn't have these factors present. It might be traditionally Republican being a Plains adjacent region, but there's no particularly strong Southern element to the culture like there is in Oklahoma. Evangelicals obviously exist up here, but not to any degree appreciably above the national average. And windmill farms are more important to the energy sector than oil and gas.

Most importantly, the admittedly smaller metros here in Iowa have much more diversified economies than in Oklahoma's larger metros. Lots of college-degreed workers in white-collar jobs. This is especially true here in the Des Moines metro, which is a hub for insurance. Lots of these professional workers have reoriented towards the Democrats, even in traditionally conservative industries like insurance and finance. Proportionally, there just aren't as many knowledge economy workers in OKC and Tulsa and to the degree that they have expanded, it's in ubiquitously present fields like law and healthcare. These kinds of workers are likely the reason that Oklahoma County was only one point away from flipping to Biden.

[mileslunn]

Primarily for two reasons:

1.  Very large white Evangelical population.  Unlike states to north where you have more mainline Protestants and Catholics, Oklahoma has one of the highest white Evangelical populations in US and white Evangelicals vote close to 80% Republican

2.  Oil and gas are huge parts of economy and Democrats concern about climate change and environmental platform is a huge turn off here.

Also despite two larger metro areas, Oklahoma is still fairly rural.  US is 80% urban, while Oklahoma only 2/3 and 60% live outside the two metro areas where GOP tends to run up the margins.  Inside those two metro areas, they sprawl out quite a bit so while Democrats win big in central core, GOP dominates rest of the metro areas.  Finally as a southern state largely culturally, whites vote as heavily GOP as they do in rest of South, but Oklahoma is a lot whiter than most Southern states.  In states to north like Kansas and Nebraska, whites may favor GOP but still around 35-40% of whites in those two vote Democrat while only around 25% of whites in Oklahoma go Democrat.