Why does eastern Iowa and it's neighbours have so many Obama-Trump-Trump counties?

[omar04]

https://ballotpedia.org/Election_results,_2020:_Pivot_Counties_in_the_2020_presidential_election

https://ballotpedia.org/Pivot_Counties_in_Iowa

From what I can tell, these counties were moving already right before 2016 and have all of Trump's best demographics.

Ironically, one of the Iowa counties that went Trump both elections is named Clinton.

[VPH]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with the demographic point. Very White, rural/small-town, less college+ educated than average, quite Catholic. This region exemplifies the kind of working-class economically center-left, socially center-right voters that Trump activated.

[omar04]

You pretty much hit the nail on the head with the demographic point. Very White, rural/small-town, less college+ educated than average, quite Catholic. This region exemplifies the kind of working-class economically center-left, socially center-right voters that Trump activated.

Yeah, I checked out the counties in and bordering Illinois and the main thing that stuck out to me was that they were very white at >=90% and had a declining population (generally they were 20-30k).

Apparently this region is known as the Driftless Area https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Driftless_Area

[ProgressiveModerate]

Another thing to add on is relative to the South, these rural midwestern counties were never as polarized allowing for stronger swings enough to flip many of them.

[TransfemmeGoreVidal]

I think that despite it's demographics we would have seen some more snapbacks in parts of Iowa in response to Trump's trade war if he hadn't subsidized farmers for their losses.

[Pink Panther]

As others have already said, the demographics in this region were ripe for a red swing, and Trump was their guy. Interestingly enough, this was usually fairly Republican territory for awhile, but had a big swing to the left after the farm crisis and being attracted to people like Clinton and Obama.

[If my soul was made of stone]

As others have already said, the demographics in this region were ripe for a red swing, and Trump was their guy. Interestingly enough, this was usually fairly Republican territory for awhile, but had a big swing to the left after the farm crisis and being attracted to people like Clinton and Obama.

Iowa was in fact the only state to swing Republican in '92, after voting anomalously Democratic in '88 in response to the farm crisis, with the decline in small farming and consolidation of agribusiness accelerated by that sowing the seeds of its current partisanship. Many other states that had voted far more relatively Dem than usual in '88 (MT, SD) also had anemic D swings and strong Perot votes in '92; MT flipped from Bush to a very narrow Clinton plurality while flipping from left of the nation to right of it!

[Hope For A New Era]

Eastern Iowa exemplified the Obama coalition in the same way that Gwinnett County, Georgia exemplifies the Biden coalition.

[Pink Panther]

As others have already said, the demographics in this region were ripe for a red swing, and Trump was their guy. Interestingly enough, this was usually fairly Republican territory for awhile, but had a big swing to the left after the farm crisis and being attracted to people like Clinton and Obama.

Iowa was in fact the only state to swing Republican in '92, after voting anomalously Democratic in '88 in response to the farm crisis, with the decline in small farming and consolidation of agribusiness accelerated by that sowing the seeds of its current partisanship. Many other states that had voted far more relatively Dem than usual in '88 (MT, SD) also had anemic D swings and strong Perot votes in '92; MT flipped from Bush to a very narrow Clinton plurality while flipping from left of the nation to right of it!

True, although the point I was making was that the gains made during the farm crisis in the Greater Driftless Area were mostly retained from 1992 to 2012, especially compared to the area's partisanship before 1988 and after 2012.