Why is Madison's sphere of political influence so large?

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

Wisconsin feels further along than other places in people of different political sensibilities preferring to live separately from each other, right? The flipside of the question of why Dane has gotten so strangely blue is the question of why Waukesha has remained so strangely red compared to similar suburbs.

Waukesha did swing against Trump immensely though, it just had such a solid stronger starting point to remain so strongly R.

Ten years ago if you discussed a scenario in which Waukesha would vote under 60% R almost everyone would agree that it would require a double digit D popular vote victory and breaking 60% in Wisconsin. Even McCain easily broke 60% there and he basically got the floor for Republicans in Wisconsin.

Somewhat notably Biden was the first Democrat ever to get over 100k votes in Waukesha yet despite that turnout surge Trump couldn't break Romney's raw vote total.

[David Hume]

Anecdotal, but I knew a girl from college who was from Verona, and she was incredibly liberal.  It did of course turn out that she was a lesbian (hope I played no part in that realization … lol), so maybe that played a part here, but she said it’s just a “cultural” thing, and I think we underestimate the simple power of groupthink here.  In other words, Madison is known as an incredibly unique and cool place within the Midwest (and especially within Wisconsin), and it ALSO happens to be very liberal … so people who are even kind of close enough to its orbit want to be a part of this identity.  Furthermore, people who desire to be around that type of atmosphere are flocking to these (growing) areas, making it a self-fulfilling prophecy.

I also think many suburbanites are conservative and under the guise that the inner city around which they live is some third-world hell hole - talk to a WOW suburbanite about Milwaukee some time… - and you can’t really play that spin with Madison.  Add on top of that, that rural Wisconsin was fairly Democratic not that long ago, and it’s not surprising that Madison’s suburbs and exurbs are way more liberal than somewhere like Austin.  As to a further explanation for why they are as liberal as they are, though, this is pretty much all I’ve got.

In what sense is Madison "incredibly unique and cool"? I would say a city with beautiful natural scenery like Sedona or beautiful architecture or special culture like the Amish counties as unique and cool.

[Sol]

In what sense is Madison "incredibly unique and cool"? I would say a city with beautiful natural scenery like Sedona or beautiful architecture or special culture like the Amish counties as unique and cool.

I've never been to Madison, but the sense I get is that it's a college dominated city with a very rich countercultural history and the cultural institutions to match--lots of bookstores, independent music venues, artist collectives, etc. Similar to a smaller version of places like the Bay Area, Austin, Seattle, etc. though I'm sure gentrification continues apace in Madison as it does in similar places.

Madison also has a unique location between Lake Mendota and Lake Monona, which gives it a pretty unique physical character. It also has quite a few Frank Lloyd Wright buildings as well.