What are the most German Catholic places in the US?

[RINO Tom]

I have long wanted to try to try to estimate a map of German plurality counties in the US and divide them by religion (i.e., only color in counties that have plurality German ancestry and divide them between Lutheran and Catholic).  My two anecdotal additions:

(1) I would add the Metro East region of Illinois (i.e., St. Louis suburbs) as an example of a German Catholic place.  IIRC, St. Clair and Madison Counties (the two largest) are both very Catholic, very German and really not that Irish.

(2) From my experience as one myself, the large majority of people of German ancestry in both Eastern Iowa and Central Illinois (the two places I grew up) were Lutheran.

[RINO Tom]

Catholic

North Dakota  26%
Wisconsin  25%
Minnesota  22%
South Dakota  22%
Iowa  18%

A majority of Catholics in these states are (probably) of German ancestry.

It's kind of interesting looking at those states' ancestries, though.  This is super simplified and only for directional information, so I picked out relevant ancestry groups for Catholic/Lutheran and ignored groups like English, "American," Scottish, etc.  These groups all have irreligious populations, but if you assume that the Irish, Polish, French and Italian populations are all Catholic for simplicity's sake and you assume that the Scandinavian populations are all Lutheran in a similar manner and then assume 20% of each are "irreligious" to reduce the denominator, you could theoretically come up with "missing Catholic" and "missing Lutheran" (from the Pew totals) populations to try to gauge the Germans.

ANCESTRY
North Dakota: 41.4% German, 32.5% Scandinavian, 7.7% Irish, 5.2% French, 2.4% Polish, 1.2% Italian
Wisconsin: 40.5% German, 11.2% Scandinavian, 10.8% Irish, 8.8% Polish, 4.2% French, 3.5% Italian
Minnesota: 33.8% German, 26.1% Scandinavian, 10.5% Irish, 4.6% Polish, 4.4% French, 2.3% Italian
South Dakota: 38.8% German, 19.6% Scandinavian, 10.7% Irish, 2.8% French, 1.7% Polish, 1.3% Italian
Iowa: 35.1% German, 13.5% Irish, 9.5% Scandinavian, 2.1% French, 2.1% Italian, 1.3% Polish

PEW NUMBERS
North Dakota: 32.5% Lutheran, 26.0% Catholic
Wisconsin: 25.0% Catholic, 19.0% Lutheran
Minnesota: 26.0% Lutheran, 22.0% Catholic
South Dakota: 22.0% Catholic, 18.0% Lutheran
Iowa: 18.0% Catholic, 14.0% Lutheran

"MISSING" POPULATIONS (Using simplified assumptions stated above)
North Dakota: 12.8% missing Catholics, 1.0% missing Lutherans
Wisconsin: 10.0% missing Lutherans, 3.2% missing Catholics
Minnesota: 5.1% missing Lutherans, 4.6% missing Catholics
South Dakota: 8.8% missing Catholics, 2.3% missing Lutherans
Iowa: 6.4% missing Lutherans, 2.8% missing Catholics

Again, this is a totally $hlt "model," haha ... but since those assumptions did not include any Germans, you could theoretically/broadly conclude that the states with more "missing Catholics" have a larger German Catholic population and the ones with more "missing Lutherans" have a larger German Lutheran population?  This of course ignores that (IIRC) a disproportionate share of "Nones" were former Mainline Protestants, so if we are looking at this from a heritage-based perspective (which is more relevant than how often you attend church in this arena, if you ask me), the Lutheran German population is likely underrepresented here.

I'm quite surprised there hasn't been a better analysis of this using demographics, though.  Maybe there has.  We could of course get like 99% of the way there if we could get our hands on data that at least estimates a state's German immigration by state.  A Prussian German has a very high chance of being Lutheran, a Bavarian a very high chance of being Catholic, etc.

[RINO Tom]

The NORC surveys ca. 1980 found that German Americans were 70% Protestant, 21% Catholic.

Source: Thomas Archdeacon, Becoming American (1984)

This would back up what I have seen that during the heaviest immigration period from the German states to the US, Prussia (and specifically the Brandenburg and East Prussia parts) experienced disproportionate brain drain.  In other words, those stats are just at little skewed in favor of Protestants than what the 1914 German Empire would have reported on the whole, and that would make sense.

[RINO Tom]

Yup, the 1880s wave was mostly Protestant.

German immigration to the Badger State occurred in three waves. The first, from 1850 to 1860, was made up of settlers from mainly southern and western states, including Bavaria, Baden, Württemberg, the Rhineland and Palatinate regions, and Switzerland...During the second wave, from 1865 to 1875, Germans came to Wisconsin from northern areas such as Schleswig, Holstein, Hanover, and Westphalia...The years 1880 to 1890 marked the final and largest wave of 19th-century German immigration to the Badger State. Immigrants came from the northern and eastern regions of the German Empire, especially Brandenburg and Pomerania, and also from Silesia and Russia.

https://mki.wisc.edu/exhibits/npp/panel-02/

It's so cool to see things like this, thank you for sharing!  I have spent a lot of time on Ancestry.com, and it matches up with my heritage well, as nearly all of my German ancestors - all Lutheran and from Brandenburg - came over in the 1880s.