This is one of these voting patterns that seems simple at first glance but is actually really confusing.
Soldiers Grove is a tiny town in Crawford County in the Wisconsin Driftless. It's most known for entirely relocating to higher ground following repeated flooding in 1970s, and subsequently embracing solar power in the process. That history is suggestive of a place where Democrats might be expected to hold up a little bit better than elsewhere in southwest Wisconsin.
However, the village still voted narrowly for Trump, swinging to him from 2016 to 2020. That by itself isn't too surprising given how dramatic the swings were in that part of the country between 2012 and 2020.
But, wait, that actually makes less sense if you look at the surrounding context:
Image screenshotted from Dave's Redistricting AppSoldiers Grove actually votes to the right of surrounding rural areas! Apparently the whole area is a hub for
organic farming, including the massive collective Organic Valley, and as a result Democrats have held up well, largely winning the blue areas in 2016 too.
But for some reason this pattern is avoided in the tiny towns nearby these farms, with Gays Mills, Readstown (especially dramatic here) and Viola voting to the right of the rural communities surrounding them. Why would an ecologically oriented small town vote Republican, when even neighboring rural areas stuck by Democrats through the collapse of their vote in the Trump era?
