By: Melissa McEwen
Maybe irrelevant, but my family has a small farm in that region. We bought it as outsiders, coming from the Chicago area, and it seems like other people from the urban Midwest also buy places in that...
View ArticleBy: Chris_T_T
Southwestern Wisconsin contains Madison, an extremely liberal college town. This inclination extends into neighboring counties.
View ArticleBy: PD Shaw
I live just to the south of that area, and my initial observation is that the first map does not accurately identify the driftless area. The map is picking up the urban areas of the Quad Cities, Cedar...
View ArticleBy: Moshe Rudner
It may be a function of A) Coincidence B) Targeted campaigning by the uber-efficient Obama machine C) The ice-age related bad farming quality of the region that has wealthy city people moving in for...
View ArticleBy: matt reusswig
I grew up in Muscatine, Iowa and lived in eastern Iowa until I was in my mid-twenties. This topic seems to pop up among my family and friends every time there is an election, though its framed more in...
View ArticleBy: Alan
The author of the article (and perhaps you too Razib?) doesn’t seem to realize the historical and cultural impact of Lutheranism in the upper Midwest. Forget the Yankee Northeast Migration theory. In...
View ArticleBy: Halvorson
Everybody here looking for deep cultural/geographical explanations would do well to read the linked Geo currents article first: “The Upper Mississippi River Valley Anomaly dates back roughly a dozen...
View ArticleBy: ohwilleke
If one was looking for deep cultural legacies, localized impacts of French, pre-Louisiana purchase settlers on subsequent waves of migrants might be involved. Another geographic factor is that farming...
View ArticleBy: aidian
In Missouri, it was largely the death of the rural, conservative Democratic party as a political factor (the same sort of thing that happened in the south a generation earlier). The death of St. Louis...
View ArticleBy: Halvorson
You can see a weaker version of the same pattern, albeit reversed, in the 1976 election: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:1976prescountymap2.PNG However, this seems to be the earliest year it is...
View ArticleBy: ryan
>Another possible legacy is that this area was a formative one for Lincoln How so? By wandering north just too late to actually engage in any fighting during the Black Hawk War, when virtually no...
View ArticleBy: Eurologist
I could imagine religion having some impact, especially when social issues are at stake – but it may not be visible in every election. Republicans haven’t always been as “antisocial” (in terms of money...
View ArticleBy: Alan
The other thing that is being neglected in this argument is the changing nature of ‘conservatism’ in this country and the changes in the Republican party. Pre-Reagan the Republican party was pretty...
View ArticleBy: PD Shaw
Current census figures don’t necessarily tell us the importance of early founders to an areas cultural and political norms. This area was sparsely settled until the Indians were removed following the...
View ArticleBy: dave chamberlin
I spend a lot of time in this area and #6C exactly explains what I see as I drive though it. This area isn’t typically rural, it is a lousy place to make a living as a farmer and a great place to move...
View ArticleBy: Charles Nydorf
Levi-Strauss who was fascinated both by cultural geography and contrasts between geological zones would have loved this!
View ArticleBy: ackbark
We’re in luck, that’s where I live. Unfortunately I don’t get out much and often feel like a tourist just getting the mail. Towns are set primarily in short steep valleys or on the narrow ridges...
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