01-11-2017, 07:51 AM
(01-09-2017, 09:04 AM)SomeGuy Wrote:(01-09-2017, 08:39 AM)Odin Wrote:(01-08-2017, 02:04 PM)SomeGuy Wrote: That's not where I was going with that at all, and I agree with you. The Upper Midwest has been trending Republican at the state and local level since Reagan (and deindustrialization, really) in much the same way that the South had after the Civil Rights movement. A shift in their presidential votes to reflect this was probably inevitable. My point was that given the extent to which issues of race and class are also salient in voting patterns, a strict Colin Woodard reading of sectional conflict doesn't really tell the full story.
I suspect a big thing in the Rust belt is that according to Woodard we Yankees tend to be suspicious of too much cultural diversity and prefer aggressive assimilation. In the last few decades there has been a shift away from thinking in terms of a "melting pot" and more towards a "tossed salad" attitude, which tends to offend Yankee assimilationist sensibilities.
This is likely true, but the shift was not as dramatic in the NE and I think that you need to expand your analysis beyond Woodard.
The reason I like to bring up Woodard is that this election has caused a lot of people to start making broad over-generalizations about "rural vs. urban" that have begun to really get on my nerves. There are a lot of really ignorant people spouting nonsense since the election who think small town Wisconsin is little different from small town Alabama.
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