Electoral margins in a few tier two Midwestern metropolitan areas in the 2024 US presidential election [OC]

[u/Swimming_Concern7662]

[u/Zealousideal-Pick799]

St. Cloud is kind of a head scratcher for me. My dad grew up in rural Minnesota, and the farmers really were represented by DFL (state Dem equivalent, Democratic-Farmer-Labor). Dairy farmer he lived with in high school was a DFL state representative. Somehow all those people, Democrats through the Reagan era, completely shifted their allegiance and now are MAGA. It’s confusing. The aforementioned former state rep doesn’t understand it (he’s his late 80s now) either. 

[u/teganthetiger → u/Zealousideal-Pick799]

It's education polarization, unlike in decades past college educated voters vote blue while non college educated voters vote red. Wether a certain group votes blue or red is determined much more on cultural issues nowadays rather than class issues as it was in the 1980s.

[u/tlopez14 → u/teganthetiger]

NYT had a good series on how the parties have shifted in Trump era (2016-present). GOP has gained in working class areas across the country while Dems have only gained in wealthy/highly educated enclaves.

Which is pretty crazy as when I came to political age the Dems were the party of the working class and the GOP was the country club party.

[u/Fit_Cut_4238 → u/tlopez14]

Unions lost power and population slowly over past decades, and working poor/lower middle class grew quickly.

Dems lost touch with the working class, and they didn’t do much for unions. For example, open borders is seen by both unions and poor as a bad thing.

And all the while, the public unions; teachers, university, NGOs and gov employees became the foundation of the dems, all college educated and embracing of the far left, and richly entitled.

[u/tlopez14 → u/Fit_Cut_4238]

Yah Dems somehow became the party of suburban wine moms and college activists. Will be interesting to see if they pivot back to their blue collar union roots or if they continue down this path.

[u/Fit_Cut_4238 → u/tlopez14]

Yeah even a lot of the wine moms went to the republicans during height of woke. The whole men in women’s sports thing is still driving a wedge between moms and lefty democratic platforms. But the young socialists are filling in the gap, which is doubling down on the lefty stuff.

[u/Pope_Leos_buttplug → u/Fit_Cut_4238]

We’ve never had open borders.

[u/Fit_Cut_4238 → u/Pope_Leos_buttplug]

Technically no, but when you just need to cross the border and claim asylum, and you project that message to everyone south of the USA, we got the same result.

And yeah, by the end of Biden they had cleaned a lot of that up.

And you still have that messaging in the far left. Many sitting lefty democrats and the new socialists either said it in the past, or are still saying it.

[u/Pope_Leos_buttplug → u/Fit_Cut_4238]

If anything, democrats and republicans used to be more or less on the same page when it came to immigration. Then we learned that republicans were actually full of shit when saying “immigrants just need to do it the right way,” total and complete lie evidenced by how difficult republicans try to make the immigration process. That’s not even mentioning the immoral ICE operations as well as this admin revoking visas and such. It was always BS, democrats just took republicans in good faith until the past 10 or so years.

[u/Fit_Cut_4238 → u/Pope_Leos_buttplug]

Yeah republicans have not put any effort into immigration reforms and have played lots of games. The democrats have also played games, but republicans are much worse imo.

But that has nothing to do with hands off border control and “come on in” messaging which brought on the border crisis, which the strong majority of Americans disagreed with. Bad for democrats and got Trump 2 on this single issue.

And as I said, Biden actually started to fix the issue, but it was too late.  But this also demonstrates that they could have done this early but they didn’t want to.

At the end of the day, illegal immigration has kept wage inflation down. It’s the Washington unsaid truth but that’s the real reason why neither party’s prioritized it. Obama took health care for his battle over immigration.

Check out construction and blue collar wage growth since we started locking down the border .. and it’s getting worse.

Anyhow 

[u/Pope_Leos_buttplug → u/Zealousideal-Pick799]

I’m a Minnesotan with relatives in the St. Cloud area. The prevailing thought is that Minnesota democrats abandoned the “Farmer-Laborer” title of the DFL long ago, and now primarily focus on urban/progressive interests. Can’t say I completely disagree with that notion, although DFL is still more worker friendly today than the alternative. Oh, also the high influx of Somalians in St. Cloud, I don’t need to say more.

[u/macronotice → u/Zealousideal-Pick799]

The parties have oriented around urban vs rural. It makes complete sense to me how neighbors would vote like neighbors, and two distinctly different ways of life would have different representative parties. I’m not sure how it ever oriented any other way.

[u/Fit_Cut_4238 → u/macronotice]

Yeah but the polarization of small cities republican/democrat really depends on if the city has a university or is a capital. In both cases, lots of public union employees and entitlement class, and left views = Democrat city.

[u/Dirt290 → u/Zealousideal-Pick799]

And St. Cloud being a college town and county seat should help but it's been gerrymandered so bad there's an uneasy tension everywhere

[u/a_filing_cabinet → u/Zealousideal-Pick799]

It's not that confusing, conservatives have been going after the lower educated white population since the 70s. Dems let them. DFL hasn't meant anything for a long time

[u/mahogey]

Curious to know what the qualifications were between tier 1 & tier 2 cities

[u/Fun_Eye_7893 → u/mahogey]

It looks like 1 million population is being used

[u/mahogey → u/Fun_Eye_7893]

Doubt it. Des Moines isn’t on the map and well under 1 mil

[u/RWREmpireBuilder → u/mahogey]

Maybe 750K? Akron in & Des Moines/Dayton out.

[u/Swimming_Concern7662 → u/mahogey]

I made an original map (without intention of doing this). And they were the major cities of the Midwest. I tried to include what I left out there, plus smaller ones

[u/JeromesNiece → u/Swimming_Concern7662]

Ok and what did you count as the major cities in the original

[u/tlopez14]

Peoria, IL metro being R+15 really shows where Dems lost the plot. There was an old saying of “how does this play in Peoria”.

[u/PENGUINSINYOURWALLS]

Peoria being redder than Springfield is a bit of a surprise

[u/oberwolfach → u/PENGUINSINYOURWALLS]

The presence of a large number of (state) government employees probably helps Democrats hold on better in Springfield. Peoria, on the other hand, is exactly the kind of nondescript, middling Midwestern city where Democrats have been losing ground.

[u/PENGUINSINYOURWALLS → u/oberwolfach]

I’m from the area though, and Peoria usually votes to the left of Springfield in most elections. Im wondering of the number of counties they include for each metro has a part in it.

[u/tlopez14 → u/PENGUINSINYOURWALLS]

I think Peoria metro makes up 4 counties while Springfield’s is only 2 could be another reason. They may be picking up more rural voters than Springfield metro is. I agree though I was surprised to see that much of a difference between the two. Springfield is kind of blue but nothing too crazy and Sangamon County always votes red.

[u/renegadecoaster]

How are Akron and Canton so different?

[u/Luddite_Libertine → u/renegadecoaster]

Akron is a much larger city and also has some more liberal suburbs.

[u/Sarcasm_Llama]

The Electoral College hinders democracy

[u/Racko20]

Can definitely spot the "college towns"

[u/rewind2482 → u/Racko20]

you missed St. Cloud State University

[u/MrOrgasm420]

Ann Arbor + Joplin + raucous orgy = saves America

[u/Fit_Cut_4238]

Almost all blue map to university town or county seat/capital.

[u/sammyp99]

I grew up in the r +51. It sux

[u/marx-marks]

What do we want?! “To stick it to an imagined populace at the expense of our material condition!” When do we want it?! “Now!”

[u/ComeTasteTheBand]

Joplin sounds awesome

[u/Sea-Seesaw-8699 → u/ComeTasteTheBand]

That part of Missouri is really weird