Wednesday, December 21, 2022

GET ME REWRITE: Rural Wisconsin counties no match for Democratic shift in once-red suburbs (Rusk County edition)

 
Rusk County ranks 8th among Wisconsin's 72 counties in having the largest percentage of its presidential vote for Donald Trump in 2020.  Twelve years after Barack Obama won the county by more than 8 percentage points.

Source:  Wikipedia
3rd-party candidates received 27.1% of vote in 1992, 22.3% of vote in 1996, 5% in 2016;
(Alabama segregationist George Wallace received 12.3% of the vote in 1968)

In a word, no.
If the Democratic collapse in rural western and northern Wisconsin was the most dramatic feature of the state’s 2016 election map, then the unchecked Republican decline in suburban southern Wisconsin is the most arresting feature of the 2022 map. It is all the more striking when you consider that Republicans had reason to believe they might steady their suburban ship this year, with Donald Trump not on the ballot, with a Democrat in the White House who has poor job ratings, with crime and inflation playing prominent roles in the campaign. But that didn’t happen.

Since the 2012 presidential election, Democrats have not come close to winning a majority of the vote in Rusk County.

Sources:  Wikipedia (presidentialgubernatorial)

The population of Clark County has decreased 20% since its 1940 peak.  By comparison, Wisconsin's population has increased 88% during the same period, Dane County 330%.

Source:  Wikipedia

Rusk is one of Wisconsin's whitest counties.


Related posts:
Clark County.  (12/20/2022)

No comments: