Thursday, December 22, 2022

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

 
Oconto County ranks 3rd 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 6 percentage points.

Source:  Wikipedia
3rd-party candidates received 27.7% of vote in 1992, 12.8% of vote in 1996, 4.6% in 2016;
(Alabama segregationist George Wallace received 10.9% 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 Oconto County.

Sources:  Wikipedia (presidentialgubernatorial)

The population of Oconto County has increased 44% since its 1920, solely because of its proximity to Brown County/Green Bay.  By comparison, Wisconsin's population has increased 124% during the same period, Dane County 560%.

Source:  Wikipedia

Oconto is one of Wisconsin's whitest counties.


Related posts:
Clark County.  (12/20/2022)
Rusk County.  (12/21/2022)

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