Does anyone know of any data on how people in various states have changed their attitudes on social and economical issues, i.e. have states that are socially conservative or fiscally liberal now always been like that or has it changed over time?
I guess it can be hard to get data that is consistent over time (i.e. what define "socially conservative" has changed), but perhaps issues such as the attitude towards abortion or the death penalty might work as good indicators.
My state petitioned to join the union in the heat of the debate over abolition of slavery. Dred Scott, a slave living in Minneapolis and petitioning for his freedom had his slavehood reaffirmed in a 7-2 supreme court decision..the Dred Scott decision.
Immediately there was an urgent push for statehood and the first thing the state constitution does after identifying its main purpose is to ban slavery and involuntary servitude.
Of the 180,000 residents in the state, 24,000 fought in the civil war. Minnesota was the first to offer troops in the war and Minnesota soldiers played a disproportionately large role at Gettysburg. Abraham Lincoln and his radical Republican Party were hugely inspirational and influential. The GOP quickly took over everything here.
This dynamic dominated the state consistently for 60 years. The dirty Democrats of the traitorous south were a third party behind the dominating Republicans and whoever else felt like running that wasnt a Democrat.
After rising radicalism flowered into the Farmer Labor party, they broke the GOP hegemony. When Republicans continued with free market policies in the face of economic depression, the small contingent of Democrats in Minneapolis and St. Paul...mostly immigrants who came after the civil war... Convinced the Farmer Laborites to merge after they suffered losses after the death of beloved socialist governor (farmer laborite) Floyd Olson in 1936.
Having recently brokered the creation of the new Democratic Farmer Labor party, Hubert Humphrey went on to speak at the DNC in 1948 with a profound speech that led in its climax to perhaps Humphrey's most famous quote:
My friends, to those who say that we are rushing this issue of civil rights, I say to them we are 172 years late. To those who say that this civil-rights program is an infringement on states’ rights, I say this: The time has arrived in America for the Democratic Party to get out of the shadow of states' rights and to walk forthrightly into the bright sunshine of human rights.
And from there the long abandonment of the Democrats and embracement of the GOP began in the south just as Minnesota and later much of the rest of the north, flipped to the Democrats.
The spirit of politics here still reflects those roots in the moral debates that led to civil war. And the shadows and phantoms of that still permeate the political spirit of the state.
You can find much of this information from the Minnesota Historical Society which is celebrating the sesquicentennial of the end of the civil war this year.
