Why was Michigan so Republican in the 1920s?

[Thunderbird is the word]

Hoover got 70% there in 1928. Was it that in the pre-UAW era the tariff issue united Labor with Management in Detroit and led to both groups voting heavily Republican?

[Intell]

For why would they vote democratic? answers the question to why it was heavily republican.

[Bigby]

For why would they vote democratic? answers the question to why it was heavily republican.

During the 1920's, the Democrats were basically the Confederacy areas again. And in 1928, that wasn't even true.

[Thunderbird is the word]

For why would they vote democratic? answers the question to why it was heavily republican.

During the 1920's, the Democrats were basically the Confederacy areas again. And in 1928, that wasn't even true.

Though in raw vote totals 28 might of been less of a landslide. It's when Democrats started to preform better in the big cities and narrow the gap in New England. The seeds of the new deal coalition might have been planted right there.

[Thunderbird is the word]

For why would they vote democratic? answers the question to why it was heavily republican.

That was me theorizing outloud as to why it would be so Republican actually.

[Indy Texas]

Not everyone in Michigan was a union auto plant worker - this was even more true in the 1920s.

You had a lot of small towns and farming communities full of German and Dutch people (two very Republican ethnic groups, historically).

[Thunderbird is the word]

Not everyone in Michigan was a union auto plant worker - this was even more true in the 1920s.

You had a lot of small towns and farming communities full of German and Dutch people (two very Republican ethnic groups, historically).

I don't know if the plants even were unionized prior to the 1930s strikes. My thought is that that's what transformed the state politically.

[Southern Senator North Carolina Yankee]

Prior to unionization, voter turnout would be lower and those that did turn would be subject to scattering because of tariffs or other issues. And the rest of the demographics would be uniformly Republican.

[King of Kensington]

Yankees had more influence on the political culture of Michigan than any other midwestern state.

[RINO Tom]

For why would they vote democratic? answers the question to why it was heavily republican.

During the 1920's, the Democrats were basically the Confederacy areas again. And in 1928, that wasn't even true.

You say that like their support was only the Confederacy but not EVEN the whole Confederacy.  While Hoover made inroads into the Upper and Border South, Smith completely reversed Harding's and Coolidge's gains among urban centers in the North.

[Bigby]

For why would they vote democratic? answers the question to why it was heavily republican.

During the 1920's, the Democrats were basically the Confederacy areas again. And in 1928, that wasn't even true.

You say that like their support was only the Confederacy but not EVEN the whole Confederacy.  While Hoover made inroads into the Upper and Border South, Smith completely reversed Harding's and Coolidge's gains among urban centers in the North.

Yes, but only gained Massachusetts and Rhode Island for it.

[World politics is up Schmitt creek]

There's actually a reasonable amount of similarity between the 1928 trend map and a current generic map.

[Associate Justice PiT]

     I don't know how much of a factor it was by 1928, but it bears mentioning that Woodrow Wilson alienated a lot of ethnic Germans, where German Catholics had once been an important constituency for Democrats. This was an important contributor to Harding's huge margins in the upper-Midwest in 1920.

[TDAS04]

Michigan is less German and much less Scandinavian than other upper Midwestern states, which is a big reason why La Follette didn't do as well there.

[Torie]

It has a lot to do with the patterns of the Yankee diaspora [migrants whose first ancestors settled in New England). The Yankees were the Pub base back in the 1920’s, as it had been since the time of Lincoln. All of Michigan was in that diaspora zone:



The map appears in this chapter.  Yes, I know, we think of Germans when we think of Wisconsin, and Scandinavians, when we think of Minnesota. They came later. When I have time, I am going to listen to all the podcasts. I love this stuff.

Oh, here is a more accurate map of the reach of the Yankee diaspora, which also happens to be the zone that is littered even to this day, with small liberal arts colleges (many of which being of very high quality), almost all of which were founded by Yankees. New Englanders had the highest literacy rate on the planet back then, and valued education.

[TDAS04]

Great map!

Oh, here is a more accurate map of the reach of the Yankee diaspora, which also happens to be the zone that is littered even to this day, with small liberal arts colleges (many of which being of very high quality), almost all of which were founded by Yankees. New Englanders had the highest literacy rate on the planet back then, and valued education.

Yes, and that's why states such as Minnesota and Wisconsin have had such great education systems.  On top of the New England settlers, the subsequent German and Scandinavian immigrants also came from education-valuing cultures.

[King of Kensington]

Why is Ontario part of "The Midlands"?

[Torie]

Why is Ontario part of "The Midlands"?

I think Midlands means a mixed bag of Yankees and other northern European ethnic groups.

[King of Kensington]

I thought Midlands meant the Pennsylvania stream.

[muon2]

I thought Midlands meant the Pennsylvania stream.

In the context of the American Nations it sort of does (I have the book). It represents the movement of people who trace back to the religious tolerance of revolutionary Philly and eastern PA. During various eras in the US some number of them moved to ON. The hallmark of the Midlands Nation is their cultural tolerance stemming from the Quakers. The author uses that to connect with the cultural tolerance in ON today.

You may also note that Tories two maps disagree with the Yankee diaspora. As it moves west the second map keeps it farther to the south. It is so much further south in IA that it largely overlaps the American Nations Midlands region in that state. American Nations was looking more at cultural impact than actual migrations in some cases, and that may be the difference.

I have my own disagreements with some of the American Nations categorization. For instance, I lived in Peoria for a while and I don't find that it is at all like the Greater Appalachia of southern IL. It's much more like the Quad Cities and eastern IA and it should go into the Midlands by that measure.

[Torie]

I thought Midlands meant the Pennsylvania stream.

I stand corrected. I made a guess (it was not really explained in what I linked). Muon2 actually read the book, so he really knows. I think the split of Iowa in the second map is about right. The two southern tiers of counties are quite different than what is north of there. And the soil is not as good either. It starts going downhill at the southern end of Madison County actually. Yankees tended to go where the soil was good among other things. They might have been intolerant, but they were not stupid. Granted, the Dutch were the best at that. That's why they grabbed Sioux County in Iowa, which has the highest farmland prices in Iowa outside of the rural parts of Scott County.

[muon2]

I thought Midlands meant the Pennsylvania stream.

I stand corrected. I made a guess (it was not really explained in what I linked). Muon2 actually read the book, so he really knows. I think the split of Iowa in the second map is about right. The two southern tiers of counties are quite different than what is north of there. And the soil is not as good either. It starts going downhill at the southern end of Madison County actually. Yankees tended to go where the soil was good among other things. They might have been intolerant, but they were not stupid. Granted, the Dutch were the best at that. That's why they grabbed Sioux County in Iowa, which has the highest farmland prices in Iowa outside of the rural parts of Scott County.

And the Dutch tended to follow the Midland path with occasional outposts in Yankeedom. That's why IA can be confusing. MN can be confusing, too. Yankeedom is about government ordered utopic society from the Puritans to the present day. Midlands is about a benevolent tolerant society with government to keep that peace. MN nice captures both in a way that the other Great Lakes states do not.

[mianfei]

Prior to unionization, voter turnout would be lower and those that did turn would be subject to scattering because of tariffs or other issues. And the rest of the demographics would be uniformly Republican.

There’s no doubt about that – in the 1890s and 1900s there were bipartisan efforts to make voting more difficult because both major parties knew that urban workers would likely vote themselves the wealth of the industrialists if they had the chance. This is the logic behind the residency requirements and literacy tests seen in the North during this time – not to mention the disfranchisement in the South of almost all blacks and most poorer whites.

According to Bruce Miroff, Raymond Seidelman, Todd Swanstrom, Tom De Luca on page 185 of The Democratic Debate: American Politics in an Age of Change, fewer than thirty percent of workers in Pittsburgh, Chicago and Philadelphia voted in 1924. Since voter turnout in Michigan in 1948, when the state’s one-party Republican political system had collapsed, was more than 15 percent lower than in Illinois, it’s likely that in Detroit and other industrial centres the proportion of workers voting was substantially lower than even thirty percent. It could have been under 20 percent, though I would need to check turnout figures.

In the North, whilst turnout did not fall as it did in the former Confederacy, it did stagnate until female suffrage despite growing populations due to a major immigration wave. In Michigan, the 1896 voter turnout was barely exceeded in 1912 and not (counting female suffrage) in 1920 or 1924. Those who did not vote would have potentially been the ones who would have challenged Republican hegemony.

[Beet]

Some place in New Mexico is Appalachia but Clearfield County, PA is not?

[Tintrlvr]

Some place in New Mexico is Appalachia but Clearfield County, PA is not?

Nobody has ever claimed this map is anything but total bullcrap.