Southwestern Missouri

[freepcrusher]

I always thought that until the 1960s, Missouri's voting habits would be that the northern areas close to Iowa (a traditionally republican state) would be the most GOP part of the state while the southern part of the state close to Arkansas (a traditionally democratic state) would be the most democratic part of the state. But I found out that Southwest Missouri has always been republican. Since the abolition of at large districts in the 1930s, that part of the state has always been represented by a republican in the U.S. house with the exception of a four year period from 1957-1961. Looking at election maps, I see that even Alf Landon won several counties in that area.

So is this area similar to Eastern Tennessee (and parts of Kentucky)? That part of the state of course stuck out like a sore thumb in the sense that it was always republican even when the rest of the state was 70+% democratic. Also, both Eastern Tennessee and Southwest Missouri are located in mountainous or hilly areas in the Smokies and Ozarks and were isolated from the rest of the south.

Speaking of isolation, I always heard that those areas had a certain brand of republicanism to it. It was sort of an isolationist type of republicanism that was against wars, kind of like what Pat Buchanan believes.