Cook County MN

[Bandit3 the Worker]

This is a mostly white rural county in the Midwest. Why is it so Democratic? Not only that, but it votes more liberal on referendums too, since a referendum to outlaw same-sex marriage did very poorly there.

Oddly enough, the last time it voted Republican was 2000. Republicans seem to do better there when they're doing worse elsewhere in Minnesota.

[cvparty]

maybe cuz it borders canada

[mileslunn]

maybe cuz it borders canada

Don't think so as lots of counties that border Canada are strongly GOP and many in upstate New York, New England states (interior of New England swung more heavily to Trump than areas near the coast), and Michigan swung heavily towards Trump.  If you look at the counties that border Canada, Clinton only won the more heavily urban populated ones.  Now oddly enough in Canada, ridings that border the US do tend to vote Conservative outside of Quebec, but that is a different story and tends to be for other reasons (rural Anglophone in New Brunswick although went Liberal in 2015 but that was unusual and voting patterns tend to be divided by linguistic lines; Eastern Ontario outside Ottawa is the most Conservative part of Ontario while Niagara Falls had a popular MP from the Mulroney government as their candidate and in the West the Prairies outside of the cities are staunchly conservative while in BC, the Fraser Valley is the heart of BC's bible belt while the suburban ridings bordering the US are mostly white upper middle class although the Liberals did make big gains in 2015).  However in the US, doesn't seem to matter much.

[Ban my account ffs!]

It's a small rural county with very little in the way of jobs but some pretty pristine natural beauty... so it attracts mostly tourism and liberals from the Twin Cities who build second homes or retirement homes.

They tend to rely on immigrants for their seasonal labor (many from eastern Europe).  The local ski resort is one of the biggest employers.



An aerial view of the largest town in Cook County  (Grand Marais)

Inland are just old settlers that live "up the trail" (referring to the Gunflint trail), richies along the shore, or others who like the Democrats' fondness for cultivating places like this through government action and subsidization.

[Hydera]

So i checked the place on Google maps. and compared it with the income block map on Justice maps.

http://www.justicemap.org/index.php?gsLayer=income_block&gfLon=-90.66479949&gfLat=47.67146748&giZoom=10&giAdvanced=1&


Apparently there is a lot of lake houses there. Which Hillary made small swings towards her.

Since the areas Trump gained were white working class lower income scale towns. It probably is why Cook County didnt swing the way other countries in the Iron Range did.


https://uselectionatlas.org/RESULTS/state.php?fips=27&year=2012&f=0&off=50&elect=0


Also consider that the county is pretty socially liberal. Trump's swing were the strongest in white working class-lower middle class voters who voted against SSM whether its for a ban or against legalization.

[America Needs a 13-6 Progressive SCOTUS]

Bush probably only won here in 2000 because the Nader vote was in the double digits.

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

It's mostly rich people's vacation homes or hippie types. Or service employees although as noted most of them are seasonal. Not really a white working class place at all.

[Heisenberg]

I also think the Grand Portage Indian Reservation has something to do with it.