Why Iowa Turned So Red When Nearby States Went Blue

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Over the past 15 years, the Upper Midwest has seen a remarkable state-by-state sorting of voters along partisan lines.

....No state in the nation swung as heavily Republican between 2012 and 2020 as Iowa, which went from a six-percentage-point victory for Barack Obama to an eight-point win for Mr. Trump in the last presidential election.

Deindustrialization of rural reaches and the Mississippi River regions had its impact, as did the hollowing out of institutions, from civic organizations to small-town newspapers, that had given the Upper Midwest a character separate from national politics.

Susan Laehn, an Iowa State University political scientist who lives in the small town of Jefferson, Iowa, recounted how an issue that once would have been handled through discussions at church or the Rotary Club instead became infected with national politics, with her husband, the libertarian Greene County attorney, stuck in the middle: New multicolored lighting installed last summer to illuminate the town’s carillon bell tower prompted an angry debate over L.G.B.T.Q. rights, leaving much of the town soured on identity politics that they largely blamed on the national left.

Another issue: Brain drain. The movement of young college graduates out of Iowa and the Dakotas to the metropolises of Chicago and Minneapolis-St. Paul made a mark on the politics of all five states....

...more... https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/08/us/politics/iowa-republicans-red.html