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Before starting this post (which won’t interest most people) let me just reiterate that the big question going forward is whether Trump will govern as a populist or a GOP supply-sider. The markets clearly expect the latter–they think he conned the blue-collar workers to get their votes. Since I’ve been wrong about Trump before, I won’t offer an opinion—just wait and see. Perhaps the funniest and most clueless headline I saw today is that markets are rising because they expect “infrastructure”. Will Keynesians ever give up? Like infrastructure is going to drive biotech 10% higher in 2 days. And that’s not even accounting for monetary offset.

The “Wisconsin Idea” is a progressive strand of politics that is usually attributed to immigrants from Germany and Scandinavia. Wisconsin was deeply involved in the progressive movement of the early 20th century (La Follette, etc.), and pioneered legislation like unemployment insurance. We abolished the death penalty 100 years before less civilized places like Britain and France. But in recent years the Wisconsin idea has been fading, and now I think it’s effectively gone. This election was the final nail in the coffin.

The story can be told in maps. Four years ago I did a post on the “Driftless Area”, where Wisconsin, Illinois, Iowa and Minnesota all meet up. It was the one white, rural agricultural area of the country that stayed blue, as other rural regions went for Romney:

Brian Donohue sent me a map showing counties that switched from blue to red in this election:

You can see that the Driftless Area stands out as moving to the GOP, delivering states like Iowa and Wisconsin to Trump.

BTW, don’t be fooled by the other blue rural areas on the first map, they are generally special cases, reflecting Indian reservations in the southwest, Hispanic areas on the Texas/Mexico border, the black belt along the ancient SE coastline of America, and the mining belt of northern Minnesota, etc.

The transformation of the GOP into the rural party and the Dems into the urban party is now almost complete. The suburbs are split, with suburbs in the more highly educated areas trending blue, and working class suburbs moving red.

Thomas Frank should write a book “What’s the Matter with White America”, as both the rich and poor (white) regions seem to be voting against their interests. (I’m not convinced by that hypothesis, I’m just saying that if you believe it, it applies to far more than Kansas.)

FYI, here is a map of the Driftless Area:

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