The Wisconsin Rural-Urban Political Divide in Historical Perspective

Abstract

This project, focusing on the Wisconsin rural-urban political divide in historical perspective, aims to answer the following research question: Is there evidence of urban-rural electoral polarization in Wisconsin from the mid-20th to the early 21st century and, if so, what were the causal factors? Researchers who have studied political polarization in recent presidential elections have sought primarily to correlate single election results to ideological differences between urban and rural communities. In contrast, this project adopts a longitudinal approach by comparing presidential election results from the Wisconsin Historical Society for the periods 1948-1968 and 1992-2020. Our research demonstrates that electoral polarization among urban cities in our sample grew between 1948-1968 and 1992-2020. However, this urban polarization was greater than polarization between the sampled urban and rural communities. Similarly, electoral polarization increased among rural towns between 1948-1968 and 1992-2020. It too, however, was greater than polarization between the sampled urban and rural communities. These conclusions suggest that standard assumptions regarding the rural-urban “political divide” in Wisconsin presidential elections are overly simplistic. Specifically, they fail to account for causal factors such as regional geography among and between urban and rural communities from the mid-20th century to the present.