General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsSerious question: How did IN become so conservative/republican? Not even Bill Clinton could carry it
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Tommy_J
(694 posts)KharmaTrain
(31,706 posts)It's like Kansas in the middle of the "rust belt". While Illinois, Michigan and Ohio are more industrial. Not all of Indiana is conservative...Gary and South Bend (where Donelly is from) is pretty Democratic...so is Monroe Co. (U of Indiana). The rest of the state is rural and red. This was the state where the Klan gained political control a century ago...the wingnut runs deep...
Greybnk48
(10,168 posts)This came up in a family discussion on election night and everyone was stumped.
RomneyLies
(3,333 posts)gollygee
(22,336 posts)I studied language and their speech is more southern than you'd think too. It's called the Hoosier Apex.
http://theamericanmidlanddialect.weebly.com/the-hoosier-apex.html
The Hoosier Apex (as seen in Figure in map above) is one that astonishes linguists. It is located in the southern/central west part of Indiana and a sliver of the south eastern part of Illinois and what it is is that it suddenly sounds like you just crossed into the state of Alabama. The Hoosier Apex is an example of the South Midland dialect; but it goes beyond that even to where it is almost just like a Southern dialect in itself. There have even been recent discussions about how there is even a Hoosier dialect in itself, taking on a Southern drawl and speaking slowly (Herring, 244). It also occurs to me that once when I was in class a peer student of mine had that when he visits other parts of Indiana they always want to know where it is he is from because he speaks a lot more southern than most anyone else in Indiana, and it just may be because he lives in this apex. I have also noticed that people from Indiana generally pick up a southern accent very easily. A phonological thing Herring points out that happens in the apex is that when someone says greasy the s turns into a z sound, like greazy (243).
Greybnk48
(10,168 posts)Another piece of the puzzle.
thereismore
(13,326 posts)Contrary1
(12,629 posts)Years ago, when my husband was in the service, we lived in Rhode Island, Massachusetts, California, and Florida.
I was asked over and over what part of the south I hailed from. When I replied that I was from Indiana and not the south, they would chuckle and say "Well; that is the south."
In Florida, not so much. And after just a few weeks in Jacksonville, I found that I had picked up even more of a southern accent.
frazzled
(18,402 posts)It was always so. Remember, that Indiana was a stronghold of the Ku Klux Klan:
Indiana's Klan organization reached its peak of power in the following years, when it had 250,000 members, an estimated 30% of native-born white men. By 1925 over half the elected members of the Indiana General Assembly, the Governor of Indiana, and many other high-ranking officials in local and state government were members of the Klan. Politicians had also learned they needed Klan endorsement to win office.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indiana_Klan
But Indiana is getting more purple. Remember that Obama did manage, miraculously, to win in (barely) in 2008. Northwest Indiana (near Chicago) and Indianapolis and Bloomington are far more Democratic, and growing.
Greybnk48
(10,168 posts)I'm no spring chicken (and a midwesterner) and I've never heard of this.
coalition_unwilling
(14,180 posts)Enrique
(27,461 posts)but I can't answer your question, because I don't know why this was. I'm curious as well...
John1956PA
(2,655 posts)Adamsmith8820
(9 posts)live here for 35 years...Indianapolis is blue,,the rest of the state is all red due to farm land and people listening to tv instead of doing research on the candidates...its terrible and embarrassing!
yellowcanine
(35,699 posts)shrdlu
(487 posts)Thanks all for the info. I was wondering about this after seeing a map showing red Indiana standing out between blue Illinois and Ohio. Didn't seem to fit.
montanacowboy
(6,093 posts)go figure
SickOfTheOnePct
(7,290 posts)Myrina
(12,296 posts)Gary et al are primarily African American and also part of the Chicago political machinery that POTUS came from.
Myrina
(12,296 posts)All during the last 125 years. Need I say more ?
Brigid
(17,621 posts)That'll clear things up.