The article attributes Minnesota’s leftism to Scandinavian influence (partly), yet, just across the line into the Dakotas, where you have the same Scandinavians, it is very conservative.
Does anybody have an answer to this? Perhaps FReepers from those areas of the country.
Of course, there was the Nonpartisan League in North Dakota and the LaFollette Progressives in Wisconsin, but neither of those movements made such a tight bond with the Democratic Party as the Farmer-Labor movement did in Minnesota.
Indeed, LaFollette sat as a Republican in Congress. His sons broke away but the elder returned to the GOP only to be defeated by Joe McCarthy in the primary.
The Farmer-Labor Party governed Minnesota for eight years in the 1930s, and were in a position of strength when Elmer Benson and Hubert Humphrey merged the FLP and the Democrats. The Nonpartisan League in the Dakotas just didn't have the leadership or staying power once the agricultural markets improved.
Maybe the Scandinavians were a little less assimilated than the Germans and clung to liberal or socialist ideas longer. Also, the Dakotas didn't have large cities that deliver liberals votes after the Great Depression was over.
Besides the Swedes and Norwegians, the miners around Duluth were pretty militant for a long time. The large Finnish population included many Communists (one wonders why).