Why did the American West become more politically conservative by the 60's?

The American West was a bastion of the New Deal, and voted for FDR all four times. Why by the 60's did the American West (such as Montana, Wyoming, Idaho) become more conservative politically?
 

Edward IX

Banned
Um, no. It wasn't racism.

A) there was not of lot of racial diversity in the West. There were not a lot of people there. I am still not sure how Montana, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming became States. Oh that's right politics. That great Conservative bastion of the people's republic of Oregon banned black people from moving to their State until 1927.

B) I think you are talking about the South. Where you have a point i.e. the "Southern Strategy" . No one cares about Wyoming's 3 electoral votes, you do care about Florida, Texas etc.

I would argue this: a lot of the population of the West was transient, around boom and bust towns. You had all races when it was boom and ghost towns in busts. Most of your permanent class of people in those States were Ranchers or mining interests. Ranchers who owned swaths of land the size of Ireland. These tend to be Conservative people. You also had a bunch of Eastern Robber barons who "wanted a place in the Country" . So the State Governments or territorial Governments were set up by people who were by nature or economics conservative people.

In the Depression we were all screwed. After? Well crisis over, return to normalcy. My 2 cents.
 
In the Depression we were all screwed. After? Well crisis over, return to normalcy. My 2 cents.

Even before it was a populist bastion under William Jennings Bryan. All I can think of is that the West was also pro-free trade and parts of it very religious (moralistic politics appeal). But I wonder where the idea of small government became popular when traditionally big government in the West wasn't unpopular.
 
That great Conservative bastion of the people's republic of Oregon banned black people from moving to their State until 1927.

To be fair Oregon was more like Idaho back then. It wasn't until the WW2 Pacific urbanization that Oregon became what it is today.



Ranchers who owned swaths of land the size of Ireland.

That's a good point. Land owners in a rural region that are doing well don't want heavy taxes. Different than an urban environment.
 

Edward IX

Banned
I wonder where the idea of small government became popular when traditionally big government in the West wasn't unpopular.
I would think that the idea of "we don't want a bunch of people back East telling us how to run out affairs, we can do just fine." Would cover it well . Plus the Federal Government didn't have a lot to do there except acquire vast sums of land. Which causes huge problems today.
 
I would think that the idea of "we don't want a bunch of people back East telling us how to run out affairs, we can do just fine." Would cover it well . Plus the Federal Government didn't have a lot to do there except acquire vast sums of land. Which causes huge problems today.

So the large amount of federally owned land plus a sense of eastern domination in the federal government makes voters wary of centralization? Perhaps since Bryan was one of them, his appeals were viewed a lot more positively.

What about the effects of the Cold War?
 
Racism obviously. Look at how they voted in 2016 if you don't believe me.

I don't think that's a thorough enough reason enough to say, and also I'm talking about the 60's-70's, not 2016. For example, the industrial Midwest voted for Trump in 2016 but in the 60's was still a Democratic New Deal bastion while the West became conservative.
 
Racism; hostility to Hippie culture, Feminism and other 60s change; spread of Evangelicalism; collapse of small farming; domination by Big Aggro and cooperatives which control input (fertilizer, feed) and output (food processing); collapse of many industry to competition from Coast and Offshore; brain drain of college graduate to Coast; etc

the Key point is Eisenhower and building of Interstate; easy transportation cause collapse of many industry and services to competition; bigger corporation (Monsanto, Walmart, NY advertising, etc) dominate economy; poverty become widespread; young people who in past lead labor union, farm cooperatives, and political reform now go to Coast for better jobs; poverty and migration of "non-communal" people cause more conservatives and insularity to spread; Evangelicalism and Republican Reaganism become cultural markers; and outlook of "big people" (factory owners, priest, rich) become accepted by ordinary people in small cities.
 
Even before it was a populist bastion under William Jennings Bryan. All I can think of is that the West was also pro-free trade and parts of it very religious (moralistic politics appeal). But I wonder where the idea of small government became popular when traditionally big government in the West wasn't unpopular.

Big State government, not messiceeily Big Federal government. The Prarie Left isen't really an offshot of Machine Politics like it is in on the coasts and south ; it's largely the descendent of Farmer-Labor parties that merged into the New Deal Coalition (and had aligned with/partially made up the Progressive Cohalition of the very early 1900's) rather than an offshot of the instiitional Left. It's ideological core has always had a strong element of local control to it, and around the 60s was when the national Dems via policies like the Great Society really seemed to push away from that hard (without the obvious need of war time).
 
The transition of the Mountain West to become solidly Republican can be traced for the following reasons.

Firstly the Mountain West had been somewhat of a swing region before the 1950s, tending to side with whoever the winner was, in contrast to the (mostly) solidly Republican North and of course the solidly Democratic South.

What caused it to move to solidly Republican was the change in the Republican Party as a result of the New Deal. Firstly they abandoned Protectionism and largely became indistinguishable from the Democratic party on the issue. The Mountain West was hostile to protectionism (because of its largely agriculture & resource extraction based economy) and by doing this helped eliminate of one the sticking points against the pre-new deal GOP.

Secondly, the Republican Party accepted the various federal agriculture programs set up by the New Deal, thereby granting more economic security to the Region, and getting rid of the reason why they swung so strongly to FDR in the first place.

Once the Republican Party had accepted these two issues, there was no real reason why the Mountain West wouldn't usually side with the GOP which by the 1950s was firmly established as the party favouring less government intervention in the economy (which the Mountain West tended to favour).
 
Population shift and suburbanization of the Sun Belt. Arizona is a case in miniature. It was solidly Democratic until the 50s when Goldwater started a conservative movement in Maricopa County. As Phoenix and Tucson grew (mainly due to air conditioning and the availability of cheap land for development) more people moved into housing tracts where middle class concerns like public safety and low taxes become important issues where Republicans have an advantage.

New Deal Democrats were also not the same as today's Democrats. They weren't pro-abortion, for example, which itself is a major wedge issue nor where they embracing the latest progressive cultural trends from college campuses.
 
Is the west conservative or conservative-libertarian? I think it's more the latter, at least with the mountain-west and plains states.

The Democrats in the region generally lean libertarianish centrist and the republicans are a mix of populists and libertarianish-conservatives.
 
If by the West we mean the Rocky Mountain states (the Pacific Coast is in a different category--though Alaska votes more like a Mountain state than a Pacific Coast state!):

Note that Colorado went for Willkie as early as 1940 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1940 and along with Wyoming for Dewey in 1944. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1944 (Idaho also was close in 1944.) In 1948 the entire Rocky Mountian area did go for Truman as part of a farm revolt against the policies of the 80th Congress.

I think the post-World War II shift was largely a result of prosperity. Westerners began seeing themselves less as relatively poor people who needed public electric power and federal protection from low farm prices and the tyranny of corporations like Anaconda, and more as hard-working entrepreneurs who were being overregulated and overtaxed (and taxed largely for the benefit of urban minorities). I am talking about perceptions here, not necessarily realities. Other factors may have been gun control and the increasing social conservatism of the Mormon church. (The best test for how important gun control was would have been if the Democrats had nominated a pro-gun presidential candidate who was otherwise liberal--Frank Church in 1976 being the most obvious possibility.)

Note that as late as 1960, JFK not only carried NM and NV but came close in MT (which had a substantial labor union and Catholic vote). He even did respectably in Utah (45.17%) and Idaho (46.22%). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960 (I have seen it suggested that Mormons had some sympathy for JFK as a fellow victim of religious prejudice.) But in 1964, Barry Goldwater, while losing every Mountain state except AZ did better in this region than in any other except the South. The die was pretty much cast from then on, though NM and NV with their large minority populations sometimes went Democratic, as did CO by 2008 (minorities, environmentalists, and a larger urban vote than most of the neighboring states). One should also note that in 2016, HRC not only carried CO, NM, and NV but came closer to carrying AZ than she did the 2012 Obama states of IA and OH...
 
Is the west conservative or conservative-libertarian? I think it's more the latter, at least with the mountain-west and plains states.

The Democrats in the region generally lean libertarianish centrist and the republicans are a mix of populists and libertarianish-conservatives.

Unless someone would defend the right to stand on a street corner smoking crystal-meth while distributing copies of the NAMBLA Manifesto in front of a burning American flag, I don't think they qualify as libertarian.

Is that the sort of thing western conservatives tend to defend?
 
Unless someone would defend the right to stand on a street corner smoking crystal-meth while distributing copies of the NAMBLA Manifesto in front of a burning American flag, I don't think they qualify as libertarian.

Is that the sort of thing western conservatives tend to defend?

That just seems hyperbolic and strawmanish. I'm referring more to people like Dave Freudenthal, Gary Johnson, Brian Schweitzer, Barry Goldwater, etc.
 
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