
The Unique Challenge – and Opportunity – in the 8 Electoral College Homesteaded States
The upper Midwestern states of Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Ohio, Michigan, Minnesota, Wisconsin, and the western half of Pennsylvania have a similar personality because they share a common history in how their rural areas were settled and populated. These states were in large part homesteaded by European farmers after the Civil War. These Northern European homesteaders were primarily farmers, anti-slavery, religious, and hardworking. Much of this was by design and that personality continues to permeate the upper Midwest. I call these states the “Electoral College Homesteaded States” because, as we all know, they have an overwhelming, if not determinative, influence on the Electoral College vote, as described in Chapter 3 of the book.
The origins of the Electoral College Homesteaded States date back to the conclusion of the French & Indian War
All of these states were originally French territories and part of western Quebec. Great Britain obtained these territories from the French at the conclusion of the French and Indian War, which was led in large part by Lieutenant Colonel George Washington. That war was very expensive so, King George decreed that he would not allow any settlement west of the Appalachians in an attempt to economize on military expenses. This did not go over well with the colonists in the 13 colonies and was yet another reason for the War of Independence.
King George ceded western Quebec to the newly minted United States at the conclusion of the War of Independence
Having lost the War of Independence, King George wisely recognized that he couldn’t possibly hold on to western Quebec with a new nation standing between his navies and the Midwestern territories. He simply gave them to the Americans in the Peace of Paris. This is what it looked like:

As the graphic makes clear, half of these territories were tainted by slavery and half were not.
The young United States was adamant that the slavery-free Upper Midwestern territories remained slavery-free
At the time the United States inherited the Upper Midwestern territories, Europe was well on its way in trying to stamp out slavery in all of Africa. The Barbary Coast slave trade was at its height and African slavers were raiding northern European farms for slaves to sell in northern Africa and the Middle East. The United States joined in some of the wars by the French, English, and Dutch that eventually ended this slave trade.
In 1807 Great Britain banned the slave trade in all of its colonies. The United States followed suit in 1808 (though it was unsuccessful in banning the ownership of slaves). All of the European powers banned the slave trade and emancipated the slaves in its colonies in the early 1800s. By 1819, and to its credit, Great Britain put in place a navy off the coast of Africa to intercept slave ships that African and commercial slavers were continuing to send to the New World. In all, Great Britain intercepted 1600 slave ships and returned those victims to Africa.
The United States very intentionally was keeping the Upper Midwest territories slave-free. Thomas Jefferson in particular was a proponent of these free states and Congress refused to enact homesteading laws for these new states because slavery was still legal in the South. Thomas Jefferson in particular wanted these states settled by “prosperous small farmers.”

The end of the Civil War opened up the Upper Midwest to homesteaders
At the conclusion of the Civil War, the U.S. finally passed a homesteading act.1 At the same time, the railroads had expanded West across the United States and were desperate for farmers to homestead the land around the railways for both economic and security reasons.
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The railroads played a heavy hand in soliciting Northern Europeans to homestead the upper Midwest
The demographic makeup of the 8 Upper Midwestern states reflects the immigration that took place after the Civil War:

The reason one finds enclaves of Finns, Swedes, or Norwegians in Minnesota or Wisconsin isn’t happenstance. In their Machiavellian way, the U.S. Railroads opened homesteading offices in various northern European countries and solicited farmers with the promise of free land. The railroads viewed Northern Europeans as particularly industrious and hardworking, having come from similarly harsh climates, making them, in their view, ideal settlers for the land that surrounded the railway lines.

The immigration of Northern European farmers cemented the personality of the rural homesteaders in the Upper Midwest
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These European settlers who came in the late 1800s were driven, hardworking, and often religious. My grandparents, all farmers, came at that time from the Netherlands, not because of the railroads, but so that they could continue their Calvinist faith. They were vehemently anti-slavery, having had African slavers steal children and young women from their farms in the early 1800s during the Barbary Coast slave trade. Many viewed themselves as coming from “enlightened” Europe, which had worked hard to end slavery in Africa and the European colonies. I know this because they told me. Some of my relatives who came over in the 1800s to settle Michigan were still alive when I was young.
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It is for this reason that I had never seen a Confederate flag until I went to college. Someone from the South had one in their dorm room. I didn’t even know what it was. It simply makes no sense in the Electoral College Homesteaded States. If you do spot one in one of the rural areas of the Homesteaded States, you can be pretty sure that that person is not originally from here and certainly is not from a homesteading family.
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The European Farmers who settled the Electoral College Homesteaded States were very capable people – they had to be to make it in the wilderness
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These Northern Europeans were extraordinarily hardy, capable, and clever, and they viewed themselves as such. They still do today. This personality permeates the rural areas of the 8 Electoral College states. They want their politicians to be honest and forthright, the United States to be strong and resilient, and people to be hardy and self-reliant. When they hear the word “rural,” they are thinking of the family farm on 80 acres,2 built by hand by very capable and dedicated people.
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The children of these homesteaders also all fought in WWI, WWII, and the Korean War. I am the first generation to not have military service – and only because it was illegal for me to serve openly.

When you use the term “rural,” think of those homesteaders. As one of the last people who has been both in the rural and urban worlds, I can say that both sides look down on the other side with a certain level of disdain. And both sides have a point. But I would say that on balance when determining whether someone is “capable,” someone who was raised on a farm is an order of magnitude more capable that their urban peer. On a farm, by the time you are 15, you have essentially gone through at least a dozen apprenticeships. You know how to do all sorts of things and can immediately be productive in virtually any business. I am aware of many employers who lament that the supply of farm kids has dried up. Young urban people today simply have few of these skills. It would be very difficult to replicate these farming skills without the family farm.
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Be aware of this mindset. They are your voters.


#Rural voter turnout is very high in the Electoral College Homesteaded States.
It is significantly lower in the rural South.
*The youth voter participation rate is less than half that of the rural voter.
+Younger voters tend to report belonging to this group with more frequency.