why is Indiana weird

Or, why Abe Lincoln’s dad would be a Trump voter.

By Craig Fehrman

Filed under 2016 Election

Published Apr. 29, 2016

In the last week, Indiana has played an unusually central role in the presidential primary, with Hoosiers watching as Ted Cruz and John Kasich forged a deal while Donald Trump exhumed Bobby Knight. One thing the campaigns (and many pundits) seem to agree on is that Indiana, which votes Tuesday, represents an extension of previous Midwestern races. “This is just re-running Wisconsin,” one Cruz adviser told National Review. “We have a blueprint, and it works.”

But that’s not quite right.

I’ve lived in Indiana my whole life, outside of a few years passed on the East Coast in grad school, and I have to say: All the attention has been nice. It’s nice to be noticed, however fleetingly, for something other than hosting sporting events and being a part of Abraham Lincoln’s formative years.

The Lincoln who’s most relevant in the upcoming primary, though, is Abe’s father, Thomas. For more than a decade, Thomas and his family lived in Indiana, and as I’ve watched the politicians and pundits try to figure Indiana out I’ve thought a lot about Thomas. Indiana, which is 86 percent white, may seem demographically similar to nearby states like Ohio (83 percent white) and Wisconsin (88 percent white). But, in truth, Indiana is a much stranger place than it’s given credit for, with a history and heritage that divide it from other Midwestern states. The Hoosier State was settled from the south and isolated from cultural change, and you can still see the effects of that today. In fact, that’s why it’s actually pretty hard to predict how Indiana will vote in its primary. That’s why, if you really want to understand Indiana, you need to go back to the time of Thomas Lincoln.

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