During this period, the WOW counties continued to expand.

But unlike suburbs

elsewhere, they had not grown more diverse. Today, less than 2 percent of the

WOW counties’ population is African American and less than 5 percent is

Hispanic. According to studies by the Brookings Institution and Brown University,

the Milwaukee metro area is one of the top two most racially segregated regions in

the country. The WOW counties were voting Republican at levels unseen in other

Northern suburbs; one needed to look as far as the white suburbs around Atlanta

and Birmingham for similar numbers. The partisan gulf between Milwaukee and its

suburbs in presidential elections has now grown wider than in any of the nation’s

50 largest cities, except for New Orleans, according to the Journal Sentinel series.