When Red States Turn Blue: An Anticipatory History of the Next Twenty Years

[eridani]

Not getting excessively starry-eyed about this--it will require a hell of a lot of work.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2015/03/16/1370547/-When-Red-States-Turn-Blue-An-Anticipatory-History-of-the-Next-Twenty-Years


First, here's the methodology. It has four parts:

1) I checked out the CAP interactive graphic to see the projected racial compositions of eligible voters in each state for the next five presidential election years, 2016 through 2032.

2) I went back to the States of Change report to see how each group had been over- or under-represented in recent elections. I used that information to make predictions about the composition of the actual electorate in each future election.

3) I estimated the vote share for each racial group (whites/blacks/hispanics/others). This was mostly derived from exit polls for elections going back to 2008. There is, admittedly, a little bit of artistry to this stage of the calculation; I had to rely on my gut a little bit to try to figure out just what percentages of each group we should expect Dems to get. I certainly tried to be as fair in my estimations as possible. At any rate, I plugged these numbers into the predicted electorates to get the Dem share of the total vote.

4) I converted this into Dem share of the two-party vote. That is, the percentage of the Democratic + Republican vote that Dems win. So any number over 50.0 means Democrats win; below 50 means they lose.

Now, this probably goes without saying, but I don't mean the numbers I come out with as literal predictions. Think of them as my best estimate of what the vote would look like under generally neutral conditions, where neither candidate has a pronounced advantage in a given state. If it's a good year for Democrats, they might over-perform these numbers; if it's a good Republican year, they might under-perform.

Okay, with that out of the way, here are the red states that have a shot at turning blue in the next five presidential elections...

[Erich Bloodaxe BSN]

1. I wish my red state (Ohio) would turn blue, but if anything, I'd swear we've gotten more red.

We're supposedly a swing state, but Dems hold a vanishingly small number of offices. I'd think they could learn a lot by emulating Sherrod Brown, and coming out as strongly pro-labour.

[MisterP]

2. well if you look at just Presidential maps from the past years the two massive political

alignments we call "Dems" and "Pubs" have gyrated so wildly everything's unrecognizable: VT was solidly GOP from 1824 until 1992 and Lowell Weicker's left of Obama (Reagan would be shocked by what Obama's saying about SS)

if populists are locked out of power or politically neutralized by 2020 the rain and the forests will have been sold out from over and under us and most homeless won't even have a trash can to warm themselves with; homeless kids are mowed down in the street; the "LW" party will be nothing more than a machine for collecting checks from the "RW" party, while riding on decades-old accomplishments and blaming the people when the other party wins

this is Central America and Brazil around 1999-2003

in fact, only in Honduras was the appearance of a new party for the 90% of people met with military action, and that's because the army has been "narco" since 1978 and is well-used to using the two traditional parties as a way to strengthen its rule

so a Dem "demographic takeover" a la California might not keep us from bottoming out: even Jerry Brown's neolib as often as he's developmentalist (he LOVES oil)--but bottoming out might not mean tanks on the streets (well, not more than the usual amount)

[eridani]

3. I agree--clearly much more than electoral politics will be necessary n/t

[Persondem]

4. Glad to see the projections for NC

And Texas. In 2008, folks came out of the woodwork in my mostly rural county to vote against Obama. In 2012 even more came out to vote against him. A lot of them have a problem with people who have a tan (wink, wink). 2016 we have a decent chance to flip back blue. HRC was very popular, well, more popular than you might expect.