President Trump has changed the contours of the electoral map, but not all of the alterations are helpful to Republicans.
Four years after Trump seized the White House in a self-described “landslide” of 304 electoral votes, he’s likely moving out of the executive compound on Jan. 20.
Pending Trump campaign lawsuits filed in Arizona, Georgia, Michigan, Nevada, and Pennsylvania over issues ranging from extended voter deadlines to transparency while ballots were counted, Democrat Joe Biden is the president-elect. Though a hand recount is already underway in Georgia, Biden is projected to be awarded 306 votes when the Electoral College meets on Dec. 14, well over the 270 threshold required to become the next commander in chief.
Biden’s presumptive victory comes after he reconstructed the segment of the so-called “blue wall” that runs through Michigan, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin. He won Michigan by almost 3 percentage points but clinched Pennsylvania by a single point and Wisconsin by less than a point. Democrat Hillary Clinton’s losses in the three states cost her the White House in 2016.
The competitiveness of the Upper Midwest states compared to previous cycles has political strategists predicting their collective 46 electoral votes may return to the Republican ledger in 2024.
The opposite is true for a handful of Sunbelt states.
Democrats have long been mocked for hoping to shade Republican strongholds, such as Texas, blue. But Arizona and apparently Georgia did just that this year, the first time the states have backed a Democratic standard-bearer since 1996 and 1992, respectively. Biden is on track to take Arizona and Georgia by less than a percentage point.
“For decades, the Upper Midwest was safely Democratic, and the South and Southwest were reliably Republican. But we’re now seeing an entirely new landscape emerge,” political analyst Dan Schnur, a Republican-turned-independent now at the University of Southern California, told the Washington Examiner.
Democrats have been monitoring demographic movements in Arizona, Georgia, and Texas as younger, more diverse people settle in the states. Adjustments were hastened by Trump’s eroding support in their expanding suburbs.
“Most of the rest of the Sunbelt is becoming more hospitable to Democrats, given the larger number of minority voters and changes in the composition of the suburban vote,” Schnur confirmed. “Upper Midwestern states are trending more Republican as a result of the changing affiliation of white working-class voters, and Florida is a reflection of the same trend.”
Florida does seem to be embedded in the Republican column, even though Trump only won it by 3 points. Trump’s heavy investment in Cuban American outreach, in particular, paid off, earning him support in left-leaning South Florida to Biden’s detriment. The former two-term vice president was prevented from running up his margin of victory in Miami-Dade County to counteract Trump’s popularity elsewhere in the state.
At the same time, Democrats may be boosted by constitutionally mandated redistricting.
Though it remained in Republican hands this month, Maine’s expansive 2nd Congressional District in the state’s north may become more Democratic if its borders are redrawn due to population growth in Maine’s south around Portland.
In the other state that splits its electoral votes, Biden flipped Nebraska’s 2nd Congressional District after Trump picked it up last time. But while pre-Election Day polling of other “flyover” parts of the country, such as Iowa and Ohio, had Biden within striking distance of the incumbent, they stayed out of reach for the Democrat.
Middlebury College political science professor Bert Johnson foresaw opportunities for both parties to “shake up” their state coalitions, arguing that decisions made before the 2022 midterm elections could reshape the map, “consolidating some and leaving others to dissipate.”
“The suburbs are part of that, and probably the largest part,” he said. “But we’re also seeing continuing shifts among some Hispanic voters, among younger people, and along an urban-rural split.”
For Tom Schaller, a political science professor with the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, this election season further demonstrated Democrats’ non-Southern strategy, which he first outlined 14 years ago in Whistling Past Dixie.
“Joe Biden is now the third Democrat to compile at least 270 non-Southern electors, and his win makes five times now that either he, Bill Clinton, or Barack Obama have done so since 1992,” he said.
Future White House contests would still focus on the Upper Midwest, according to Schaller.
“As it has been for more than a century, the Upper Midwest continues to be the most pivotal region in presidential politics,” he said.
He added, “Given how close Michigan and Wisconsin were in both 2016 and 2020, look for both parties to continue fighting for dominance in the Great Lakes region. As it goes, so goes the presidency.”
