For the last eighteen years of politics, ever since the presidential election of 2000, a “red state” vs. “blue state” framework has defined how Americans talk about politics. And the “red” vs. “blue” divide hangs ever present, driving countless headlines emerging from last weeks’ midterm elections. “Red states get redder, blue states get bluer,” read the headline affixed to E.J. Dionne’s latest at the Washington Post. “The red parts got redder and the blue parts bluer in a midterm election that underscored America’s deep divide,” proclaimed the analysis at the Los Angeles Times.
This had become “the narrative”.
Over the years, the “red state vs. blue state” framework has not gone unchallenged. Four years after the Bush vs. Gore election, in 2004, then-Senate candidate Barack Obama of Illinois stood on the stage at the Democratic National Convention and declared,
The idea that “red vs. blue” states does not tell the complete picture has been echoed by scholars as well, such as Stanford University’s Morris Fiorina. In 2004, Fiorina wrote Culture War?: The Myth of a Polarized America, an analysis of data suggesting “red” and “blue” states are not as far apart as they may seem.
Yet in 2018, it’s impossible to dismiss the partisan and cultural divide as a myth. And voters agree; in the National Exit Poll, 76 percent of voters in the midterms said they believe Americans are “becoming more divided.” But these divisions increasingly make less and less sense as a split between red states and blue states, with state boundaries creating the dividing line. If you take a look at the many ways that the presidential election results of 2016 can be represented on a map, and red vs. blue visually have become much more about population density, with blue dots at America’s cities, surrounded by a field of red.
The reason why the House of Representatives fell out of Republican control in this election was not just because blue states behaved like blue states, or got bluer. Yes, Republicans got wiped out in many House districts in New Jersey, Illinois, California — quintessential blue states. But of the 32 seats that had been called as of Tuesday, just over half were in blue states. Another small handful were in the state of Pennsylvania, which is a red state as of 2016 but was also significantly redistricted as a result of a court decision earlier this year.
It was districts in the red states, places like Kansas, Oklahoma, Utah, and South Carolina, places that voted for Donald Trump by vast double-digit margins, where voters also showed Republicans the door on Tuesday. And it was, in particular, the suburbs that drove these shifts. Look at Georgia, where Trump narrowly won the suburbs in 2016 by a five point margin, and yet where Stacey Abrams edged out Brian Kemp by three points, according to the AP VoteCast exit polls this year. Or Iowa, where Trump won the suburbs by nine points, and yet Republican Kim Reynolds lost them by eighteen points.
Yes, Reynolds was still victorious, handily winning the rural areas where over half of Iowa’s voters live. But that did not save the two House districts in Iowa that swung to the Democrats. It did not save Republicans in the Atlanta suburbs, where Karen Handel has conceded defeat and where Georgia’s 7th District race is headed to a recount. The suburbs of Houston, Dallas, Oklahoma City and Salt Lake all sent Republicans packing and voted like they had politically more in common with the suburbs of Chicago, Denver, and Washington than with the sea of red that surrounds them in their states.
Presidential elections are decided by the states, and therefore the discussion around red and blue states isn’t going anywhere. But red states didn’t all get redder and blue states didn’t all get bluer last Tuesday. Massachusetts and Maryland re-elected Republican governors by wide margins, while Texas came awfully close to electing a progressive Democrat to the U.S. Senate. Many light-red districts became light-blue districts. The story is more complex, and suggests instead that the suburbs felt a stronger gravitational pull from the cities they surround. For Republicans hoping to roll back Democratic advantages in 2018, running up the numbers in the rural areas in red states won’t be enough if the suburbs in those states start voting ever more like their blue state brethren.
